Apple picking

This past weekend our family headed out to the Country Mill for our first time apple picking this season.  It was our first time because we'll go back at least a couple more times.  We enjoy it that much!  We enjoy picking the apples ourselves and it's fun for us to look at Drew and Kate and see them each munching away on apples as we walk along.  Of course, our trip also involves fresh donuts and cider.  Lots of apples, lots of donuts, and some cider tastes great, but we usually leave with a slight stomach ache!  It is definitely worth it though.

Drew used the apple picker quite well and helped us get some higher-up apples.

This is a rarity: Drew did a great job posing for the camera.  We're wondering if he's finally emerged from that awkward stage of not sitting still or posing well and is back to producing great pictures.  Super cute!

Kate had great fun walking around the orchard and sampling the apples.  This was her first year out of the stroller and walking around on her own.  We kept a careful eye on her because she was prone to want to pick up apples off the ground and take a bite out of them.  Yuck!

Here's one more of Drew at the orchard.  Also this weekend Drew and I had an event on our own and Jana and Kate had their own event.  Drew and I went miniature golfing on Saturday afternoon while Jana and Kate went out for coffee and to the playground.  Drew has been intrigued by miniature golf and asking about, so the two of us hit the course.  Drew did fairly well.  While I don't think we have another Tiger Woods-level talent on our hands, I was astonished when on our fourth hole Drew sank a fifteen footer for par (a two).  To his credit, Drew seemed pretty surprised as well!  I was left with a five foot putt that I missed and with that it had only taken Drew four holes to get a better score than me.  Given that I was actually trying to make the putt, it was quite humbling.  Drew managed to best me once again later in the round.  Most importantly, we had a wonderful time and Drew is looking forward to trying it again.  Kate and Jana also enjoyed their woman time and we're looking forward to occasionally splitting up in the future along gender lines for some fun events.

Local fun

Lately we've been having some fun in the Lansing area.  One of things we did recently was to visit the Ingham County Fair.  We love the fair . . . not for the rides, but for the animals!  Being city folk, it's kind of fun to take our annual trip out to the fair to see smelly things in corrals.  Kate busted out her Bader & Sons John Deere mesh hat for the occasion.  She fit right in.

For some reason I like this shot of Kate's eyes.  Her eyes are definitely brownish in color, but subjectively I think they are such an interesting color.

For many kids this is no big deal, but for our shy 4-year-old son, this was a momentous occasion: his first fair ride.  Drew has often admired these rides but never shown any interest in them.  In fact, he's shown open aversion to going on them.  We've been patient though (with some difficulty!) and at this latest fair Drew decided to start riding on the rides.  He had a great time and we're looking forward to many, many, many more times of him asking to ride on something.  Maybe it was better when he didn't want to go on the rides! :)

In this family picture you may notice my commitment to being a good dad.  Drew wore his Mensch hat to the fair (a company that produces a product that "sucks up the poop from cows" in Drew's words), Kate had her Bader & Sons hat, and we also had a second Bader & Sons hat that the kids asked me to wear.  I felt that I fit right in at the fair in my mesh John Deere hat, especially in the agricultural areas.  It also went quite nicely with the polo shirt I had worn that day.  Wearing that hat out in public was right up there with the time I put on a toy fire helmet and drove the kids around in the car while we pretended to be a fire engine.  All three of us were making siren noises and I'm sure we looked awesome.  This time, we were quite the family at the fair in our sweet hats.

No trip to the fair is complete without petting and feeding some animals.

This is probably the most important part of animal petting at the fair, washing hands afterward!

One morning after Jana and the kids dropped me off at work, they headed across the street to the MSU Demonstration Gardens and 4-H Children's Garden.  In the picture below, Drew and Kate are in the Demonstration garden checking out the annuals.  Hundreds of varieties of annuals are planted there each year.  Jana took all these pictures, so I'm making up stories to go with them :)

Kate is checking out the vegetables in the children's garden.

