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Yearly Archives: 2011

/2011

Zach and Ben Finish Swimming Lessons

Today, Ben and Zach finished swimming lessons and boy were they bummed when the lesson was over.  They want to take another set of lessons when we get back from our trip.  We’ll see.  They did a great job and they had great teachers.  We’re going to practice a bunch with them when we go on our trip.

After the lesson was over, the boys wanted to get pictures taken with their teachers.

For a park district swimming program, they learned quite a bit, and they both passed on to the next level.  This made them very excited and they can’t wait to show their cousins what they learned when we go on our trip!  Great job boys!

By |2011-08-01T06:01:58-07:00June 27th, 2011|Home Life|0 Comments
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First Garden Harvest!

Today, Kirstyn harvested her first vegetables from the garden!  They were beautiful radishes and she was very happy about that as you can tell from the picture!  🙂

She can’t wait to see what comes up next!  The garden is looking a little dead right now due to the intense heat and lack of rain.  We’ll keep our fingers crossed!

 

By |2011-08-01T05:33:30-07:00June 18th, 2011|Home Life|0 Comments
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EEP Camp Starts!

Today, Kirstyn started her Northern Illinois  University Summer Engineering Camp (NIU-EEP) that was part of the program she started on Saturdays not long ago.  The program buses them out to NIU in Dekalb every day and they spend the whole day there learning about engineering, completing projects, and going on field trips.  She loves the stuff and has decided she still wants to be an Architectural Engineer when she grows up.

Have fun this week, Kirstyn!

By |2011-08-01T05:30:35-07:00June 17th, 2011|School|0 Comments
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Happy Birthday, Brittany!

Well, only one more year until she can date…  That’s the first and foremost thing on Brittany’s mind today on her 15th birthday!  She is quite the funny girl and she definitely  keeps our family laughing at how boy-crazy she is!  🙂  It’s hard to believe that our little “itty bitty” is already 15 and in high school!  Yikes!

She had fun opening presents and then having her “cake” as well.  It was more of a “pie” with a #8 candle on the top (because she wanted it and we didn’t have enough candles for 15)!  🙂

Thanks for being such a GREAT daughter Britt!  We love you!

By |2011-07-22T10:59:50-07:00June 14th, 2011|Home Life|0 Comments
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Swimming Lessons Start

Today, Ben and Zach started swimming lessons at Philips Waterpark.  They are so excited to swim, and Zach thinks he’s a pro already!  🙂  It was so much fun to watch the two boys (in swim lanes right next to each other) work with their teachers and see how well they caught on.  Ben is quite the funny little guy and we think he’ll do well.  Zach loves the water and can’t get enough of it.

As soon as they finished up with their lesson for the day today, they wanted to jump right back in and have another lesson.  They didn’t want to wait until tomorrow!  🙂

Great job boys!

By |2011-08-01T05:26:48-07:00June 13th, 2011|Home Life|0 Comments
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Stake Youth Conference @ Nauvoo!

Over the last 3 days, Sarah and Brittany were able to participate in a wonderful Stake Youth Conference in Nauvoo.  It is great having Nauvoo so close!  🙂  They went down with a couple hundred youth and leaders and spent the time learning about church history, dancing, and the highlight:  doing baptisms in the temple.

The stake leaders decided that they would make this youth conference all about family history so all the youth were challenged to come up with their own names of family and friends to take to the temple.  We don’t have any that we know of due to very diligent grandparents, parents, and other relatives, so we asked the Raketic family if we could do their names.  They were very willing to let us do this, so she provided all the information that she had.  We did all the prep work and submitted them for doing the temple work.  Brittany and  Sarah were able to be baptized for all the names we prepared, which included Tracy’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  What an awesome experience!

Overall, our ward had about 600 names (I think) that we all need to finish the work for, so we are going to take this on as a ward project for the next year-and-a-half.  This should be an amazing experience!

Overall the girls loved it!  They came home pretty excited and couldn’t talk enough about it!

By |2011-07-22T07:28:01-07:00June 11th, 2011|Church|0 Comments
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Regional Leadership Forum (RLF) Reconnect

Today I had a GREAT day up in Milwaukee at an RLF Reconnect for my leadership program I participated in through work.  Once a year, the Midwest region hosts one of these and people come from all over to renew relationships, learn about leadership concepts, discuss the book we are asked to read for the session, and to have a bunch of fun.  This year, it was at We Energies in Milwaukee.  What a great place to meet.  It was an old building that  was built to be converted to a hotel, should the new “electricity” thing of the day fail.  🙂

Our 2009 RLF group was by far the most represented there.  We had a great time catching up and talking about the “old times” during our session.   The theme of the session was Driving for Success and we read the book The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon.  This was a very fascinating book and one that I would suggest to all to read.  We also had a keynote address by Steve Cartwright, the CIO of We Energies.  We also discussed challenges of developing and staying true to your vision, and did some fun group activities around RLF success stories.

