Jensen's 2nd Birthday!

We celebrated Jensen's 2nd birthday last week. He is obsessed with football so Austin made him a football cake. It took him 5 minutes to decorate this baby. Pretty impressive. Jensen loved it!


Luke was pretty jealous of Jensen's presents, and is much looking forward to all the many presents he thinks he'd going to get for his birthday.


Luke was the present delivery boy. Second best job to actually opening the presents.


Jensen got a lot of fun stuff including this sheriff set from Grandma Flake.


Luke used his own chore money to buy Jensen this birthday gift. Pretty cute. He also wanted to buy himself a few birthday gifts though. When we explained that that's not how you do it, he made sure to buy something for Jensen that had two of them in the package so they could both play with the new toy. Sword fighting ninjas, pretty cool I have to admit.


This is now Jensen's favorite accessory - replacing his superman/batman cape that Grandma Flake made him. Luke puts it on whenever he gets the chance too.


Jensen got this fun phone from his Great Grandma Williamson - Austin's grandma. It records voices and has a lot of other fun features. I'm pretty jealous of it myself. He gabs for hours on it. He definitely doesn't take after his Grandpa Flake in that area.
(I think Jensen looks a ton like his cousin Jackson in this picture)


It's been raining a lot here lately - not really anything new. I usually don't let the boys play in the puddles, but I needed a submission for Ashley's naughtiest kid contest. My kids had a blast being naughty - even though I was letting them. Seems like that would take the fun out of it.


Jensen took my "letting him play in the puddles for a picture", too far and sat down in the water and got his face all muddy and ended up taking his pants off and running a little wild on his 4-wheeler before I caught up with him. We really like this guy and can't believe we've only had him 2 years! We're excited for little Eliza in less than a month!

summer adventures

This is a summary blog that covers our trip to Yellowstone (July 22) through today (aug 28).



Austin decided that we should have a backyard campout. We got a great deal (10 bucks) on this fire pit through craig's list. We roasted dogs, brats, and smores, then Austin burned 150 ft of baseboards in the new fire pit. Austin told a scary campfire story to the boys about "THE MOSS MAN." Luke was terrified. Of course when we asked him to go get something from the house later that night he refused citing the fact that the Moss Man was going to "get him"



Happy campers: Jensen, Heather and Eliza.



Luke was an awesome helper. He set up all of the tent poles, pushed them into the tent and then plugged in the tent poles. He also towed all the firewood over from the chopping block to the fire pit.



roof warrior: Four of our friends were SO awesome and came over and helped us re-roof the garage the Saturday after we got back from Idaho.




this guy's got a rap sheet a mile long

this is the finished product!!! It took about 12 hours! Thank you so much to all who helped.

For how much time all of these kids spent in the car over the three days we were at Yellowstone, they all did really well.



Austin got some shadowing experience in with his favorite podiatrist in Boise, Dr. Lowe. He shadowed a 3 1/2 hr lapidus fusion surgery, and loved it.



all of the "buddies" got back together one more time for a romp through Yellowstone.
(Benson Montano, Luke Kramer, Asher Montano, Jensen Kramer)



The rainbow that projects over the mist generated by the Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This is the scene from one of the 300 plus steps that take you down "Uncle Tom's Trail"



This is the view from the lower viewing platform of Uncle Tom's Trail. The lower falls are twice as tall as Niagara falls!



A family photo taken...well almost a family photo taken at the the lower falls of Yellowstone. Where's Luke? well, when Austin went to pick him up for the picture, it caused Luke to drop his toy airplane down into the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which in turn caused him to have a complete meltdown. Austin tried to go down and retrieve the plane, but Heather would not allow this. All was forgiven with the promise of a new plane. The most amazing thing about the whole hike to the lower falls was that Jensen walked back up all 300 steps all by himself! All of the people coming down were amazed. We were most amazed.



Our great friend Carina was such an amazing hostess and tour guide! We were so grateful for her family letting us stay in their cabin near Yellowstone. Carina's father has a rough airstrip at their cabin, and on the last morning before we left, two random airplanes came to land on the strip. It's an understatement to say that the boys loved getting to see the 2 planes these guys flew in on.





We were really glad to have taken a 2 hr. detour to see this, the first National Monument of the United States: Devil's Tower. In the middle of a beautiful nowhere near Gillette Wy, Devil's Tower juts straight up a quarter of a mile into the sky. It was really amazing to see. Turns out (they think) that this was the core of a volcano where the exterior was worn away over time and the hardened lava core was left behind. Either that, or like the indians tell it... a bunch of girls who were playing one day were trapped on a steep hill by a grizzley bear who tried and tried to get up the hill but only managed to carve grooves in the side of a growing mountain.



We happened upon this great place in Rapid City SD on the way to Mt. Rushmore. Its the Dinosaur Park. Absolutely free, and really cool. Definitely the highlight of our kids' day.



Finally made it to Mt. Rushmore. Just amazing.




A quite disturbing phenomenon has been noted about our son Luke...When he sleeps, he looks exactly like Jay Leno. Yikes!



*on a side note, the first 3 pictures were taken with a 7.1 mpxl. camera we got from walmart for 39 bucks. The rest of the pics were taken with my camera phone. Which look better?

"Is the vessel sea worthy?"

After Austin left today, we tried to keep ourselves busy to keep our minds off it. We did a big project in the yard and these boys were hard workers, with the dirty faces to prove it. 3 hours in the morning plus 3 hours in the afternoon=No more rock bed!

Looks like he smeared ash all over his face. The bathtub had to be scrubbed after they were done.

We bought a boat! Austin grew up in FL, his parents live on the water and have two boats so when we moved to Des Moines and he saw that they had a few "lakes" nearby, Austin wanted one of these little boats right away. He finally found a great deal on the day that Ashley and Ben came to visit us! We bought it, our neighbor gave us some ores and it's been a blast! We are the first on my side of the family to have a boat. Eat your heart out, Joel.

The captain of our "boat"

While out on the water, we saw a few turtles swimming around. Austin reached in and pulled one out of the water. It was much bigger than we anticipated. It even scratched him and we could hear it hissing. It tried to escape, the boys got a little scared of it - and put their feet up, etc. Luke ended up liking it and naming it Hiccup. We let it go after Ashley wasn't startled at all by it.

Jensen loved the boat, our boys are hooked. Austin almost took them out at 5 this morning so they could go before he had to board his airplane.

Mister Hiccup

Two sailors

Luke LOVES being on his baseball/t-ball team. He's got a pretty good swing too. