Wow. It's been quite a summer. Two graduations and two weddings. Now that they are behind us and the only major life event left is bringing Katie to Dordt next week (I don't want to even think about this yet), I think it's about time I catch up on this little blog of mine.
I got the cottage all spiffed up for my mom and dad who arrived on June 1.
Holly moved in a couple days later. I emptied out my office so she could have her own little space. It was the least I could do since she offered to cook for me the whole time she lived with us!! More on that later...just know, it was totally awesome.
John got 4,387 yards of bark delivered. Okay, maybe not that much but he got a lot. We barked a lot.
We had lots of great helpers which we were SO thankful for!
At one point, we had the entire Corkill family over helping. We could not have done it all without them!
Ed and Julie (two of their daughters will also have their receptions in our backyard) helped too.
Jayleen and I. Isn't there a saying that goes, "The family that weeds together, stays together" or something like that?
Another evening, the Corkills came over to help hang lights. It was supposed to be a fun job. Jayleen even brought a pie for us to celebrate with when we finished. It was a great plan.
Well....our night didn't go quiet as planned. Our neighbor was trying to be helpful and told us he had a bunch of thin cable we could have to string the bistro lights onto. He neglected to mention that the cable had come unstrung from the spool and was just shoved into a bucket. So....we got to straighten out around 800 feet of very tangled cable.
A real low point of the night is when it started to pour about three hours into the job.
Another low point was when Jackson looked up how much a ready-to-go spooled roll of cable would have cost us.
Needless to say, after six hours of untangling, we didn't actually get any lights put up. The pie was good though.
So, lights actually getting strung up was another night. It went pretty smoothly although I did have to just had to look away a couple times when John had a ladder precariously set up in the bed of his truck
to reach the high spots.
It was all totally worth it when Holly finally got to turn the lights on! It was beautiful and she was so happy!
Keith thought it was cool too.
Our friends Todd and Cheri were kind enough to drop off a golf cart so Grampa and Gramma could go on rides around the property.
I found this big guy when I was cleaning up one day!
Doyle and Susie came on June 4. You know you have good friends when they show up a week before a wedding and expect to be put to work every day.
Susie was a power washing beast. She single-handedly power washed every inch of cement on the property.
And Doyle kept busy with a million jobs that John had lined up for him to do.
One of his jobs was cutting every zip tie off of 408 bistro lights strung to an untangled cable. I would say they both went above and beyond.
Holly cooked for us all nearly every night she was home. Every Sunday we would sit down together and plan out the menu and how many people she had to feed. She got lots of new recipes from her two bridal showers, so we got to try out lots of new dishes. It was amazing. I want her back.
I cannot even begin to say how special it was to have all three kids home under one roof for a couple weeks. Made my mama heart super happy.
Two days before Sam got married, Susie, Mom, Katie, Holly and I scheduled manicures for ourselves. We told the guys there was no more working for us after that.
I got a pedicure too! I figured I will only be a mother of the groom once!
Susie enjoying a cocktail in a purely supervisory role.
Good friends, Bernie and Alesia flew in from South Dakota a couple days before to help out too. Us, them, and the Beltmans were super tight when we all lived in Iowa together. It seems like just a few years ago we were helping at each other's baptism lunches and now we are helping each other at all those baby's weddings!
LOVE these good friends!
John's family flew in the day before Sam's wedding. We were so blessed to have Mom Hiemstra, ALL seven kids, and most of the in-laws here for his big day.
Everyone pitching in to set up.
The two Grandma's supervising. One of my most favorite memories of this summer will be watching the Grandma's together, it was so fun having them both here for so long.
