Summer

I know I haven't been on here lately. Sorry. Its been a busy summer. We had a fun 4th of july weekend. Sunday evening we were lucky to have aunt martha and uncle bob take us out on their boat. We parked in the middle and watched firworks all over the lake. Someone was on the island right by us and they did some really good ones. From where we were you could see some over at sand lake and devils lake. It was a nice time.
Then on the 4th we had a koepfle family reunion. Lots of people came. Jims cousin passed away about 10 years ago and we had talked the night before about how he hadn't seen his cousins son since the funeral. He came to the reunion!  How cool! He's 16 now and I guess he looks a lot like his dad. That was really a cool time. We had lots of yummy food. I had just tried out a new recipe of cheesecake filled strawberries. They were delish!
The kids have had t-ball for the past 5 weeks and they love it. They are getting a lot better and have enjoyed playing. Ethan gets bored out there on the field at times but its cute.
Well I will write more soon.

Trips

I have been trying to post from my phone, but for some reason it hasnt been working.
We went to Zhenders in Frankenmuth last weekend. Man was it fun! We had never been there before and the kids (and Jim and I)had a blast. They have 2 huge slides. My sister wrote on her blog about the slide at a waterpark she went to and how scary it is when your tube starts going up the side of the slide. These two at Zhenders were terrifying, but luckily, we're enclosed, so when you are going a million miles a second down the slide and curving farther and farther up the side you just scream thinking you're going to flip over. Ha! They have a huge splash zone. The nice thing is that they also just have a regular pool. It was split into 3 smaller pools. One was up to 6 feet deep and cooler, one was up to 3 feet deep and cool and then a huge hot tub. They were all connected by steps going into each other. They were obviously the original pool before the splash area was put in, but it was perfect when you just wanted to chill away from the crowds.
Paige became an amazing swimmer while we were there. She was swimming like a fish, which honestly, scares me. She becomes overly confident at times. When she's in the pool I don't worry so much because she can normally make it to the side, but in the lake, there is not visibility. That scares me!
We taught the kids how to play Marco Polo. They loved it. Samantha wanted to be included and would swim around saying "Marpo, Hello!" Adorable. Ethan enjoyed the "fish out of water" idea. He kept trying to get out of the pool and get away from us and then giggle like crazy when we would yell "fish out of water" and catch him trying to be sneaky.
We are heading to Ludington in a few days. We are very excited. We'll just be up there a few days but it will be soo nice. The kids have talked about it non stop for days. I have already started packing. I know, crazy. But I want to make sure I don't forget anything. More on that when we get back.