This is one of my favorite parts of the children's garden.  Kate is walking down a steeply arched bridge and Drew is racing ahead to turn a turnstile that activates a pump.  The pump causes water to squirt from a frog statue.  It's so much fun! (for kids and adults)

There are also toys to climb on in the children's garden, which the kids loved.

Kate driving the train.

It almost looks as if Kate is asking this guy what he's reading.

The best plant in the children's garden, hands-down, is the sensitive plant.  When you touch it's leaves, they curl up!  It is so cool to touch them and watch the plant respond.  Never gets old.

Someone was kind enough to snap a picture of Jana, Drew, and Kate.  What a fun morning!

A week ago the four of us went camping with a group of people from church.  We camped once before with all four of us last spring over Memorial Day weekend, so it's been a while.  In the picture below Drew is playing in the playground area that was right next to our campsite.  You can see our tent in the background.  All four of us slept in there and got a good night's sleep.  It was a very successful and fun one night of camping (and it was the perfect length!).

Kate is quite the climber and fairly flew right up this ladder.  At the top she let us know she was up high in "Beaumont Tower" (a famous landmark on MSU's campus).

Kate showing off for Jana on the "balance beam."  It's amazing how any surface like this, a curb, a bench, or a parking lot cement stopper, can instantly become something to balance on and walk across.  You'll also notice that Kate is wearing her moose shirt, which Jana and I purchased on vacation in Wyoming.  The shirts that Kate and Drew got from us have become instant favorites and will probably show up in many pictures!

end of summer

It's been a while since I've updated on here, and I was reminded by my brother Todd that I actually do have a blog and that people do check it.  I was realizing that I've kept this blog going for over 4 1/2 years now and that it has included many posts and pictures.  It continues to be the record of our experience raising Drew and Kate.  Todd's reminder got me curious about who is actually reading the blog still.  If you read this post, can you drop me a brief e-mail? (m_aupperlee@hotmail.com)  Thanks!

Summer for our family ended last week went Jana went back to work for the fall semester at MSU.  Prior to returning there was lots of fun in the month of July.  It has been unusually warm in Lansing this summer, so that has meant a lot of time finding ways to play in the water.  Many a late morning or afternoon was spent in our backyard running through the sprinkler.  Kate and Drew had a blast with this little ring sprinkler and never seemed to tire of playing in it.  It feels good!

One of our favorite things to do is romp in the living room.  Sometimes it gets hot though, and clothes tend to come off!  In this picture Drew and Kate are sprinting through the living room prior to their nightly bath.  This game often involves Jana and I lying on the floor taking turns catching and tickling them.  It only spurs them on to escape and attempt to run faster the next time.  Drew handles this game very well and does a nice job of not steamrolling Kate as they blitz through the living room.

Often around the house I get hot and take off my shirt.  The next thing we know, both kids are looking up at me shirtless and saying, "I'm hot too."  One evening Drew had his shirt off and got the opportunity to talk with one of the grandmas.  For someone who eats like a horse, he looks so skinny and like a big boy in this picture!  The other day Drew had five pancakes, four slices of bacon, an egg, and fruit for breakfast.  Twenty minutes later he was hungry and asked for cereal!  Where does he put it?

Um yeah, another night with no shirts.  We love this picture because Drew and Kate are so clearly siblings.  Look at the similarities!

In July, the kids and Jana visiting my family in northern Michigan at a cottage on a lake.  Drew and Kate had great fun down by the lake, which was nice and shallow.  Perfect for the kids to play in!

Kate, our adventurous child, took off on her own pushing this thing around.  As on the playground, that girl is fearless.

Kate and Drew had fun on the dock watching Grandpa Bill fish.  He caught several fish and Drew and Kate were fascinated.  That was one of the things I heard about when they got home: the fish Grandpa Bill caught.

Drew man (one of his nicknames) hanging out by the water.  Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that he's just barely 4 1/2!

The other part of July (and part of the reason we don't have as many pictures of the kids) Jana and I took a trip to Wyoming to celebrate our 10th anniversary.  We were gone for 9 days without the kids while each set of grandparents watched Drew and Kate for us.  Drew and Kate had a blast with their grandparents and enjoyed the extended time they were able to spend with them.  Jana and I loved the freedom of getting away for a while with just the two of us.  In the picture below, I'm perched next to Lake Solitude, which was a 16 mile round-trip hike we could never have done with Drew and Kate.

