Happy Birthday Jeremy!

Jeremy was happy to be at home (not little kid state wrestling) and have electricity (unlike last year) for his birthday.

Happy birthday Jeremy, we love you!

Grand Knight

Jeremy is Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus council for the Wahoo area.  It's just the fancy name they use instead of president.  He's kind of excited to have something different to think about and work on...and we get to say no to all other extra responsibility positions for the next two years because "Jeremy is already Grand Knight."
 

Happy Father's Day

To these great dads!

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

We love you!

We celebrated at little on his actual birthday...

And then the following Saturday

I threw a little surprise party for him!  The Laniks were in charge of distraction the day of.  Chad needed company while smoking some ribs for "a buddy's" party.  He just left out who the buddy was!  Jeremy headed to their house at 1:00, which was earlier than I anticipated but gave me lots of time to get ready.  The kids helped me clean. I picked up the frozen pizza rolls I'd made (during a wrestling meet I didn't go to) from the Rezac's and got them baked.  Then Samuel showed up to take the younger boys to Lincoln for brothers evening and spending the night at G & G's.  At 4:00 Chad texted Mayday! and Becca called me for ideas.  The Shoeneck's showed up with the beer I'd enlisted them to buy and Robyn brought fruit due to the fact any fruit let at Family Fare in Wahoo on Saturday is very sad.  Then we just had to wait...

I had figured if we could keep it a secret until he pulled in the driveway it was a success and we did it! The Laniks pulled through and kept him at their house without arousing his suspicion.  Yay!  It was a really fun party.

Happy 45th and thanks for everything you do for us!

Super Impressive

The Fremont store outdid itself with the Christmas decorating again this year.

They had a fun lighting ceremony with pizza dinner and desserts that we went to.

All the rein"deere" and the sleigh.  :) 

Someone Needs to Adjust Their Cooking Amounts

We had just a bit of food in the fridge.

but it's not just me!  Jeremy smoked three different things this weekend!  Including these manicotti noodles stuffed with sausage and cheese and wrapped with bacon.  They were delicious.

 

Wedding #1

Jeremy was groomsman for Mr. Jeff! (He didn't love the kids calling him Mr. Ebbing so we settled on Mr. Jeff a long time ago.)  We called it a date night.

Jeff and Jeremy have both worked for Platte Valley for a long time.  Jeremy started as Jeff's boss (Jeff is the guy who got Jeremy the Boss Lift years ago.)  They have both changed positions and Jeremy hasn't been Jeff's boss for quite awhile and Jeremy was honored when Jeff asked him to be a groomsman.  

Congratulations Jeff and Jamie!  We're so happy for you!

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

Jeremy got to spend most of his birthday watching Philip wrestle at State but we did get home in time to celebrate with a cake Julia made

and a gift!

We love you Jeremy!

Enjoying the Smoker and Fathers

 Jeremy smoked a turkey breast for the inaugural use of his smoker, mostly because I had one and turkey breast is relatively inexpensive if it doesn't turn out well.  

Jeremy got lots of advice at men's night (read: sitting around Father's fire pit drinking beer and discussing manly things) at church.  Then, for Father's day he smoked a brisket.  Jeremy's parents and my parents came for dinner and it turned out really tasty!

 Good job and thank you for everything you do for us Jeremy!  We love you!

Happy Birthday to Jeremy!

Okay, so really I just failed to get him a gift this year so when he found this smoker on sale, I figured we could count it!

 

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

 After watching Philip wrestle at State we stopped by my parents to collect Nicholas and Julia and celebrate birthdays.

Happy Birthday Jeremy!  We love you!

Celebrating

And Happy Birthday to Jeremy too!

We lived up his St Joseph Solemnity birthday by grilling steak even though it was a Friday in Lent.  Solemnities are for celebrating, especially in the year of St. Joseph for Jeremy Joseph's birthday.

 

Flag Football

Philip enjoyed flag football again this year.

Jeremy mostly enjoyed coaching.  ;)  His wife's warning that being a 3rd/4th flag football coach would consist of 95% behavior management did not turn out to be an overestimate.  She may know a thing or two about getting groups of kids to do what you want.  But they got into a groove and did pretty well.  They won some and lost some and seemed to learn more about football-so overall it's a win!

Happy Birthdays!

A hazard of "dump blogging" (doing lots of posts at once) is sometimes you forget what you did.  I don't have any pictures of Julia on her actual birthday or remember what exactly we did.  But we celebrated with the extended family on St. Patrick's day!  she and I made strawberry truffles.  We need more practice if we want to perfect them! She enjoyed the company and her gifts and is looking forward to a summer friends party!  Happy 11th Pretty Girl!

We celebrated Philip too.  He got green pancakes for breakfast, served at Mass (per his request) and the two tiered cake with Ninja on top that he asked for (thank you, Grandma Susan!)  He had a fun day opening gifts and playing with cousins.  Happy 9th birthday Little Leprechaun!

He drew the cake design for Grandma's benefit.

The building of the tractor set Dad picked out for him commenced as soon as the guests left.

It took two days and lots of co-builders.

Jeremy got German chocolate brownies for his 40th Birthday!

 I didn't plan much of a celebration because we were supposed to go to his store's customer appreciation dinner that night.  It was cancelled due to the flooding so we celebrated at home.  We're planning some more fun for this summer.

The Snow Piled Up

And we kept ourselves busy through a couple more snow days and late starts.  My school also got off because the high school girls' basketball team made it to state, the kids had an early out that day.  And we had spring break.  It made for three weeks when we were at school less than we were there.

Nicholas got creative because we had no syrup.

We took some tractors and Rescuebots downstairs and brought up the train tracks.

They had a "24 hour stay on the couch" challenge.  After half an hour they declared that no one won.

Jeremy melted the ice dam because we were getting water in the main floor bathroom.  The ceiling will need repaired.  :(  

Samuel and Nicholas worked together to make some cookies.

The littles played with a "gross out" science kit.  They made big crystals (probably polymers), green slime and grew germs.

And after a long, long, long, snowy winter....

In the Driveway

Back in 1991 this was tricked out!  As soon as we get our stuff together I can turn in my chauffeur hat at least for Samuel's activities.  Thomas won't be too far behind so Samuel better enjoy being the only kid driver while he can!

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

Thank you for everything you do for our family!

We love you!

And They Wonder

why I hate it when they make a grocery list.  And by they I mostly mean Jeremy.

20 Years

We enjoyed Jeremy's 20 year reunion last weekend.  We went with the family out to a lake where the kids had a blast and then had dinner at a local bar that evening without kids.

Everyone enjoyed the kayaks and the jump pad.

 Thomas got really good.

 14 out of 40 some plus a few showed up after the picture. Pretty good turnout!