June Recap

This past month has flown by.  I have been checking in periodically to read some of your blogs, but just haven't found the time to post.  So here is a massive dump about what June has been for the Kraft family.

Todd and I went to the MN Catholic Home Education Conference...without any children!  Madeline and Haley both took the babysitting certification class last summer and have been practicing up their skills over the winter.  They watched the children for two whole days and nothing burned down!!!  Seriously, they all did a great job and it is a huge milestone as parents to be able to have children old enough to babysit.  Whoo-hoo!

If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you'll know that we've been trying to sell our home for the past 3+ years.  Our realtor advised us from the beginning that most clients require granite and hardwood in the kitchen of which our kitchen had neither.  We didn't want to put any money into the house that we were trying to sell, so we just left it.  Fast forward three years and we decided to take her advice.  We put in the granite and hardwood, painted accent walls throughout the house, and removed any personal and religious items from the home.  She staged the heck out of it and I must admit that it looks amazing! So far...no serious lookers.  But, it's only been re-listed for 15 days.  I'm hoping and praying to sell soon so that we can be moved by the fall and the start of the new school year.

Our kitchen before with linoleum flooring and laminate countertops.  Looks nice, right?

We let the kids take Sharpies to the flooring the night before the wood floor  installers got started.  They loved it and let their creativity flow!

The kitchen after with wood flooring and granite countertops - looking even better, yes?

Do you see all those pretty plates precariously placed throughout the kitchen?  

Because we re-listed the house and it is beautifully staged, I decided to take the children to North Dakota for a week.  It's tough to keep a house (full of breakable items that belong to your realtor!) looking clean and uncluttered with 7 children.  My mom and dad graciously agreed to let us take over their house for 8 days.  The entire trip went remarkably well.  Other than the fact that Peter whines and/or cries every minute that he's strapped into his car seat (did I mention that it is 8 hours of driving time?), the entire trip went off without a hitch!

I celebrated my birthday in Minot!

The kids got out golfing with Grandma Eileen a few times.

I took the kiddos to the indoor water park.  It was a ton of fun!

Todd rode the train and joined us on Saturday.  Here is surrounded by his adoring children on  Father's Day.

We came home for two days and celebrated Madeline's 13th birthday in the morning and headed out to Camp Lebanon in the afternoon.  We were there from Thursday evening until Sunday afternoon.  There were some crazy storms that passed through.  Two cabins had a massive tree uproot and fall on top of them!  Luckily, nobody was hurt.  We had a fabulous time and the children played and played.  Lillian and Peter had some weird virus over the weekend with high fevers and body and head aches.  Lillian slept the better part of two days and Peter cried a good portion of that time.  However, they are both back to normal and I am thankful that it was a short-lived illness!

Happy 13th Birthday Madeline!

Esther and Eleanor on the pontoon.

The big girls spent hours and hours in the lake.

Todd helping Eleanor with a sand art project at craft time.

Our next big undertaking is opening our home to 5 extra children for a week.  Our dear friends are heading down to Texas to visit her mother and asked if we'd take 5 of their 7 kiddos for the week.  The children are over the moon excited to have them!  It should be interesting with 12 kids for a week.  I'll let you know how it all goes!

And just like that, June is over.  It has finally heated up and feels like summer.  I know that July will fly by just as quickly. With so much going on, I know that I won't be posting much.  I decided to do periodic posts and spend more time just enjoying summer.

God Bless!

Heather :-)

Camp Lebanon 2010

Our family just got back from a wonderful family camp weekend.  Camp Lebanon is located not too far from St. Cloud and was less than a 2 hour drive for us - nice!  It is a Baptist camp that a local Catholic Church rented for the weekend.  We didn't know anyone going into the weekend, but made some new friends and had a great time.  There were even some friends that Madeline had met at Schoenstatt a few weeks ago.  What a small world!

The weekend was great.   The scheduled activities were kept to a minimum. We had family rosary and camp fire each night.  The children had a craft time on Friday morning.  They all had a great time - especially doing a little leather work.  There was Mass on Saturday evening.  The meals were all delicious and huge!  I definitely need to start up my exercise routine again!   The rest of the time was filled with whatever you wanted to do.  Todd took the kids swimming, boating and fishing.  There was also carpet ball, ping pong and pool in the Chalet.  I mainly hung out with the youngest three and was the nap and playground monitor.  It was wonderful to spend time with the little kids and get to give them my full attention.  Likewise, Todd got to have some big kid fun with the oldest three. 

We all enjoyed ourselves and are looking forward to going back again.  The neatest thing for me was being around other families who shared a strong faith and are working hard to live that faith and pass it along to their children.  We were just an average sized family with our six children.  The largest family there had 12 children.  Everyone we met was open to life and God's plan for them - so refreshing!

Much of our weekend was spent playing or watching "carpet ball".  It's kind of like bocce ball and was a HUGE hit with the kids.  I'm a little worried Joseph may go into carpet ball withdrawl! :-)

Friday morning craft time was great.  The play-doh for the little kids was so simple, yet effective.  The older kids had a variety of activities from which they could choose.  Their favorite was the leather working.  They each made a necklace that will be a cherished keepsake for years to come.

It did rain the last night we were there.  I was happy we packed some board and card games!  Madeline and Haley played Uno Spin with some friends that Madeline had met at Schoenstatt Camp.

We also had many fun hours on the little playground when the sun was shining.

On another note, we did have 2 open houses while we were gone and only one person stopped in to look at the house.  Please pray that some family will find our house and make a fair offer.  We are trying so hard to be patient with the house situation, but it is getting hard.  We'd love to be moved for the next school year and be closer to the home school co-op.  All things are possible with God and prayer is powerful.  Your prayers are greatly appreciated.

God Bless!

Heather :-)