A new BIL!

Brother - in - law. We abrev in this fam. =)

DALLAS IS ENGAGED to this fine fellow: (ok Levi is in the blue shirt - NOT HIM haha)









Here are the stats:
Name: Caleb Nachtigall (knock-tih-gall)
Age: old enough
Hair: blondish brown and short
Loves: Jesus, Dally, computers, art, fixing ANYTHING, making ANYTHING
Fun fact: He made Dally's ring. That's right, you read that correctly...he MADE, as in started from nothing and ended with a ring to put on her finger. HOLY CRAP
Proposal date: 10-10-10....don't really think that was on purpose cause it just happened to be when he finished the ring...it took a whoppin 5 weeks.

Anyhoo, I got permission from the owners to post this even though it hasn't been released on the world wide web yet. As luck would have it, Caleb thought enough to make a video of the whole creation process so the rest of us can have a craft...month. haha SO...stay tuned for all the pictures/videos/information/stories/wedding plans to come. Check Dallas's fb or Caleb's...I've been told it will be up for the viewing soon! But for now - here's a preview. Note that it looks even MORE amazing and sparkly in person and there's a whole history behind the diamonds...and if you knew Caleb at all, that would not come as a surprise.

We are SO excited to have such a great new addition to the family! Welcome!!

Start of Year 5!

We've almost been married for 5 years!! hahaha. just kiddin. Thursday was our 4th anniversary and yesterday morning Ry was leaving for work, he made some joke about it almost being 5 years now. haha. Trust me, it was pretty funny.

SOOOOOO, now that we're officially in the 5th year of marriage, here are some fun adventures we've taken in the last 2 days. =)

FIRST OF ALL, Friday was our last day with lil Ellington. So we packed up in the morning and headed off to visit Emily at school for her last day of teaching! The kids in the class thought it was so awesome to have visitors for a few minutes. It's like Where's Waldo trying to find the boys in this picture! haha....they loved going to the school cause it was like a whole room full of Hunter's!! I told Emily that in those 5ish minutes we were in there before the kids went to art I was completely overwhelmed. I would take 4 kids under 3 years old ANY DAY over a class room of 3rd graders!! haha

And then a great shot of Em and the big sister!

Seriously....any day now baby W's (pronounced = Dubs...maybe it should just be BDubs! HA!) Well, she's due on Wednesday, so I guess we might just have a wait a bit longer....

And then yesterday evening Deb and Rich came over. We haven't' hung out with them in forever it seems, so it was great to have them here. Deb and Ry went to pick up some DELISH food from a restaurant that one of his patients owns and after we ate we headed off to the park to burn off some of the boys' energy - not like they need any help burnin energy with Uncle Rich here... he gets em all sorts of riled up! How do you spell that. Anyways, check out these action shots!!




HA! And then of course we had to have dessert. Dilly Bars from DQ! That was a first time experience with ice-cream on a stick. It went over quite well actually. =)



Just noticed I don't' have any pictures of Deb. terrible! but she was here!! haha. Anyways, we're glad to have such great friends here, we had a blast today with Whites and Gpa Joe at the Harvest Festival on the bluff, followed by pizza for lunch, naps, some football watching of course, the park, Sydney shopping, supper at Joe and Susies, and the lovely quiet moments after bedtime. =) SIIIGHHH. Life feels so busy when all you do is chase people for a living. hahaha! Deep down I'm still thankful for these days because they go by just as fast as they came. =)

Tick Tock...

Any day now.......... !!!!!!



I've been workin on Elle when she's here to tell me her brother's name. The first time she said 'tsi-tsi' and the second time was very clear - 'NEEN'. And she seemed to know exactly what she was saying to me. hmmm......Does this look like a face that would lie?! I think not!

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of another sweet lil boy!

What a reader!

So Garrett's not really reading, this book has just been read to him so many times he knows it. HA. This was about the 5th time thru the book tonight so this time wasn't as good as the times before, but it's still pretty cute. =)

Movin Movin Movin

I should have posted this milestone up quite some time ago, but I'm just now getting to it....she's been WALKING! for a few weeks now, totally unbalanced still, but definitely getting better. As you're watching this below, note that Grammy and Grandpa Joe (sometimes Garrett just calls him 'Joseph' cause that's what Susie says -hahah) are over and doing what they do best - helping them burn off some energy! And this is exactly why God blessed us with a large lil lady...just watch and know that the tackling happens multiple times a day, and rarely ends in crying. What a TANK!!! Just tryin to toughen her up, you know! haha! Enjoy!

Another Great Weekend!

SIGH. Sunday night already. I'd like to say that weekends go really fast and during the week it slows down a bit, but in two months Sydney will be 1 so I guess time general just flies right on by.

