August 31, 2007-September 3 , 2007
A camping trip at Brower Park.

As you can tell, if you look at my posting date - I am about a month behind on my blog. Everybody is back to school (watch for future posts on that), and settling into a routine has been....well, shall we say.....hectic. Needless to say, the fact that I work at home, means I am ONLY working at night, which leaves little computer time for personal projects like - what's this called again - a blog?

Anyway, Labor Day weekend we headed out to Brower Park with Mom & Dad, and Cory,Catherine & Joshua, with a visit from Shawn, Erin & Owen thrown in on Saturday.

As much fun as we had at the big family reunion at Myers Lake (and can't wait to go back), it was so much fun to watch the kids interact with Joshua "one-on-one" for more than a couple of hours here and there. They had so much fun together. There was a playground right across the street from our camper, that had a log cabin house. The kids were constantly pretending it was an ice-cream store. They would take our order through the window, and they would serve us pine-cone treats. What fun, to see them play together and PRETEND. It was so great, they even had other kids from the campground coming to ask for "ice-cream". Apparently, they got a reputation.

There was also a couple of walks to another playground on the other side of the campground, where there was a big wooden train. The kids had lots of fun crawling and climbing all over it, as well as enjoying the bouncy toys, etc.

To top off the weekend, we ran into some friends of Mom & Dad on Saturday night and they had a pontoon boat. They offered to take us for a ride, which ended up being much longer than we anticipated. The kids had lots of fun, and Joshua really like seeing some of the FAST boats up close.

We had a lot of fun together, and can't wait for more camping fun in the future.

August 29, 2007 - A New Look!

Gabrielle's hair has been starting to drive me crazy for quite some time. The longer parts of her hair were so thin and fine (baby hair) and she had a bunch of places that would just stick up all the time because of the incident a while back with Nicholas taking a scissors to it. http://vanwesepventures.blogspot.com/search?q=quiet. When I would pull it to a ponytail there were short pieces sticking up and some of them would always fall out. School was getting ready to start and Paul would be getting her ready at least one day week, and pony tails are not his thing. So.....I took her in to get a major makeover. She's looks so ready for school and so grown up. Hopefully, if we decide to let it grow out again now it will be thicker and more even. However, I like it so much we might just keep it short for a while. Gabrielle loves it too, and thinks she looks like mama.....which she does.

August 22, 2007 - Summer Portraits

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Will all of the camping we have done this summer, I was a little late in getting around to Allison and Sam's newest portraits (and of course, a few group shots thrown into the mix as well). They are doing some new things at the portrait studio...some I like, some I don't. One of them however, is when they let you preview the pictures prior to ordering they have all sorts of enhancements on the photos which are sometimes really cool. It is an obvious ploy to have you fall in love with the enhancement and just "have to have it". I fortunately go in there with my list of what I need and never get caught in their little scheme. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that when I received my electronic versions of the pictures...it included all of the enhancements. Kind of cool.

August 14, 2007 - A New Vehicle....New to us that is!

Over the past months we have been feeling slighlty cramped in our mini van. Adding Sam to the family this past January put all four "car-seat" compatible locations of the van in use. We no longer had the ability to take one of the seats out when we needed to take extra gear with us, and the every time we went somewhere for any period of time, the gear was a lot. I could barely get the groceries in if I happened to have the double stroller along. Our numerous camping trips this summer have increased our desire for a bigger vehicle. We just didn't know if we would be able to do this. After some serious research, lots of looking on-line and a few days of driving to numerous car lots we found our perfect match. We found a 1997 Chevrolet Suburban. It is a little older, but for it's age only has 108,000 miles and these vehicle seem to last forever. So far, we love it and our recent camping trips have proven how much extra room we actually have. So, with an 8 passenger seating capacity, we can successfully seat all 4 car seats, but we have room for an additional car seat and one more additional passenger if needed (for taking friends along - not another baby if that's what you are thinking). We also have a "ton" of room behind the back seat for taking all of the many belongings that go along with 4 kids.