May 7-9, 2010
CranHill Ranch

The weather was not looking good for the weekend, but we had reservations and we were going to be with some great friends and the fellowship is all we really needed to make a great weekend out of it. We had wind, rain, cold temperatures and a few little snow flakes in the air ~ but we also had great company, good movies, arts & crafts, scheduled activities and a great attitude.

Oh-- and did I mention it was FREE! We got 2 free sites for the weekend because we brought friends who had never camped at the campground before.

For Mother's Day weekend, the ranch hosted a free (oh - there's that free word again)
pancake breakfast up at the lodge.
Paul does not like sausage, not a bit, so the girls were having a ton of fun teasing him to take a bite of theirs. Oh the giggles of little girls - priceless.

The ranch had many activities scheduled for the weekend -
the older 4 kids participated in archery.
They had a great time and I wouldn't be surprised if they want to try it again this summer.

What's a trip to CranHill Ranch without a "pony" ride?

For some reason, Sam is convinced that he rode a horse named 'Lucky' last year.
The ranch employees insist that they don't have a horse by that name ~ but we can't seem to convince Sam of that fact. Actually, as I write this it is almost an entire month after this trip and Sam still tells me that the next time we go to CranHill 'Lucky' will be there.

No camping trip with the Peters is complete without some great lightsaber duals.
Even Sam is learning to get in on the action.

The only thing the girls need lately is each other, but a couple of swings never hurts.

Given the state of the weather, Lyn planned ahead and brought some crafts for the kids.
One of them that was definately a hit was their pirate hats, swords and eye patches.
(The girls made necklaces, but I didn't find any good pictures of those)

Friday night, was quite windy. The wind was even worse for the Peters, they kind of blocked some of it for us. Heavy wind in a travel trailer can lead to little and interrupted sleep. We had spent a lot of time in their trailer so we called a couple of hour quiet time in the afternoon. They hung out in their trailer and we hung out in ours.

Nicholas' birthday was on Monday - so we brought one of his presents. Our self imposed quiet time was great time for him to open one of his gifts that we brought with us.
We played his new game for a while.

A hayride in the summer's sweltering heat, sitting on haystacks in your shorts isn't the same as a beautiful spring night cuddled together under some wool blankets watching a beautiful sunset.
Not to say I don't prefer the summer weather - but this hayride had a feeling of it's own.

Our attempt at a group picture to commemorate our weekend together.

Sometimes it's just NOT about the perfect shot -
it's about kids being kids and loving every minute of it.

Lyn caught this shot of Allison and I absolutely fell in love with it when she e-mailed it to me.

The kids say hello to the donkey.
Note: Tyler doesn't want the donkey to get his pop-tart.

Lyn spent several summers attending summer camp at Cran-Hill when she was young.
So - one of the things we did was climb up the steep hill to find the cabins she stayed in.
I'm glad I don't have to climb this hill every day.

Gabrielle and Sam loved walking Romeo.

The kids theme for the weekend, which we saw repeated many, many times.

All for one.....

....and one for all!

We pray they can grow up together, sharing those same sentiments along the way.
All for one, and one for all.

May 26, 2008 - Memorial Day
Trip to Hoffmaster State Park
Click to Play

Believe it or not - we actually did NOT go camping over the Holiday weekend. We stayed home and had a successful garage sale. Enough money to pay for next weekend's camping.

Since we stayed home we decided to have a picnic supper on Monday night, to add a little fun to the weekend. We drove over to Hoffmaster State Park and took the kids into the Visitor Center there, went on a hike and then found a quiet spot for supper.

December 17, 2007 Puzzles, Pots and Pans

You'd think the theme for the day was the letter 'p'.

Every afternoon, Sam takes a nap and the girls have to find quiet activities to occupy their time. They usually start by watching a little TV or a video - while I get a chance to get lunch cleaned up, etc. However, one of their favorite activities is doing puzzles. It is so interesting to watch how their minds work so differently. Gabrielle is really good at finding the correct piece for a particular spot. However, Allison is actually a little better about orienting the piece correctly in the puzzle. The two of them can do a 25-50 piece puzzle almost by themselves. I am usually there to help when they get stuck and sometimes prompt them for the next piece they should look for. I'm sure you can see the gate in this picture. We actually have a gate on both ends of our kitchen to keep out the pot bandit. (The is also a safety issue - as Sam like to pull out the oven drawer and stand inside it to open the oven door, "little monkey.") Anyway, today Sam was unusually fussy while I was trying to make dinner. Since I didn't have the oven on, on that particular day I decided to let him inside the gate to explore the cupboards as he loves to do. He will often dig out the spoons and start banging.

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.

February 4, 2007 - It's way too quiet in there...
... We should have known better!

It was Sunday afternoon and we were pretty much snowed in. Most of the churches in W. Michigan were closed. Ours wasn't but we weren't going to venture out in sub zero temperatures with 4 kids as young as ours, one of them being a newborn. Anyway, Allison and Sam were taking both taking a nap and Paul and I were actually going to relax a little in the living room. Nicholas and Gabrielle were playing nicely in the den, or so we thought.

First of all, they had their activity boxes out: crayons, markers, glue, etc; which is normally a "kitchen table only activity". I guess we were being a little lazy and since they seemed to be getting along quite well we let things go that afternoon, as everyone was suffering from cabin fever and a little peace and quiet were a welcome reprieve. Needless to say, we learned our lesson, a couple of hours later I found a chunk of hair on the kitchen floor (see below). This was the first chunk of about 5-8 that we ended up finding. Apparently, Nicholas decided that it would be fun to take a scissors to his sisters hair. UGGGHHH...I almost cried. I can't believe Gabrielle didn't make a fuss when he did it. Once they were done playing and she began moving around the house, the chunks of hair that had stuck to her clothes began falling in various places in the house.

Thankfully, he didn't touch her bangs, and he didn't take any chunks out of the bottom of her hairline. There are several areas where she has small sections that are now as short as 3 inches long and a couple of areas where she has 4-6 inch long pieces. He mainly stuck to the top section of her head and around her part. So far, most people won't notice and I have still been able to pull most of it into her pigtails. If you don't look for it you won't find it, but it is going to be quite a while before these sections grow out.