what have we been up to??

Time has flown by! My goodness - it seems like it was just Tulip Time!

Well...it has been a long time since I've done an updated post - so I thought I'd better get something out there to explain what life's been so busy with. Let's see...

...we decided to plant a garden this year! It's purely a plant it, water it every now and then, and see what happens. And, from how things look now, I think we tried to fit a little too much in the

space we have.

**early signs of growth****growing, growing...*******vegetables to pick!******

To date, the tomato plant seems to have some kind of disease (although, it's so big right now that it would see like things are just fine) The tomatoes look like there's a bug eating them. Derrick & I are slowly teaching ourselves to like tomatoes, so it's not too big of a let down. And, I when I planted the sweet corn, I wasn't sure if I needed to sow each seed a few inches apart, or to just scatter them in a trench. I opted for the latter (we really enjoy sweet corn, so I thought "the more the merrier") Probably not so smart - they got to be about a foot tall, and then they kinda stopped growing. So, we thinned them out a couple times. We'll see if that helped. And, I picked my first basket of green beans on Sunday, and there's plenty more to eat!

...we got caught off-guard when the major rainstorm hit at the end of June. We were actually out by the lakeshore looking at a Parade of Home house when the rain started. So, we decided to head back home, but found out that we were trapped in Holland! Every street we went down in hopes of getting back to Zeeland was either blocked by the police, blocked by a fallen tree, or

completely flooded to the point of impassable! It took us and hour to get from Butternut Dr. (where we first realized what was going on) to our home in Zeeland. And, for those of you who

know where we live, know that our house was built much higher than the houses around us in

the neighborhood, so we've never had any problems with water...until that night. And, we didn't even think to check our basement...until the next morning. Sure enough, we had water!...ugh! Our basement isn't really finished, so there was no real damage.

The biggest loss was that there were quite a few of Derrick's books he had gathered from his time spent in Israel & Turkey that were being housed in a cardboard box. Most are still readable, but kinda wrinkly and warped.

Lesson learned from this = we now have our stuff stored in plastic tubs, and we have a couple extras sitting around for any future storage.

...it was Derrick's golden birthday at the end of June!

*Derrick at around 1 yr old****Derrick at age 27***

He's still got those sweet cheeks!!

We celebrated the day by attending his cousin's wedding. It was a beautiful outdoor wedding on a beautiful day! And, it was a great night to spend in celebration with his family.

We also got together with both sides of our immediate family to

celebrate his June birthday. We got together with my side of the family to go out for pizza. There are 4 birthdays in the course of a week amongst my family...so, in June, there's usually a cake to go along with our pizza. And, Derrick's side of the family thought it'd be fun to go golfing. Which it was fun, until it started to rain. But, everyone was a trooper and made it through the 9 holes.

...and golfing has been something that Derrick's enjoyed doing in

his spare time this summer. We even get a little putting practice in

when he's not even on the course.

Other than that, we've been trying to spend as much time as we can outside...taking walks, biking, watching a few softball games, reading in the sun, hitting the beach...stuff like that. We're looking forward to heading out to Oak Grove next week to do some camping! We've got a lot planned that we'd like to do, so we're hoping that the weather will work with us so we can really enjoy ourselves!