Cruisin.....Disney Style!

I am so blessed to have married into such a wonderful family, not only because they are fun to be with, laugh all the time, and love the Lord, but also because they take great trips!!!  With much thanks to Grandpa and Grandma Sapp, the whole Sapp Family, all 30 of us, boarded the Disney Dream a few weeks ago for a 4 day Cruise Adventure.  We weren't sure how Cooper would feel about all the Disney characters and activity of the boat, but he LOVED every second of it!

Waiting to board the boat with Gigi



The boys with Donald

This became a very commonly used face on the boat, everything he saw
he was just amazed at and would say "ooooo"

We are on the ship and we are excited!  Look at this group ;)

Coop dancing on Grandpa Wayne's shoulders

I will just let the pictures tell the story.....there are way to many to share, but here are some highlights!  Between the amazing Disney themed shows every night, the delicious food, the lifesaving nursery (that Cooper and cousins Sawyer and Crosbi hung out in together during dinners), the baby-crawling contest, and all the family that you would run into around every corner of the boat, the experience was unforgettable!!!!







Checking out the top deck, "Woa it's Windy up here!"



Meeting Minnie on Pirtae night

These three LOVE Stitch, they chased him down the hallway to

get this pic with him! Not kidding.

Nemo's Reef

A little mini-golf, sure why not!

Getting in some Crosbi Lu time!

Had a great time with the Sapp Family.

Wish we could do it all again!

(sorry the font is kind of messed up on this,....
.if anyone has any blogging tips I could use some)

Corn Picking!

You know you live in Nebraska when you find yourself doing this...............

Yep that's right, got to pick ourselves some corn this week! 

Andy talked his uncle into planting us a little patch of sweet corn in his fields a few months ago, and Sunday we got the call.....THE CORN IS READY!  So we recruited some corn picking people and headed out to Ashland!

Andy absolutely loved every second of it, and was a corn picking machine.  I got into as well, it was a really fun experience and I think if you live in Nebraska you have to do it at least once!

Coop even got in on some of the action!

He mostly hung out with Aunt Mary though and got to do fun things like pet her goats, play with Jesse the dog, and go on little rides (slowly) on the ATV!  He's a farm boy at heart ;)

Out in the fields

Jesse even helped us out some

Even got cousin Andrea in on the action too, and at almost 8 months pregnant!  She was amazing, I can't say corn picking would be the first thing I would want to do with 6 weeks left to go, but she loved it!  (and we really needed her help too ;)  )

After we picked for a couple hours on Sunday and Thursday night, the fun didn't stop there.  Then we got to process it, and because we had so much of it, we cut a lot of it off the ears to freeze for later!

What a fun experience!  I think I learned more about corn than I ever thought I would know, and now we have corn to eat all year long!  We also got to share it with neighbors, co-workers, family, and friends.  Andy loved running around the neighborhood handing out bags ;)

Thanks Uncle Kevin and Aunt Mary for helping us out with this!  And big thanks to John and Kristel and Andrea and Ryan for helping with the harvest!!!!!

Grand Beach

Oh how we love love love being up at Grand Beach.  It takes us back to our highschool days when we were dating and would go up almost every summer weekend with our families.  In case you don't know the history of the place, Andy's parents had a place up there first and my parents immediately fell in love with the community while visiting Wayne and Suzi one summer weekend at there place.  That also happened to be the same weekend Andy asked me to Junior year highschool prom on the beach, but's that a whole other story......Anyway my parents soon purchased a lakehouse there as well and now Coop has his grandparents in the same place (both in Naperville and Grand Beach).  And they just happen to be BFF as well.  Pretty special, not many people can say that ;)

One of the hardest things about being away from Chicago is missing the chance to go up to Grand Beach.  Such a beautiful, peaceful, serene place.  We love everything about it, and are excited for Coop to get to enjoy it as well.

Here he was on his way from the airport to GB a few weekends ago......look how excited he is!

Sweet, sweet memories........and God willing many, many more to come.

A different kind of 4th

This might be the first 4th that we have actually been at our own home and just together as a family.  Although I feel like we should be doing more today since it is a holiday, with it being the middle of the week and our last couple months being so hectic, we decided to just lay low. We started the morning watching our neighborhood parade, which just consists of everyone who wants to walking, pushing strollers, wagons, or riding bikes through the neighborhod and ending up at a park for donuts and fruit.  They had a clown for the kids and an old man singing.  Fun to get out and chat with the neighbors.  The rest of the day was supposed to be either spent at the pool or doing something fun as a family, but looked a  little more like this......

Ugh, yep the drain in the storage room clogged.  Therefore the next couple hours were spent declogging.  Happ 4th Right?    Now we are sitting here with our air off  (b/c the air conditioner was draining water into the clogged drain) in this 100 degree day staring at the drain praying it starts working!  

LUCKILY the last few weeks have been full of festive events to celebrate at!!

Andy participated in the Warrior Dash which was a 3 mile run/obstacle course

Off to the East Coast for Michael Connell's wedding, which was in Old Saybrook, CT

The reception was in a beautiful white tent right on the water

Beach Walk with Grandpa

Painting with mom and the Sapp girls

Aunt Heather came to visit for a week - here she is with Andy doing a little rabbit hunting in our backyard!

Coop with his two favorite boy cousins, Grif and Sawyer.  We love when these 3 are matching!