Finally.. An update!!!

Wow, I can't believe how fast time sure can fly by! A lot has taken place with our family since I last posted in March. Here's a quick catch up for us..
In April, we celebrated Easter in Sun Prairie, WI and the kids had a blast! The weather was just beautiful and the kids even had an Easter egg hunt outside! What a great time we had celebrating our Lords resurrection!!!

At the end of April, we took our first family vacation! We took a long weekend and headed to Sioux Falls, SD for the Shrine Circus. A co-worker got tickets for us (Thank you again Larry) and kids had a blast! We took them first to a butterfly garden house and it was very cool to see all the different colors of butterflies! God's creation sure is wonderful! We surprised the kids by taking them to see one of my co-workers semi truck. Nate was just in his glory!! They even let him blow the horn! Totally freaked out Jason!!! Sunday we went to the circus and our hotel was right across the street from the arena, so we walked over there! Kids really had fun swimming and was a great kids pool.. it had a pirate ship full of slides!!! Monday, we took the kids into MCT. Midwest Coast Transport is the company I work for and the "home office" is in Sioux Falls. Kids, well.. lets just say they would have made great clowns at the circus! it was a quiet ride home as they fell asleep from being so tired! They talked about that weekend for a long time!

May came and so did the end of school! Caitlin graduated K5 and was fun to watch their program and to see her in a cap and gown was precious!! The following week, Hannah finished 2nd grade. They just love being on summer vacation!

That's been pretty much our busy lives the past few months! We're looking forward to the next few weeks here in June with a new niece coming and July.. a few birthdays and a wedding!!

A new toy.

I'm testing out this new toy my loving husband bought for me. It's an iPod touch. Very similiar to the iPhone. Thank you honey for your love and this wonderful toy!

Happy 8th Birthday Hannah

Last Saturday, March 21st, our first born, Hannah Joy, turned 8! Happy Birthday Sweetheart! We have been so blessed with this precious child God has given us! She is a great helper and such a smart girl! We were just told last week, that she made the "A" honor roll for the 3rd quarter! Praise the Lord!! We celebrated her birthday with Grandpa Joppa, Auntie Lissa, Uncle Jeff, Madi, Wyatt, Grandpa and Grandma Nelson, Uncle Andrew, Aunt Angela, Great Grandma Ten Eyck and James. The weather was just beautiful and we were able to take the kids to the park as well! Here are a few pictures for our fun weekend!

Gymnastics

Hannah and Caitlin are in gymnastics and this past week, we received their pictures.

Finally.. Updating!!

Sorry we have not been keeping current! I am not sure what took place, holiday's for one, sickness for another!! So here's a brief "catch up" of what's been going on in the Joppa household!

Christmas was such a blessing to us! We had Christmas with my parents and our kids were sure spoiled!! We had our family Christmas and kids just got clothes from their parents.. I kinda fell bad, who would LOVE to get just clothes, well.. our kids did!! Whew! We took off for a nice long weekend in Wisconsin! Kids were spoiled and our two older girls along with my niece received enough money for an American Girl doll! The Friday after Christmas, Melissa and I took 4 girls down to Chicago to the American girl store. They were just in their glory!! :)

We celebrated the New Year in style.. just home with our family and enjoyed every minute of it!

My brother, Ben came home shortly after Christmas and we were able to spend a lot of time with him and his girlfriend, Becky! We were finally able to meet her, after getting to know here a little more from facebook. We had a great time getting to know her and were sad when she... they left :)

Our family has gone threw a few weeks of sickness!!! We're thankful it hit us at one time, and not spread out over a long time. It started with Nate coughing.. finally he complained of an ear ache, so we thought.. ah here comes the infection. So off to Urgent care we went.. Pneumonia! We were shocked! Samantha and I were heading down the same path, so we made an appearance at the clinic. She was in the beginning stages of pneumonia and I had bronchitis. Later on that week, Caitlin and Jason went to the clinic, She ended up with a double ear infection! Jason, just the good ol' fashion cold. Hannah, was the last to get it and when she did, thankfully, it wasn't so bad! Praise the Lord we're on the road to recovery! Jason and I are still dealing with some of this, but we're getting there!

This pretty much catches us up!! Hopefully, I'll do better with this!! The temps have been very cold and we're looking forward to spring!! yeah!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

We sure have a lot to be Thankful for! Our salvation in Jesus is one!! Family, friends, food, clothes, homes, vehicles, just to name a few. Wednesday, the girls had a Thanksgiving meal, so my mom and I went to have lunch. The girls were so excited and cute! They were able to leave after lunch, so they had a great afternoon with Grandpa and Grandma. Thursday, we had thanksgiving meal at our house. This was the first time I had done this, so was pretty nervous. The turkey didn't burn :) and the food all got done at the same time!

Here are some pictures of Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursday night, after the kids were settling down for the night, I went with my sister and my mom off to Albertville Outlet Mall. Some stores opened at 10 PM for their after Thanksgiving deals! And BOY did we get the deals! We were shopping and at 4 in the morning, had Burger King! That seemed strange! We headed back and hit a few stores around here. All in all, was a pretty LONG day! I slept from 7:30 to 9:30 and felt like I was hit by a mack truck! It was fun and I'd do it again.. next year! No way I could do this all the time!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!!

Mall of America

This past weekend, my father in law, sister in law, niece and nephew came to our house for the weekend. We had such a great time!! The day started off sleeping in (for some) and relaxing/goofing around. In doing so..

BeforeAfter

Caitlin's tooth was really loose, and just the right amount of being silly is all it took :)

We headed for the Mall of America and had lunch there and the kids were just as excited as could be! We took them to Underwater Adventures! It's costly, but Arby's has coupons for a free child admission with the purchase of an adult and we brought in food donations for $4 off our fee, so that helped! Here are several pictures of Underwater Adventures.

I posted some videos on facebook, if you get a chance to check them out, one is Sammy dancing and the other is a HUGE stingray floating over our heads!