Bieze Family Reunion!

We had a family reunion this past Saturday and it was lots of fun! Here is my brother, his wife Sarah and their 4 kids from Oregon! It was so great that they were able to come all that way and for all of them to be able to get together was quite a job too! If I remember right 2 of the kids had to fly in from the east coast and meet up with the rest of the family and then drive up from Chicago! Now that is some awesome planning and organizing!

Here we all our with my Uncle Ted in the middle.

And lots of milling around!

Here comes the gang from Oregon. They sure had a time getting here, sounds like they drove thru a bad storm and when they got close to their hotel they had a flat tire on their rental and had to wait for AAA to get there and fix it. But then they finally made it and it was so great to be able to visit with all of them!

Luke and Tayt taking a break from swimming.

Peyton sneaking in some eating in between swimming and playing catch.

Playing games and eating.

The whole bunch under our shelter.

And talk about food, there was way too much and it was all unbelievably good! Next reunion we will be figuring out a menu and everyone can pick one thing to bring. Then we won't have soooo much food. We all really hated to see any of it go to waste.

Eating.........

Eating.......

Eating.........

And more eating!

My brother Jerry and one of his boys Jacob.

My daughter Casey and Jerry's daughter Katie.

My cousin Peggy and her mom Aunt Pat.

My cousin Joyce, my sister Liz and sister-in-law Sarah.

My two brothers Dennis and Jerry.

Looking at old picture albums of my moms with pictures from my great grandparents.

Here is everyone leaving after a long day of visiting, eating, swimming and playing some games. I hope everyone had as good a time as my family did. Just a few places where people traveled from and I hope I am remembering everyone, Oregon, Illinois, Georgia, Wisconsin and the east coast! We visited with relatives I talk to every day and some I haven't seen since I was in my teens! Yikes, that was a long time ago! I sure hope everyone will be up to doing this every other year and we are hoping to go back to our original park Devils Lake State Park. If anyone has any suggestions or new and different ideas for our next one please write me, we would love to hear from everyone. So lets try to keep in touch and til next time, or hopefully next year at Casey's wedding reception, everyone take care and it was wonderful seeing everyone!

Happy Anniversary Courtney & Dave!

Today is my beautiful oldest daughter Courtney and her wonderful husband Dave's 9th wedding anniversary! Congradulations you two! I know I will probably embarass them both but I am going to tell two short little stories to give everyone an idea of how much these two were made for each other.

Story one, a funny one one: Courtney was a bridesmaid for a friend of hers not long after her and Dave were married. At the reception I was talking to another friend kind of close to the bar where Dave was standing. All of a sudden Courtney comes running over looking just beautiful in her bridesmaid dress and says very loudly(as we all know she can be at times) "I just farted over there!" and she then runs off! Thank goodness the friend I was talking to was a good friend who loves Courtney as we all do because she just started laughing! I turn around just as Dave comes up and puts his arm over my shoulder and see that he is laughing and obviously heard Courtney and says to me"I will love Courtney FOREVER!" Boy if that ain't love I don't know what is!

And story two: When Courtney and Dave were going to get married I don't remember how we got into the discussion of why she thought Dave was "the one" but I do remember exactly what she said to me. She said she had had boyfriends in the past and she always thought to herself "I can do this, I can put up with this, I can live with this" When she was with Dave she thought to herself "I can't live without this!" So to a couple who started very young and 9 years later love each other more and more every day. We love you and wish you many many more years together!

Camping, Swimming & Softball

I know, I know, another ball game, but we threw in some camping and swimming this time and it was lots of fun! This first picture is a bunch of us just getting to the ball game, as you can see there are the usual puddles!

And here are 3 of my 4 lovely daughters and 3 of my grandkids.

And lets not forgot who it is that gave us the reason to come over here for the weekend, Chris (9) and Dave (3). They didn't win this weekend but they sure gave it a good try!

Boy there is nothing like sitting on the beach with your feet in the water. These I think belong to Austyn, I was taking a lot of pictures, so they could really belong to just about anybody!

Luke wasn't sure about the water at first but after getting water up his nose more then once he actually seemed to get used to it!

Poor little Nash started getting sick after this day, fever and not wanting to eat anything. It took til today, Tuesday, to start feeling better.

And we can't forget Austyn who pulls off the princess look even in the water! I think she was born to be a princess, always in pink!

Peyton thought he would play football with Luke, not really sure who even has the ball here!

Lia and Peyton enjoying the beach.

Our camp site, once we finally got everything set up and if that wasn't an event! Friday night Randy and our son-in-law Dave took off early with the pop up for Dave, Courtney and their 5 kids and a pretty nice big tent for Randy and me. The tent we borrowed from our daughter Mallory and her husband, and Mal assured us that "yes all the tent poles are in there." Well the guys plan to get there early and get everything set up did not go as planned. No poles for the tent and Dave forgot the key to the camper, so what else could they do, make a fire and open up the cooler with beer! So I grabbed a tent from our place and Courtney grabbed the key to the camper and off we go to Rock Dam. Everything went pretty good til we tried to put our tent up. We have 3 tents and of course I grabbed the worst one, broken poles! We ended up all sleeping in the camper which luckily was very roomy. The next morning Dave made us all breakfast on his Traeger grill and of course the way this summer has been going, it decided to rain, thank goodness for the camper! Not too long after that we left for the ball game and met up with Mal and Chris who had all the poles for the big tent. So that night we had a nice big tent to sleep in and guess what? Thunderstorms all night! The tent really held up and we didn't get wet at all, I think everyone was probably tired from all the swimming and eating and we didn't hear a thing. The boys team didn't win but it was a really nice weekend, even with the occasional rain shower and Rock Dam is a really nice place to go camping.