Happy 4th of July... Belated, That Is!

We hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! Ours was pretty "mundane" this year. As some of you know, CJ and I are building a deck on the side of the house. We started on Father's Day and have basically just been working a few hours here and there when we are not running off to a ball game! Since we didn't have to work on the 4th, we decided to spend the day working on the deck.

Brianna's friend, Nichole, invited her out to their cabin out at McCook Lake for the July 4th weekend! McCook Lake is in South Dakota, but is actually only about 6 - 7 miles from home! It is just over the border! They went out Friday morning and spent the night and Brianna came home Saturday night. She had lots of fun and it worked out for us too, since she wasn't bugging us all day while we worked! Zach was home and he helped us out quite a bit, but he also ended up going with the neighbors and shooting off fireworks later in the evening. This was fine with us... we were just glad we didn't ruin the holiday too much for them! They are used to going over to South Dakota and getting fireworks and shooting them all off all night long! When this deck is done, we are going to owe Zach and Brianna some "quality time with mom and dad"! They have been really good about it, though, and we try to let them get involved with building this deck as much as they can so they can say that they built it too!

End of Phillies' Regular Season

The Phillies' regular season ended on July 1st. I know I quit posting "game stats, etc." but it was getting pretty monotonous... I felt like I was just typing the same thing for each game! I will just sum up the season with this post!

Zach had a wonderful pitching season, and he did get a lot of doubles and triples, but no home runs this year! He still has All-Stars, so maybe we can get one out of him then?!

The Phillies ended their season with a record of 20-1. Good job, Phillies!!! They had three games that were shut-outs, and basically almost 10-runned everyone they played. They ended up with the 1st place trophy from the League. The team that came in 2nd place was six games behind the Phillies! Zach's team had some really good players this year! Congratulations, Phillies!!!

All-Stars Baseball

Zach found out at the end of June that he was selected for the All-Star baseball team, so he will still be playing baseball throughout the month of July, even when the regular season is over on July 1st! Great job, Zach ~ We are proud of you!


The All-Star team is made up of individuals from each of the teams in the league. The players take a vote on who they think should make the team, however they cannot vote for themselves or anyone else on their team. The kids with the most votes (the top 12) are then on the All-Star team representing our Morningside Little League. They will play against other leagues included in our District 6. If they win at the district level, they go to state! YEAH!!! Good Luck!!!

City Youth Softball Tournament

Brianna was in a city youth softball tournament on Saturday, June 21st. The games started at 8:00 AM and went on all day. The girls at this age level - 8 years old - play 3 innings per game, so each game is pretty much about 1 hour long. Brianna's team was winning their games, so it was working out that they play for an hour, have a 1 hour break, then play again. As the teams got narrowed down in the afternoon, they played back to back up to the Championship game. Brianna's team ended up playing 5 games and getting in to the Championship game, which they lost by ONE lousy point!!! They played really well all throughout the day and ended up going home with the 2nd place trophy!! Brianna had an awesome day -- she had two grand slams and two homeruns throughout this tournament!!! Way to go, Brianna!!!

Happy Belated Birthday, Mom!!

Okay... time to get this blog updated! Thank you for being so patient!! This still may take me a few days to get them all published since we are still busy every night!!!

First of all, I want to say a belated "Happy Birthday" to my mother! Her birthday was June 20th (I know I'm a little late... I said "belated", didn't I?!) Mom came to Sioux City for her birthday. We grilled steaks and had cake on Friday night, then Brianna had a softball tournament all day on Saturday. Saturday night we took Mom to Awesome Biker Nights downtown on Historic 4th Street. It was packed with so many people that you couldn't even look around to see if there was anyone you knew! We went to see Night Ranger perform! This is a band from the 80's -- some of the members looked different and the keyboardist was definitely a different person -- he didn't even look like he was 30 years old yet! The lead singer looked exactly the same -- same clothes, same long hairstyle, etc. He had sunglasses on, but when he took them off and they showed his face on the jumbo screen set up by the stage, then you could see how old he really was! They were still really good, though!

All in all, this was a good (and busy!) weekend -- I think Mom enjoyed it!!!

Happy Father's Day!!

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there!! Hope you had a wonderful day!! We had a very "productive" day around here, but that was great too!!!

We have torn down our old deck that was attached to the side of the house. It was very old and rotting, and it was really wobbly. We have bought lumber, etc. to build a new deck, but just haven't been able to find the time to work on it! The kids had ball games yesterday, and CJ had to work all day, so we decided that we would work on it today... even though it was Father's Day! (CJ didn't mind, really!... whaever it takes to make "progress" on this project!!)