Friday Dustin and Breanne texted and asked us if we wanted to go to the Michigan Notre Dame game in Southbend on Saturday....we were free so we said SURE! Joe and Susie came and we headed out. Turns out, Dustin is an expert in purchasing tickets AT the game, or any event he goes to. He said he can't remember the last time he went to a game or event or concert and had tickets in advance for it...or paid face value. WELL OK! He just left the three of us in the dust to go check out his market to find the best deal. We ended up sitting across the stadium from them and their tickets were in the donor's section RIGHT under the press box, which was great for Breanne cause she's 7 months pregnant with their second and that could have been pretty uncomfortable had she not had a back rest. Anyhoo, the guy that was sitting by them really enjoyed his time with D & B, ended up saying he was super glad they got to sit together and told them to go buy something for the baby and handed ALL HIS MONEY BACK for the tickets!!! WOAH! They paid $70 for each!! Of course they didn't realize it was all the money until they were out of the stadium and that guy was long gone...WOW. How awesome to be so nice to a complete stranger. Well, we all thought that was super neat. We then headed to Chili's to celebrate the victory - Breanne went to Michigan so they were silent in the donor/ND section but secretly cheering on the inside for MI, and we were cheering for ND in our section of great fans and also secretly cheering for MI on the inside. haha. Well, I just cheer for whoever ry is cheering for...who are we kidding. But it was a GREAT game to the end, the weather was awesome, people we sat with were really friendly and were so much fun. Brought back some GRRRRREEEEEEEATTT memories we both have of going to Nebraska games and really made us excited for next season when they start playing games so close to us!!!

OK. These pictures are showing up a lot smaller on the blog then i was expecting....so click on em to make em bigger. Check out everybody's face in this picture in the background. hahahaaa


Breanne is sitting at the 50 yard line, back against the press box wearing a yellow coat. And Dustin is in blue on her left. Same with this one, have to zoom in to see em. You could easily see them in real life but the camera makes it seem like we were really far away and that everyone looks like an ant. I thought we had GREAT seats!


This picture is SO funny to me cause it looks like Breanne's arm is linked with Ry's. hahahaaaa. But really Ry is just holding his rain coat. so funny!


Thanks for a great gameday/hangout closin Chili's down! haha. We had a full day today too, but that will be in the next post... holllllaaaa!

Labor Day Weekend!

Well, it was a hoppin weekend here once again. Since Deb couldn't come visit with Briana this past July, she cashed in her tickets for last weekend and was able to stay a few extra days due to the holiday and her mother-in-law passing away the week before. Would have loved to have been at Rose's service, but thanks to technology, We watched the taped version that was available online. Beautiful!

Of course we tried to jam as much in as possible, and had intentions of doing much more than we actually did. =) From the pictures I ended up with it seemed like we just spend all our time inside. NOT the case. The weather was beautiful...we sat outside and drew some pictures with chalk, carousel with the boys and grammy and grandpa, walked around downtown St. Joe, enjoyed some fine dining at Silver Beach Pizza, the grill a few times, waffles, and delicious stir fry. mmmm. also, the weather was great and we had the windows open and breeze flowin thru the house.....ahhhh FALL HAS BEGUN. =)

Here's the picture reel......


Now amongst these here photos you might have seen a couple of florescent orange sticks, I will tell you that for Hunter's birthday this year, which was Monday, the Thomas's gifted his first EVER pair of stilts!!! He didn't even know what they were at first. hahahaaa. But 24 hours later he had the hang of it and was taking like 10 steps at a time! I tell ya...age 9 is the perfect year for stilting. I was laying awake one night when i couldn't sleep trying to figure out how old we were on the farm when dad made ours for us - and came to the conclusion that I didn't know but it had to be somewhere around then. We had 2 or 3 sets i think, all started with our crazy days with the Magnusson kids, but we would race each other across the front yard and set up obstacle courses for ourselves. Oh the days of cheap entertainment! Couldn't tell ya when the last time I stilted was, but of course I had to try them out and sure enough, it's like riding a bike!...maybe I should try skipping with them...haha.

Anyhoo, school started yesterday here for the kids. Had to get Ash's highlight appointment in before she went back - the after shot is in there too. It looked great. Elle is here now for a few weeks while Emily finishes out teaching the rest of her pregnancy. Can't imagine another little one in the mix! 5 more weeks and he'll be here!!! I'm just glad Syd has a friend to play with....all these boys around here =) They are definitely both excited to see each other in the mornings and after naps and such. so cute! They read like this for like 10 minutes this afternoon. haa


SIGH...just tryin to get into the swing of fall...gotta get the decorations out here pretty soon. YES!! my favorite season is just beginning and I have a ton of new recipes to try. Stay tuned for more adventures!