Okoboji Family Reunion

The Hoefer family celebrated Great Nana's 95th birthday with a family reunion in Okaboji.  It was fun to spend time at the lake with my kiddos since I have so many memories from past family reunions.  I don't even know where to begin describing the week so I'll stick with captions on the pictures for this post.  We are so thankful to be a part of such a wonderful family.

Drake and Eric on the dock with Grandpa.

Lilly, Sylvia and Phillip on the boat with John.

Enjoying the waves with my boys.

Uncle John patiently helping Drake drive the boat.

Extended cousins pile-up on the slide.

Eric likes to help Great Nana with her walker.

Enjoying some sticky s'more's with Adam and Grandpa.

We spent a lot of time on the Noah's Ark/Pirate Ship playground.

Eric and Noah attempting a game of Connect Four.

An evening out with my cousins.

The Hoefer Family 5K participants.

Eric investigated the boat lifts multiple times during the week.

Family "pedal" boat ride.

Eric and daddy's kayak trip.

The cousins all built flashlights with Uncle Lee.

Daddy is good at swings.

Sylvia's kayak trip with daddy.

Lots of cards and games were played in our lounge.

These two enjoyed the water all week.

Great Nana is good at sharing her snack with my boys.

Filling up buckets of water to take down to the beach.

Grand Harbor

We spent a weekend in January at the Grand Harbor Resort in Dubuque with our friends, the Baxters.  The kids loved playing in the pool and going down the water slides.  Sylvia is becoming quite the swimmer, Eric got brave enough to go down the water slides by himself and Drake had lots of fun going down on mommy's lap (I didn't let him try by himself although he was officially old enough).  Before heading home, we tired the kids out at Jumpin' Jane's.

My solution to early rising children while others were still asleep.  So thankful I packed breakfast.

End of Season Boating

Grandma and Grandpa took us out for a final boat ride of the season back in September.  Drake did a little navigating for us (while we were parked).

 

Sylvia loves swimming and even started jumping off the back of the boat while we were out.

 

Eric liked to guard the door and let people in and out of the boat.  He seems to like the water when mommy is around.

 

Sylvia tubing with Grandma.  They like to go about the same speed.

 

Eric tubing with Grandpa.

 

Tired out from boating.

 

See you next summer.

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

 

The Hoefer family gathered at the Coralville lake mid July for a week of camping, swimming, boating and plain old having fun The kids and I were out there most of each day and Dan joined us after work. We were even able to stay at the campsite a few nights thanks to my dad borrowing a camper from some friends.

 

Grandpa brought all of our old bikes out to the campground. Eric loved turning the peddles and watching Grandpa fix them. I got to take a spin on my old banana seat bike.  I guess there's not any pictures of that.

 

This boy is fearless on the playground.  He climbs all the ladders, etc. and loves the slides.

 

Drake wasn't too sure about taking a nap in the pack 'n play so he got lots of snuggle time with mommy out at the lake.

 

Getting some time with daddy and staying out of trouble.

 

We tried using the bouncy seat to keep the babies out of trouble.  There are so many things to stick in your mouth when you're camping.

 

We also tried keeping them on this blow up raft but that only worked so well.

 

The babies. There was a three week old that didn't make it and two more on the way at the time.

 

My kids had lots of fun playing with my cousin, Jonathan.  He's currently in school for elementary education.

 

Sylvia loved playing with her cousins and digging in the dirt.

 

I planned a few activities for the kids to do to help fill the time.  Here they are putting their nature collections onto contact paper.

 

Here they're stringing Fruit Loops onto yard and making necklaces.

 

Eric ate his Fruit Loops off the yarn before we had a chance to make it into a necklace.

 

The adults were able to fill the time without me planning cute activities for them.

 

Evan and Ben celebrated their birthdays while we were all together.

 

Eric was one of many who enjoyed the yummy cake.

 

Sylvia got to spend the night in a tent with Grandpa.  It stormed that night and she was so proud that she had stayed in the tent during the storm and wasn't afraid.  A few of us were up in the middle of the night cleaning up our campsite before the rain hit.  We'd gotten so used to no rain this summer.

 

Testing out the gate on his bed in the camper.

 

Cleaning up after our night to do dinner.

 

Heading to the beach for another day of fun.

 

Even Drake likes to splash around in the water.  He got to go for a swim after a fish jumped on my mom and she tossed him into the water!  She may never live that one down.

 

Sylvia is becoming quite the swimmer.  We were taking swimming lessons that week so she got lots of practice.

 

Eric likes to dig on the beach and enjoys the wather some but not as much as the other two.

 

Playing in a hole with Noah.

 

Me and my boys at the beach...right before Eric fell asleep eating goldfish crackers.

 

What camping trip would be complete without s'mores.  I had to remove Eric from the assembly table because he was eating all the marshmallows.  He also figured out how to help himself to the "lenomade" that week.

 

A beautiful sunset I stopped to get a picture of on my way home one night.

 

My grandma and her 6 kiddos.

 

For some reason my dad thought "make a funny face" meant growl at the camera.

 

The Hoefers. We're only missing 13 people in this picture.