We thought of Drew and Kate at the end of this hike, which was in Yellowstone National Park and brought us to the top of a mountain that had a fire watch tower on top of it.  What a view!  Drew and Kate both love anything firefighting related and they enjoyed hearing our stories and seeing our pictures of this peak.

It was a lot of fun to spend several days with this view, but we were awfully excited to return to Michigan and Drew and Kate.  It was fun to come home to them and to be extremely grateful for spending time with them again!

Other People's Pictures

We've been having some fun lately, but the pictures we have of the fun are not our pictures!  This post will be entirely composed of pictures that other people took for us.  The first set of pictures are from Shannon, Todd's girlfriend.  I pulled them off Facebook, so I apologize if the picture quality isn't perfect (the original shots are amazing).

The event for all these pictures was the Battle Creek Air Show, which we attended the weekend of the 4th of July.  It's amazing!  Shannon got this picture of the hot air balloons taking off.  Drew and Kate loved the balloons, and it was quite spectacular to see all 47 balloons taking off in a matter of minutes.

While we were waiting for the balloons to take off, we checked out some of the other stuff at the show.  That included a helicopter that we could get in and climb around.  It was very cool!  Kate got a turn in Shannon's lap working the helicopter controls.

Next, we went over to an airplane used in the Mediterranean in WWII.  Drew was fascinated by the guns on the plane.  The four Aupperlee men went closer to check them out.

Drew was amazed by how big the plane was, and it was pretty impressive!

I lifted Drew up so he could see where guys sat in the back of the plane.  The plane was a bomber and the bombs were located just below this area.

Shannon got this great picture of the whole family with the hot air balloons taking off in the background.

Drew got on my shoulders and Kate got on Uncle Todd's shoulders and then they wanted to go in for a hug (this put Todd and I in uncomfortably close proximity!).

Kate also took a turn up on Jana's shoulders.  In addition to the hot air balloons, we also had fun watching some airplanes that were part of the show.

Oh yeah, I can't forget about this . . . while we were there Todd and I went for a ride on a MONSTER TRUCK.  Yes, a monster truck.  We embraced our inner redneck and went out for a ride on this bad boy.  It was actually quite fun.  Kate did not enjoy watching me on it though.  She cried the whole ride and was very glad when I got off and held her.  I think that was a once-in-a-lifetime ride :)

Drew rolled up his Air Force poster and used it to check out the action.  As you can see, it was getting dark as we waited for the balloons to return and then be lit up.  Lit up?  Yes, they line the balloons up after they return from their flight, they are all blown up and anchored, then they fire their burners to light the balloons up.

Shannon got this great picture of the ballons with their burners firing.  Cool, isn't it?  Whenever the crowd wanted this to happen we'd all yell in unison, "Light 'em up!"  For the past few weeks Kate has been sitting in her crib before falling asleep saying, "Light 'em up!"

Moving on to the next set of pictures I didn't take, these are from an outing arranged by our daycare provider, Rebecca.  Even though Jana has been home during the summer with Drew and Kate, they got the chance to join the daycare kids at a local fire station.  Clearly, this trip was right up Drew and Kate's alley.  They all brought along their bathing suits and participated in some "training" with the firefighters (who got some time in squirting their hoses).  The next set of pictures were taken by Rebecca and were also pulled off Facebook.

Drew and Kate were quite brave and sprinted right into the spray, which was actually pretty heavy.

The firemen were apparently all impressed by our little two-year-old as she sprinted through the water.  Fearless.

A few more pictures of them playing in the water (they might have been having a good time).

Before getting wet, the kids watched the fire truck come out and the firefighters extended the 105' ladder.  It's amazing how even training can be exciting!

In the near future I'll have more pictures that we took ourselves, but thanks to Shannon and Rebecca for the pictures.  What fun!