The MANY, MANY pics from the trip to Minnesota and back again!

 We went to Minnesota on the 30th of May and stayed until the next Friday.  Everybody had a great time! Here are some pictures (okay, LOTS of pictures) from our journey!  

Our first stop on the road trip - a rest stop for dinner.  Had to play a short game of "Duck, Duck, Goose" to burn some energy!  

Already had the life jacket on and we were many, many hours away!

Sunset on the drive

Stopped in Owatonna on Friday night and we were ready to get up and go on Saturday morning!  Had to stop at Cabela's on the way to get Korinne's first fishing pole! Thanks, Uncle Ben!

We made a little pit stop at the Mall of America to do a little shopping and visit the theme park. Meeting the Ninja Turtles made Kohen's day!

Karlee opted out of meeting the real turtles but posed by the fake ones by the ride. 

Kohen LOVED this ride.  It went SO high too!

They had a blast riding rides in the Nickelodeon theme park

The Mall of America wore everyone out.  That was good, though, because it made the rest of the trip go much faster .... for them!

Fishing pole in each hand.  Ready to fish!

Pa pretending he was going to eat the fish

Kohen and his many catches of the day

A favorite Minnesota stop - Zorbaz.  Macho nachos, pizza, beer and arcade games; right on the lake.  What more could you ask for?!  They were even representing the 'Show Me' state, as you can see above. 

Karlee loved playing on this beach.  She played for hours and hours in the sand.  She was Dannika's side-kick most of the week. Although, Korinne refers to her as "Da-kitty", not Dannika!  Karlee really loved playing with Morgan, Madison and Dannika. She even named her three mermaids after them when she got home. 

One of my favorite pics!

Another favorite - the fish were still breathing and Korinne was mimicking them by opening and closing her mouth.  Anyone that has been around her knows she is the biggest copycat on the planet.  She will study people and stand exactly like they are standing, does everything anyone else does ... I guess it doesn't stop at copying people.  She copies the fish too!

The city of Perham

View from the beach

BBQ Night - Korinne loves babies and made fast friends with Macy.

She was fascinated by the fish.

S'mores - round one!

Uncle Mike fishing off the dock

Lamberty cousins - just missing Ben and Kim

This picture does not do the size of these fish justice.  There were two very large fish laying on the side of the highway while I was out running one morning.  I have seen a lot of dead animals on the highway but even after all my years of going to Minnesota, seeing two large fish was a  first.  I had to take a quick pic - I just wish I would've put my foot next to them to show the size.

The Perham Express - had to take the annual ride before the Turtle Races. 

Turtle races - Karlee was pretty upset she didn't win.  She has quite the competitive nature. 

Taking a little fishing break to play on the Ipad.

Kohen, Mike and Mark.

Tired girl!

She must've been REALLY tired - laying on the kitchen floor!

The whole crew - We were only missing Michelle this year.  Quite the crew!

Dance party time!!!!  The kids danced up a storm and then Cora, Abby and Karlee serenaded us with "Let It Go" and "Do You Want To Build  Snowman"

My little copycat copied Toby the entire night. She did EVERYTHING he did, and I mean everything!

S'mores - Round II - last night of vacation for us.  Most everyone else stayed until Saturday. 

S'mores, S'mores and more S'mores!

The last fishing night 'keepers'.

Kohen was completely enthralled with this fire and was throwing anything and everything in it.  He even burned his old shoes, as you can see above. Chad gladly let him throw in his fishing jeans.  This brought pure joy to him for several hours. At least Lynn was making him solve math/word problems before he was allowed to throw anything in.  So the pyromania was made to be educational at the very least!

The next several pictures are of the beautiful sunsets we saw every night.  

Korinne was not ready to leave.  We packed everything around her the morning we left, including the blankets that were on her and she was zonked.  Vacation is hard!! 

The ride home

Great vacation was had by all!

Last Day of School

Kohen's last day of kindergarten was today.  How time flies! It feels like I just put him on that bus in August for the first time!

Last day of school!

First day on the left. Last day on the right.  I can't beleive how much he has changed over the course of nine months!

Mrs. Catron and Kohen. What a great year!  Mrs. Catron was just the teacher Kohen needed for his kindergarten year.  We lucked out big time with her!

Field Day 2014 and Bus Party

Well, I guess I lied on my last post because the following pictures are not from Minnesota filled with fish, the lake, and sun!  Kohen had Field Day today at school and I dropped in for a bit to join in on the fun!  Only one more day of school left for my little kindergartner.  Mark recently told me a story about when I was out running errands, Kohen ran downstairs and brought some free weights upstairs.  He told Mark he needed to start lifting weights and running on the treadmill because he is going to be in first grade now and needs to get in shape!

The next two pics are just some pretty "scenery" pics from our drive to The Legends last night. 

Kohen's bus driver, Ms. Karen, was a great bus driver!  She threw a pizza party this evening for all the kids on her bus (and their siblings) at the park in our neighborhood.  We are sure going to miss her.  We are keeping our fingers crossed we somehow get her again next year! 

8K Race, Memorial Day and More!

