Aunt Jayne and Uncle Ken's visit

For the first time in the six and a half years that we have lived here, Jayne and Ken and their family came to visit us. We had a great visit packed with many activities.
On the first day that we were here, we went out to our lake property to spend the day. We had a lot of fun. The kids rode the four wheelers (and Jayne a few times).
Joe and Ken worked with the tractor clearing a few more spaces of underbrush. Jayne said she didn't think the fact that Joe let Ken use his tractor helped much in their ongoing discussion about Ken getting a tractor.
In fact, when you get two men like Joe and Ken together, they start thinking of creative ways to use the tractor: (cutting the lower limbs off of a magnolia tree that is next to our "cottage" up there. They were blocking the view of the lake.)
Jayne, Koni and I took the kids over to the island to feed the goats. The goats were happy to see us and really enjoyed eating the food out of the kids hands.

Megan, Jayne's daughter and Nate.

Emma and Lily

The girl cousins, Lily, Emma, Megan, Ellie

Just Megan and Emma

Tyler (Jayne's son) and Michael. Michael was determined to ruin the picture

All three of us women and ALL of the kids except for Adam rode in the boat you see below in one load. Incidentally, it still rode higher in the water than when the men took it out. I think they forgot that the weight needs to go in the back, what do you think?

Even Nate and Will liked to ride, or pretend to ride on the four wheelers and go karts.
That evening, we invited some of our friends up to celebrate Austin's birthday and Jayne visiting. Joe decided it would be a great idea to cook them dutch oven dinner. That worked great until we started inviting people...before we knew it, we had about 85 people there! (Can you believe that many people like us enough to come to our property?) Everyone seemed to have a good time, the kids rode four wheelers and ran around like crazy. Then Joe lit a massive bonfire and the kids all ran up to watch it burn. It was a great excuse to burn all of the underbrush he had been collecting for the past few months.
Our family (and Jayne's and Austin's) all camped out that night. On Sunday, we just relaxed and enjoyed the fantastic weather.

Monday we went to "Pump it Up" in the morning (an indoor place that has inflatable play structures). We got a babysitter that night to play bouncer to our children who were all upstairs while we played games downstairs. That was very enjoyable.

Tuesday we went to the Health Museum in the morning and then Incredible Pizza Company in the evening. The Health Museum only had about 3 large exhibits, but they were all well done and we got tired after seeing the three of them. Here the kids are sitting on some giant teeth:


Now Jayne's family has all gone home and we are feeling the need to rest and take it easy for the rest of Spring Break!