Kaiden's Baseball

Kaiden is in coach pitch base ball again this year, with yes... Mike as his coach! His loving it, and is a pretty good little play player as well, if I may say so myself. They have 2 games and one practice per week. So it is pretty time consuming, but boy is it fun to watch! Kaiden had a great catch to get some one out last week and boy was he excited, after throwing it in with a grin from ear to ear he started jumping up and down. I sure wish I had the video camera going. He played again last night and lost by 3. They did a great job and I think they had a little fun in the process.

Here is a
Picture of
mike with
the score book,
and Kaiden is
on first.

First Sleep-over!

Well Karsyn had her first sleep-over last night! Boy was she excited!!!Raelyn and her brother Dylan (One of Kaiden's best friends) came over at about 7:30. It was the first sleep-over for both girls, so it was nice that Raelyn's brother could be there with her as well! Every thing went without a hitch. They played barbies, dress-up, watched the Swan Princess movie, had a little candy, and some cereal for a bedtime snack! What more could you possible fit into one night?
It was a lot of fun to watch and listen to the girls from a distance.

Weekend at home!

Last weekend we hung out at home, it seems like forever since we have been able to do that! Lowell came down from Watertown on Thursday night. He missed Kaiden's baseball game but was able to go to Mike's softball game. I was planning on taking the afternoon off on Friday so that I could take the kids to the pool. The morning was beautiful, around mid 80's and by 1 pm we were in the middle of a big rain storm! The kids decided that the indoor pool would do, and by the time we got there we had a half hour before the pool closed. It was still a lot of fun, and I so much enjoyed every minute that I got to spend with them!

Jeremy, Kristin and the boys came down from Sioux Falls Friday night to watch Karsyn play tee-ball on Saturday. She had 2 games for the tournament. It was fun watching the kids try to play ball! She is starting to get the hang of it and is enjoying it in the process!

Sat night we had a few friends and family over to grill out. The weather was awesome, and it was so fun to watch the tether ball and basketball competing go on through the night!

Europe Trip!

Mike is going on his second year as an agent for Farm Bureau Financial Services, which is an insurance company. As a production incentive FB has reward trips for the top 11% of the company, that you can qualify to go on each year. This year the trip was a Mediterranean cruise that started in Barcelona Spain and had various ports in France and Italy! After a lot of hard work we qualified for this trip and just recently got home!

Our flight left on Friday June 2nd from the Sioux falls airport bound for Barcelona. The magnitude and beauty of the ship was unbelievable as we pulled up to it in our tour bus. We get checked in and find our room, which was awesome. It had an open air balcony with patio chairs which gave us the most wonderful views of every port we stopped at. All food was included and we had 24 hour room service, a formal dining room, a full buffet and a couple more dining options!

The first night we had a welcome reception with appetizer and cocktails for all of the FB people with an Ice skating performance. It was great to start to get to know some of the wonderful people that were there to experience this trip as well. From there it was to dinner and then to party in the hot tub. The next day we had a day at sea which was great to have the option to sleep in and relax after the previous day of traveling. Mike spent the day in the hot tub partying it up with other agents from around the US and I enjoyed sun bathing and watching at a distance from the upper sun deck. We had our first of 2 formal dinner nights which was at 9:15 that night. Needless to say Mike was in great shape to attend a formal dinner! He was well behaved and of course was the life of the party as usual!

Our next port was Naples. We took a boat to the Island of Ischia, which we toured for 2 hours on a bus then went to the thermal springs, which was just awesome, and relaxing. I think Mike needed a day like that after the previous night!

Next was Civitavecchia Italy where we deboarded the boat at took a bus to Rome. Alls I can say about Rome is WOW! The history and architecture is just so magnificent no words can explain. We saw Trevi fountain, the ancient ruins, the colosseum, St. Peters Basilica and much, much more. It is something I will remember and appreciate for the rest of my life!!!!!

Livorno was next on our list which we passed on tours and explored on our own with a couple friends from Oklahoma. We checked out some city markets, an indoor fish market and was hustled on the street by people selling watches, purses and sun glasses. This was a lot of fun to see what we could negociate final prices for! We had a great authentic Italian lunch and made it to the boat with plenty of time to spare for cocktails and hot tubing!