The 8K team - Team Ava; Brian, Beth, me, Karie and Heath - We ran the Amy Thompson 8K to support the Brain Injury Association in honor of Ava (Beth's niece) on her 11th birthday. 

All of Team Ava - Brooke (also Ava's aunt) and Shauna did the 5K

KC Wolfe and Me - I was pretty excited because I placed 1st in my age group!

Wonder Woman and Korinne doing a little cleaning for me. 

Wonder Woman was quite the helper ......

 ...... someone else was not so much and decided to fall asleep on the job!

Karlee informed me on Sunday that our baby is almost not a baby anymore.  Then she said, "that's okay because we can just start growing another one"

 Silly Girl!

99.7 The Point crashed Michael and Paula's Memorial/Congrats/Gavin's birthday party - thanks to Randy from Henry Wurst! They gave the kids free ice cream, Pure Leaf tea and provided some T-Bones tickets.  Too bad the tickets were for that evening.  Not sure why you go crash someone's party and then give them tickets to a game they would have to leave their party to attend .... oh well! They interviewed Paula and it was on the radio later.  A little excitement was added to the party! 

We took the kids to see the giant pencil in the sky near downtown Liberty.  It is really a cell phone tower disguised as a pencil.  They thought it was pretty cool!

DON'T MAKE ME GET OUT OF THE POOL!!!!!!!!!!!!  She LOVES to swim and it was "closing time"!

This made me laugh - Kohen brought home a book from kindergarten.  One of the pages had a list of his favorites.  This one is his favorite ice cream - thenela.  Used in a sentence:  Would you like chocolate or thenela (vanilla).

The next stop for the Gibbs Family during this VERY busy year is Minnesota!  The next pictures you will be seeing should be full of fish, the lake, and hopefully lots of sunshine!!!!!!

Frozen Hot Chocolate, Baseball, Legos and More!

We took a little walk to the lake in our neighborhood in hopes of throwing rocks into the lake.  No such luck! No rocks to be found!!

Korinne and I headed out to the Farmer's Market in Liberty last Saturday in search of frozen hot chocolate.  One of my friends kept mentioning it and we thought we knew where we were going.  We went to the coffee place and they gave Korinne a hot chocolate with some ice cubes in it (in a coffee cup).  Not exactly what we were looking for .... She enjoyed it, though, along with her mini cinnamon rolls!  We ran into some friends while Korinne was finishing up and they steered us the direction of the infamous frozen hot chocolate. This was a very good thing because we had two people at home that had been waiting patiently for their "order".  They got the good stuff (and boy, was it good!).  They were both nice enough to share with Korinne too!

Watching Ko play tball. Korinne calls him Ko and it has kind of stuck. 

Mark and I went to the Royals game last Saturday night.  They almost had a perfect game up until about the 6th inning.  To explain some of the pics - the car in the middle of the parking lot was parked that way when we went in and that is how we found our car after the game.  They were handing out free BBQ sauce after the game.  The Royals koozie was the best purchase all night because it was pretty cold, for being so late in May, and my hand was freezing to the beer!  We stopped for nachos after the game at a place called 'Escape' and they were the best nachos either of us had ever had, hence the scraped clean plate! 

Karlee went to the emergency room on Sat night/Sun morning.  She had been complaining of a stomach ache that would come and go for about 3-4 days.  We thought maybe it was appendicitis.  They said they didn't believe it to be but it could still result in appendicitis and they sent us home and told us to keep watch.  She still complained about her stomach for a couple days but it seems to have subsided now so I think we are appendicitis clear!

Since Karlee was feeling under the weather Kohen, Korinne and I headed out for a day of fun!  We got some lunch, hit up Macken Park for a picnic and a little playing and then ended up at Lego Land. 

Lego Land Fun!

The picture of Korinne and the dog makes me laugh.  I told her to stand by the "woof-woof" (what she calls dogs) and that was as close as she would get.  She was too scared to stand any closer. She thought the girl looked a lot like Karlee because she kept pointing at her and saying "karlee, karlee".

These pictures don't do this portion of Lego Land justice.  They have a great set up inside with all of the stadiums, speedway, buildings downtown, the Wizard of Oz, etc.  All made of legos ... it was pretty cool!

I had to go out of town Monday thru Thursday of this week to Greensboro for meetings. The top is a picture of my team - Nan, me, Laura, Leisa, Kathy and Louis.  The Greensboro Grasshoppers field (minor league team) is right outside the window of the home office in Greensboro.  We got to watch the ACC championship games all day throughout our meetings.  The cars are just some pics I took at a parking garage because I knew Kohen would like them.  

Don't mind the funny look on my face in my pic next to the grasshopper.  When I first started with Bell (5 years ago) I had to go to Greensboro for new employee training.  I took Kohen and Mark with me and the picture on the top left is Kohen next to the grasshopper when he was 14 months old.  I was out running while I was there this go around and ran by the grasshopper and decided I had to sit and take a quick "selfie" 5 years later.  It would've been better if Kohen could have been in the "later" shot but he still got a kick out of it when I got home. 

Just a couple "views" from the plane.  The first one is coming into Greensboro on Monday night.  Then, on the bottom row - leaving Greensboro, getting into ATL and getting back to KC.