What a great day!

 

By |2011-07-22T07:19:32-07:00June 8th, 2011|Work-Related|0 Comments
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Playing with the Firemen!

Today, Ben and Zach saw the Aurora Fire Department testing out the fire hydrant in our yard and could not resist going out to check things out!  The firemen were really nice and let them hang around.  Then they got a picture with Ben and Zach!  Quite funny!

After that, Ben told me he wanted to be like the guys he got his picture taken with!  Starting early, every little boy wants to be a firefighter at some time or another!  🙂

By |2011-07-22T10:55:12-07:00June 7th, 2011|Home Life|0 Comments
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Last Day of School!

Yea!  It is finally here!  The last day of school was today and the kids were VERY excited to be done!

Sarah and Brittany have been wanting to be done for quite some time.  This year was pretty hard for them and they were tired!  I think we are excited to have Zach done to protect his teacher from him!  🙂  He had a little bit of a rough year with some behavior and attention problems, but his teacher did a GREAT job in helping him this year, so we hope that next year brings some more positive results!  Kirstyn was the one who we think could have kept going.  She loved school this year, had a great time, and got great grades!  Angela is gearing up for a summer with lots of activities and lots of bodies running around the house making lots of  noise!

 

By |2011-08-01T05:19:57-07:00June 7th, 2011|School|0 Comments
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Special Stake Conference – Bishop Burton

Today we had a special Stake Conference that was not on the normal schedule.  Bishop Burton of the Presiding Bishopric came to speak to us and it was a wonderful meeting!  He is Brittany’s idol (if you can say that about a general authority), because she loves it when he talks about the welfare program of the church and what the church is doing to help those around the world.  🙂

We were very concerned at first because we ended up right up in front on the second row and were not sure how Ben would behave.  I took my iPad and he ended up playing with it the entire time and not making a peep!  That device is TOTALLY worth its weight in gold!  Not once did I have to tell him to be quiet  Whew!

After the meeting was over, we were able to shake his hand and Brittany was totally excited!  He was only able to shake a few hands before rushing out the side door due to his busy schedule so we considered ourselves very lucky that we were so close up front.  There were many wanting to shake his hand that didn’t get the opportunity.

 

By |2011-07-12T13:44:35-07:00June 5th, 2011|Church|0 Comments
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Father’s and Son’s Campout

Last night and this morning, Ben, Zach, and I had our annual Fathers and Son’s Campout with the ward.  We had a GREAT time!  Zach was VERY excited (as usual), and Ben was happy as well.  This was Ben’s first trip.  He was a little nervous because he didn’t know what to expect, but as soon as we got there, he starting running and never stopped until we went to bed!  🙂

We stopped on the way up there and got dinner at Chick Fil-A and then went and picked up some junk food.  We arrived and set up the tent, ate dinner, and then the boys had a blast climbing trees, playing Frisbee, and having fun with their friends that were there.

When it was time to go down to bed (the boys’ favorite part), we pulled out the junk food, ate a bunch, and watched a movie on my laptop.  They really love this because they can relax and I really love this because we can be together!

This morning when we got up, we got ready for breakfast.  Even after all the junk food, the boys were really hungry and ready to eat.  I had to cook breakfast with the bishopric and so as I was cooking, the boys tried to stay out of trouble.  We only had one injury when Ben was trying to help me with the pancakes and hit his arm on the hot griddle.  It burned him pretty bad (as you can see in the picture), but he was very brave and didn’t even cry.  Crazy!  I’m sure he’ll have a wicked scar from that.  He’s OK though.

Overall we had a wonderful time and I really enjoyed spending time with the boys!  We can’t wait to do it again!  We won’t wait until the next Father’s and Son’s Campout.  Maybe we’ll camp out in the back yard when mom and sisters are at Girl’s camp!  🙂

 

 

By |2011-07-12T13:40:20-07:00June 4th, 2011|Church, Home Life|0 Comments
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Zoo Field Trip!

Today I was a chaperone for Zach and his school class at Brookfield zoo!  I did this with Kirstyn and had a blast, so I volunteered to help with Zach as well.  I only had 3 kids (including Zach) and that worked out VERY well.  Each kid was supposed to figure out what his or her favorite animal was, research it, and then we were supposed to visit that animal during our visit.

Zach did his research about bats and wrote a great report to read to us.  It was fun to listen to what each boy had written.  🙂

The trip went really fast!  I think we were actually on the bus longer than we were in the zoo itself.  Each of the kids brought their own lunch and with my boys, as soon as we got to the zoo they wanted to eat!  🙂  I made them wait until they had found their animal and read their report so we could at least see some animals.  🙂  We ended up walking fast and seeing quite a bit in the couple of hours we were there!

Thanks for asking me to come, Zach!

By |2011-07-12T13:25:46-07:00June 1st, 2011|School|0 Comments
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