Brianna went to spend the night with her friend, Nichole, from school. She got back home this morning just before noon, so that is when we gave CJ his cards and presents. Before Brianna came home, Zach and I went out driving (Zach got his permit on Saturday... YIKES!) so he could just get a little comfortable behind the wheel of the car. He didn't do too bad... it went a lot better than I thought it would! He wanted to go with me instead of CJ because I tend to have more "patience" than CJ does! He was afraid his dad would be yelling and making him nervous!!

When we got back from our little driving lesson, we made a breakfast brunch, then cleaned the dishes and by this time Brianna was home, so we gave CJ his cards and presents. Brianna wrote him a book with pictures she drew for her story. It was all about her dad and how much she loves him, etc. I think this was his favorite present! CJ likes LSU Tigers, so Zach got him a T-shirt from their 2007 Championship and then we also got him some shorts to go with it. Then I got him a miter saw because he is going to need it to build this deck!!!!

After presents, we went to Menards to pick up some of the lumber they have been holding for us since we bought it back at the beginning of May. We came home and spent the whole afternoon measuring, digging holes for the posts, cutting the posts, pouring cement in the holes, etc. We now have six posts cemented into the ground! This is a start! Now we just have to figure out what day we will be able to work on this again!! I will be sure to post it when it is completed... hopefully before summer is over!!

Okoboji Vacation 2008

Well, we just returned home from our annual trip up to Village West in Okoboji! Can't say that anyone is glad to be home, though! The week up there seems to go so fast... next thing you know, it is time to go back to work... YUCK!!


This was perhaps the "rainiest" year we have had up there in the 8 years we have been going up. At least most of the rain was in the middle of the night, so it didn't really disrupt our day plans much! Even if it had, there are plenty of indoor activities to do there as well!

We arrived up to Okoboji last Sunday afternoon, and the first thing Brianna did was put her swimsuit on and head down to the beach!!! It was so hot that day, and the beach was crowded! Brianna did get in the lake and swim around for about 45 minutes or so -- we were told the water temperature in the lake was just above 50* or so... cold, but you got used to it fast enough if you kept moving around! My mom came up later in the day and stayed with us until Tuesday evening. We kept her busy going to movies, swimming, golfing, playing games, etc. As a matter of fact, the kids were so busy doing everything on Sunday and Monday that everyone was tired and in bed by 10:00 Monday night!!!


My sister, Jenny, and her daughter, Sydney, came up on Tuesday morning, along with Jenny's boyfriend, Matt, and his sons, Luke and Noah. They stayed with us until Wednesday afternoon. The kids went swimming, did some craft activities, played on the beach, swam some more (!) and we also had a cookout!

On Thursday and Friday, we didn't have any company so the kids were bored. We went swimming some more, saw a couple movies, went miniature golfing, and then went out to eat. We let the kids pick the restaurant, and they picked McDonalds! Of all places!! We can eat there any time! But we ate at McDonalds, stopped at a WalMart to pick up a few things, then headed back to the resort for... you guessed it, more swimming!



On Saturday, my uncle Bill came up from Emmetsburg with his two daughters, Jasmine and Collette. Both girls are close to Brianna in age, so they had a lot of fun together. We went and watched The Bee Movie in the movie theater, had a cookout for lunch, went swimming most of the afternoon, then we decided to make a trip over to Arnold's Park and see what was going on over there. Arnold's Park is just across the lake from where we were staying, and it is a very busy "area" with an amusement park, several museums, lots of little clothing shops, food places, bars, etc. We parked and walked down to the water and out on the docks to watch all the boats. Then we decided to walk up the The Emporium, which is a large three story building with restaurants, bars, clothing shops, an arcade, etc. We did end up buying the three girls matching Okoboji shirts in one of the stores! (see the picture above!) Bill and his girls decided to go home after we had been walking all over down there. We stayed and went in to the amusement park and Zach and Brianna rode all the rides and played games. We ran into "neighbors" from the resort and even saw people from Sioux City who were up to Okoboji for the weekend! We finally got back to the resort shortly after 9PM and the kids decided to go spend more of their money in the arcade instead of swimming one last time. When we got back to our townhouse, the kids watched TV and fell asleep while CJ and I cleaned the place up and packed our stuff to get ready to leave in the morning.


Zach and Brianna were pretty good about getting up this morning and helping load the car. We were ready to leave by 9:30AM, but Brianna had some coupons for the gift shop that she had gotten while playing games in the arcade. She had close to $6 that she could spend in there with her coupons, so we had to wait until 10AM when they opened. She got a few things with her "money", then we headed back to Sioux City. We got home about noon... I just got done unpacking and Brianna is already over at a friend's house, so I thought I would get on and update the blog before our week started up and we were busy again!