We’ve moved from our apartment into a house that we’re renting from some friends, which is a huge blessing. It’s in a neighborhood just south of campus, the neighborhood that Lynn’s always wanted to live in. We had a garage sale mid-June and met a lot of our neighbors which was great! Our friends Eric & Holly, and their kids who know live a block north came over to help at the garage sale and help Dan build a deck. We had a lot of fun and know thank God that He’s placed us in this place at this moment. You can kinda see our house in the pictures below.
We had the joy of celebrating Dan’s brothers graduation from Crossroads College in May. He graduated with a degree in Sports Ministry and is currently interning for FCA. Congrats James!
We spent a day in Clarksville with Dan’s parents helping clean up the pasture from early season flooding (and this was before the MAJOR flooding here in Iowa), The floods brought down a lot of corn stalks, which we burned along with a variety of trees that had fallen during the winter. We even roasted hot dogs on one of the HUGE bonfires.
We visited Lynn’s family & celebrated Mother’s Day with a tea at the church Lynn’s mom is working at as the Childrens Coordinator. It was a lot of fun to be there with both grandmothers and Aunt Kathy & cousin Katelyn. We also got to see the additional progress on the house that Lynn’s parents are building, which is coming along GREAT!!!
On Memorial Day weekend, we again visited MN, celebrating Lynn’s cousin John’s graduation from Dunwoody as an electrician. We also visited Grandpa Vance’s grave with Grandma Vance. One Saturday, we had a pleasant visit with Grandma Klisch. Big storms cam through but thankful missed us, as well as Dan’s family home in Iowa. The big F5 in Iowa only passed 20 miles SW of Dan’s family farm.
While going through the Cities we stopped in the area that Lynn’s childhood home was located to see the many changes occurring with development. The trees had been cut, and some replanted, the dirt had been moved, new neighborhood streets were put in, and a few houses were even up! It makes you start to feel old that we’ll one day just drive by this neighborhood and say, “Mommy grew up in a house that’s no longer there up on that hill, with rolling pastures around her, a barn, chickens, horses, and dirt roads.” They’ll probably hardly believe us, except that we have some pictures. We took some pictures of what it looks like now but our computer crashed and we lost those before backing it up.
We experienced our friend Jen run the Dam to Dam Race, which was amazing. She did great and Lynn especially can’t imagine doing such a thing! The Des Moines Farmers Market was open and we saw a lot of what Iowa has to offer.
We got the chance to see a good friend from our time in Thailand, Ja, as she visited the States. Another friend, Grant, was up from Texas to visit too! This pic is from when Grant is visiting us and we're hanging out in our garage which is stuffed full of our things that we're getting rid of... if you need anything, let us know.
Ashley & Lynn threw our soon-to-be sister-in-law, Nicole, a Pampered Chef bridal party, as Ashley is a consultant (and a very good one I might add!) at the end of June. We made some scrumptious food and everyone had a great time, especially James & Nicole, who’ll start out their new marriage with lots of great items for the kitchen!
We celebrated the 4th of July in style visiting Minnesota for the weekend. St. Joseph, where Lynn’s parents live, had a great small town parade! Some of our favorite entries were the tow truck company with all the trucks together, the unicycling kids, local bands, horses, and Santa Claus. That night we had the joy of seeing the St Cloud fireworks in VIP status thanks to Lynn’s Uncle Doug, who works for the Park and Recreation Dept in St. Cloud. The best part was we got to spend time with Lynn’s cousin Heather, her boyfriend, Matt, and other friends!
We visited mom and dad Klisch’s house again; they’ll making great progress and will be in by this fall! On Saturday we went for a bike ride and then headed to the Brennan reunion (Lynn’s dad’s mom) and saw a few cousins, great aunts & uncles, and family. We also visited Lynn’s cousin Karen’s family and caught a quick game of baseball – they boys won!
On Sunday we got to see Lynn’s good friend Laura as well as our friends Bryn & Melinda and their little girl Joey. It’s amazing to be entering the time of life that many of our friends our beginning to start families, we have a lot of friends who are due August – November and beyond.
That night Dan started to milk cows at a friend’s farm for a week while Lynn went back to Ames to work. In the evenings she kept busy by helping with VBS, which was a lot of fun!
The next weekend we again headed to MN, with a stop for dinner with Lynn’s grandma Vance, cousin Michelle, and uncle Joe. It was great to catch up. Early on Saturday morning Dan, Nathan, and Leo headed out fishing with cousin Zach, and Lynn and mom took off for the Klisch Women’s Retreat in northern Minnesota on Lake Vermillion. It was a blessing to catch up with Lynn’s aunt Bonnie and cousins Kristin and Lindsey from Idaho, as well as the other aunts and cousins. We went hiking, cooked dinner, sat in the sauna, played games, and talked! It was such a blessing. Dan in the meantime did a triathlon (because we’re noticing it’s the thing to do). Well he did run, bike, and swim, but not in an official race. The boys had a great time fishing (Dan caught some great fish) and doing other active things, like building a work bench for dad.
The next weekend we took a course on how to learn a language (called the Growing Participator Approach), so that we can learn Turkish as fast and possible. We’re really excited about it and had a lot of fun with the others in the class.
The fun continued at the end of July with a trip to South Dakota. We joined Pam and Dave, Nicole and James, and Kathie and Anthony to see the Badlands, Mt Rushmore, and others great sights of South Dakota. Nicole, Kathie & Anthony had never been to South Dakota yet. We camped on Saturday night and except for the mosquitoes it was great! On Monday we enjoyed seeing Dan’s cousins show some of the Beaver Creek Farm heifers at the Bremer County Fair. One of the cows was in heat and a bit ornery (which happened to be the one we own), so Dan helped show it. See pictures below. He had a lot of fun!
We stopped briefly at Dan's grandparents and got this pic, this is a buffalo they had taxidermied and hung on their wall... it's huge!
