Hulse Family Reunion

 

The 2nd week in August, we were able to have a Family Reunion to celebrate Travis's parents 40th Anniversary and his Dad's birthday with all 26 family members in attendance! We all met in a central meeting place for almost everyone in his family, a small town in Illinois, called Rock Falls. We rented a house there with 9 rooms, a room for each family! It was so great to spend time with everyone and just enjoying hanging out! The boys got to go golfing and fishing, and the girls got to go shopping of course! We enjoyed having a fire in the evenings and even roasting s'mores! To celebrate Jim and Jan's 40th wedding anniversary, the kids made a wedding cake for them to feed each other. While we were decorating it, Natalie was upset that she had forgot to get a little bride and groom for the top of the cake. Luckily, McKinley's toys saved the day. She has a purse of little people that she carries around with her everywhere, and she just happens to have bride and groom little people. So we used those as cake toppers. When McKinley saw the cake she kept saying, "people" over and over and couldn't understand why she couldn't have them! It was quite funny! Travis and Natalie also made them a picture recreating the town where they dated and grew-up for their anniversary.

 

Natalie made us all matching shirts that said, "The H" on them. We tie-dyed our shirts one day which was a lot of fun! They all turned out great!

A few of the other fun activities we were able to do while we were all together is play a family Minute to Win It game. We had fun sucking up M&M's, shaking ping pong balls out of a kleenex box on our backside, moving a cookie from our forehead to our mouth using only our faces, doing a cereal box puzzle, and picking up various sizes of bags using only our mouths. It was a hoot and made for a fun time!

Another fun thing we were able to do, is ride on a train. The man that lived in the house beside the house we were staying in had a train complete with a track throughout his whole yard to ride on. He was really nice and took the kids on a whole bunch of rides! He even had a few times that were designated for adults only, which was a lot of fun too! He gave the kids all conductor hats and train whistles to keep!

We also spent a lot of time just relaxing and hanging out! McKinley loved spending time with all of her cousins!

After a few days at the house, we headed to spend the last few nights in a hotel, due to a mix up in dates with the house. We stayed in a town just a little ways down the road. It was Jim's birthday that night, so we all headed to a park to play and have birthday cupcakes that evening.

We had fun swimming in the pool at the hotel and spending sometime at a local national park!

We had such a great time! It's not often when all 26 of us are together, so it was so much fun that we all got to be there together for a few days! McKinley overall did really well on the drive out there! She had fun on the iPad and watching her shows! We were pretty impressed with how well she did. On the way home we stopped at a park in Des Moins, IA for her to play with. As you can tell from the picture she quite enjoyed it!

County Fair

 

We had a great time heading to the Lancaster County Fair today. We went for the second year in a row, see my blog post from last year here :) McKinley had a great time! She loved all the animals, since she is quite the animal lover these days! We got to see goats, a camel, a zebra, ducks, rabbits (even a huge on named Titanic), chicks, chickens, cows, horses, and even a monkey! Every time we walked away from an animal, McKinley would says, "more, more!" 

We joked when we saw this horse standing in front of the fan that he was a "Travis Horse", since he shared his loved of fans with Travis :)

After seeing all the animals, we headed over to the carnival part of the fair. McKinley got to ride on the carousel and Travis got to play a basketball carnival game, they were both in heaven :)

McKinley was so cute walking around the fair sporting her "glakesses." She loves to wear them now, and wore them almost the whole time we were there! She's a little sunglasses lover like her parents :)

 

 

We had a great day at the fair! McKinley talked about the fair and all of the animals she saw for the rest of the day!

4 Years!

This past Thursday, July 26th was mine and Travis's 4 year anniversary! I can't believe we've already been married 4 years! Crazy how time flies when you're having fun :) On our actual anniversary, Travis surprised me with these beautiful roses and a few little treats around the house in the places I look first thing every morning. In the fridge, where I get McKinley her cup of milk, in the cabinet where we keep McKinley's diapers and wipes, and on top of the DVD player where I put on a show for McKinley when she wakes up in the morning. He knows me too well :) It was really sweet and fun to go around and find fun little treat for me!

 

When Travis got home I had this sitting on the table for him. It's a plastic Chinese food container full of homemade felt fortune cookies, with a tag on the box that said, "So FOURtunate to have been married to you for FOUR years". (I found the idea here, I didn't come up with it on my own :) Inside each of the fortune cookies was a little surprise for the evening. One of them said we'd be making Chinese food for dinner, his favorite. I was a little nervous about how it'd turn out since I'd never tried this recipe before, but it actually turned out amazing! We made our own sweet and sour chicken with fried rice! We loved it! It took a little while to make, but was fun to spend time cooking in the kitchen together, something we've enjoyed doing together throughout our marriage. 

Then on Friday, after Travis got off work, we dropped McKinley off at Brad and Emily's house and headed to Omaha to spend the night to celebrate our anniversary. It was our first time leaving McKinley overnight, and overall she did pretty well! It was a little weird not having her to worry about all night and the next morning! It was a nice break and a good way to celebrate our anniversary. We got to Omaha and went to dinner at Fuddruckers, a favorite of ours that they don't have in Lincoln, so we don't get to go very often! We actually met for the first time at a Fuddruckers, so it was kind of a fun place to go on our anniversary :) After dinner, we went to Dave and Busters! We had a great time there, we both love arcade games, so Dave and Busters was the perfect place for us! Travis won the jackpot of 300 tickets on the basketball game, no surprise if you know Travis's arcade skills :) In the 4 years we've been married he's won 2 basketballs at Six Flags, a HUGE stuffed bear at the Utah State fair and many other little arcade games here and there. We used our tickets to buy McKinley a stuffed Alex the lion from Madagascar. She loved it :) We spent the night in a hotel then woke up Saturday morning and walked around downtown Omaha, then shopped around at a nice shopping center! We had a wonderful time and enjoyed celebrating 4 years of marriage!

 

I'm so grateful I made the decision to marry Travis 4 years ago. He's my best friend and a wonderful husband! He's a great father to McKinley and works so hard for our family everyday! Here's a few fun pictures of us on our special day 4 years ago! What a great day that was!