We than ported in Villefranche, which we were than bussed to Monaco. We had a tour of Monaco, the palace, and several other beautiful areas. Monaco was the cleanest, most beautiful, safe spots in all of France. We then went to the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo. The architecture and artwork was amazing, but the steaks were even a little too rich for Mike and Gary, so they settled for putting a few bucks in the slot machines and watching the high rollers play the tables.


Marseille was the final stop before heading back to Barelona. We again toured on our own, saw a few stands selling fresh seafood with the largest lobster I ever saw in my life. It was 50 Euro per kilo. Which we estimated at over $200 us. Can you say insane? The rest was just a lot of high end stores like Prada, Louis Vetton & Rolex. All things that where very high end and too hard on the pocket book! Everyone else decided to give up and head back to the boat, So Connie, Joe and I kept on looking for an open air leather market. We never ended up finding it, but stumbled upon a mall instead. It was very similar to ones like at home, so after trying to get lunch by people that didn't want to wait on us we finally headed back the ship!

We made it home without a hitch, and as fun as it was, it is sure hard to beat HOME! It was so nice to see the kids again and get back into the swing of things!!!

Australia

At the end of February Mike, Myself and my parents boarded a plane heading to Australia for my cousin Kelva's wedding, after 30 some hours of traveling we finally arrived to Townsville AU. We stayed at Magnetic Island for a couple days accompanied by my Uncle John (from Canada). It was so wonderful to have those couple days to hang out and relax and catch up with John. We had plenty of exploring time on scooters, which was a lot of fun after I got the hang of steering those stinkin things!!!! After our time on the island we headed back to catch up with the rest of the crew that had arrived in. We had a good portion of our Canadian family (Joan & Dale, Richard & Kathy, and my cuz Brandon), as well as the Aussie crew. It was so much fun to see everyone. They are all so truly important to me, and I care about them all so much!!!

The wedding was gorgeously done, the flowers, the food, and all of the wonderful people. Kelva looked stunning (which was no surprise), and the speeches had everyone rolling!

after the wedding, we headed to Richard and Dyan's Station. With mango smoothie stops, tours of their new place, getting stuck in the mud and a cocktail stop, our 4 hour trip turned in to 12 hours. Dyan had a wonderful spread of steak and lobster awaiting us when we finally drove in at 10:30. We spent the next couple days at Wentworth Richard gave us great tours of their place never missing an opportunity for pictures whether it be of Emu, roos, cattle, or landscape! We also got to see a bit of Simons territory, and Kelva's new home! Mike's highlight of the trip (besides getting stuck in the mud), was Simon taking Mike up in the helicopter. WOW, what a rush! We had the privledge of being Kelva & Simons first house guests as a married couple!

On the way home we flew through Tokyo Japan and took and extra 2 days to check it all out! I booked the rooms online and was trying to save a little $$$. The place I booked looked very nice for the money on line. We get on the subway, and as we look at the map we discover that the stop we need is the very last one, and is as far away from any thing we would want to do as possible. When we finally get there we walk around this part of the city trying to find the location. When we get checked in we head up the our room. When we opened up the door, I think I can safely say that all 4 of our jaws hit the floor as our room consisted of 2 sets of bunkbeds 3 high and that was about it! Our bath room had a standard toilet, but the bathing area was Japanese style. Basically, you have a stool about a foot off the ground and a shower hose. Needless to say, no one was too impressed and all you could do was laugh (kind of). Mike was not too impressed with my booking choices and at 10pm in foreign city, we decided to tough it out and hopefully find a deferent hotel the following day. We head out to try and find a restaurant because we have not yet had supper. The area we were staying in was more residential, where the locals lived and nothing was translated. We finally go in a neat looking restaurant which had circular grills in which they set into the table. The people that worked there did not speak a stitch of English, so we lived life on the wild side and prayed and pointed to writing on the menu, which we then cooked on our grill at the table. We ended up with a couple different types of soup, meats, and deserts. My meat was marinated bacon. But all in all it was very good and a awesome experience!

After settling back into our bunks, the snore-a-than began between Mom and Dad. We tried ear plugs and it didn't dull the roar. Mike went down to see if he could get online to search for better accommodation for the following night. I suffered through and finally fell asleep after several yells to my parents to BE QUIET!!!

The next day, Mike let us know our options, which there weren't very many. We end up getting separate rooms at the Tokyo Hilton for about $250/room. By this point it no amount would have been too high to keep a descent quite room to sleep in!!! We spent the day touring around the area of the Hilton and it was great!