Summer Highlights!

It has been an amazing spring and summer. The last time I posted was in March so I see that I almost went though two seasons. Spring was very late and cold so our Brazilian guests got to experience a mild version of our winter. They got to experience snow for the first time and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was a time for the family to be together and get acquainted with our family from the south.

The wedding reception was a success and all my hard work paid off. Even my first attempt at decorating wedding cake was a success and my mother-in-laws homemade cake was the best.

Blaise graduated from the University Eau Claire May 18th. We went up there for the graduation followed by another smaller reception at our house. He got a computer science job for the same company he interned for in college and he and Marissa moved to Eagan, Minnesota.

 They spent the week between at our house and we took the kids to Dells of Eau Claire and Nueske's Alpaca farm for a little recreation on Memorial Day weekend. Spring finally arrived as evidenced by the trilliums in bloom

Meanwhile Dane was vacationing in Greece and he and Nefeli announced their engagement. They hope to marry later in 2014 if they can get the immigration clearance. 

The following weekend Drew graduated from Lincoln High School. So it was back to graduation party this one a bit bigger than the one two weeks before. 

The children started water skiing with the Wisconsin Rapids Aqua Skiers in the beginning of May. The air was still cold and the water was just as cold.  Both were around 57 degrees fahrenheit. The enthusiasm was amazing, even as cold as it was. Summer truly found her sport. The boys were a little less enthused. The team is very young and and doesn't  have very many experienced skiers, so skills have been learned mostly by trial and error. The improvement has been amazing in spite of that. The children got newspaper coverage two days in a row during the Wisconsin State Waterski tournament which is hosted annually in July . It is the largest Show Waterski tournament of its kind an is hosted right close to home on Lake Wazeecha. That was an exhausting experience as a few people on our small team did the largest amount of work in the 8 days of preparing and setting up the tournament, selling concessions and maintenance of the grounds and tearing down and returning the grounds to a part. Our family put in a combined 352 hours of volunteer time in order for this to happen. This is an experience I don't care to repeat, so hopefully some changes are made before next year. It was the first time in 22 years that I didn't get to watch a whole show with 28 teams competing. Here are some pictures including the newspaper pictures and a video of one the the best four high pyramids in the tournament. 

I even got a picture of one of the easier jobs I had to do. Dock queen. Dale loves the boat driving job. 

We did get one picture of us enjoying a few moments at the state tournament.

Last weekend was our first relaxing weekend all weekend with Mark and Janice Willbur coming from Ohio. We had our interview with CETUSA about getting a foreign exchange student from Brazil and it looks like it will work out, but first we will be having guests from Ukraine starting tomorrow!  What a summer!