Carter, Applesauce and Carter!

Last week Satruday my sisters, my mom and some friends of ours made applesauce, it was really messy and sticky but the end product turned out really yummy! We made quite a bit as you can see from the picture of it all lined up on the counter! Also, I threw in a few pictures of Carter, just cuz he's so cute!

Praising God in a Time of Sorrow.

Early Saturday morning Grandpa De Jonge went to be with Jesus in Heaven. Although we saddened by the loss, we know that Grandpa is singing with the Angels in heaven and that his body is healed with no more pain or suffering. Grandpa was a great man and his love for Jesus was evident through the way he lived his life. I have been blessed just to have known him for a few years. As we mourn his loss we also rejoice in knowing that he has met his Savior. We are thankful for all the memories, he was dearly loved and will be greatly missed.

One year already!?

Can you believe that we've been married a year already? This past year flew by! This past weekend we went up to Traverse City to Celebrate our one year anniversary! (September 7) We stayed at Cherry Tree Inn right on the bay. We went to a few different wineries and did some wine tasting along both Old Mission point and Lelanau Peninsula. We came home with a just a few bottles of wine! =) We also went up to Sleeping Bear Dunes for a day and spent the day hiking up the dunes and driving through a scenic drive. Trust me, the dunes were much steeper and bigger than they appear in the picture, but we still had fun climbing them! We also ate at some great restaurants up in Traverse City! We had a lot of fun relaxing and spending time together! We did make it to Turtle Creek Casino one night too, we didn't win any money just playing with $10-15, but it was still fun to see and experience a casino because I had never been to one! I couldn't believe all the old people, about half with oxygen tanks and the other half chain smoking their cigarettes!

Elk

Mike would probably be upset if I didn't post this picture...so here is a picture of the Elk that was above the fireplace at the cottage we stayed at...it was pretty big! The cottage was right by Legends Ranch (I think that is what it's called) so we did a drive by a few times to look at the deer that are fenced in there, we actually saw quite a few!

Summer Vacation

The first week in August we went with my family to cottage for the week. It was located on Pickerel Lake in Bitely (near Baldwin). This is a picture of the cottage, a log cabin style, it was very nice! We spent a lot of time relaxing, swiming, skiing, tubing etc.
This was the view from the cottage, notice the our lovely pontoon boat and my dad's old gold boat...I think they're both antiques! (they both run most of the time!) The shore was full of weeds and really mucky so we'd take the our pontoon boat out to the middle of the lake to go swimming. We're not sure exactly what Mike is doing in this picture--fishing or taking a leak...it's up for debate!
Here's how we spent our evenings - reading and playing games! I think I got through almost three books!
SHOCKER!! We even got Kyle to read--more than just a magazine! We were all SO surprised! I think he actually liked it more than what he let on to!

This past Saturday we went up to Mike's aunt and uncle's cottage on Bass lake, we did a little tubing, skiing, knee boarding, fishing etc. Here's Carter's first tube ride, it was so exciting that he fell asleep! Allyssa, Mari, Mike and Brian going for a wild ride, Mike is the only one who fell off -- TWICE! =)
Feeding the fish...
Mike, Mari and Matt fishing, they claim they had good luck, but we didn't see any of their fish, supposedly they "threw them all back" -- likely story! =)

More summer fun

A few weekends ago we went rafting with a big group of people down the Muskegon River, here's the boys getting the tubes ready to float. Here's the whole group of us!
After rafting we ate supper and hung out for a while...then sat around the fire. (*note you may recognize these pictures, I stole them from Kelly's blog b/c I didn't have my camera with me*)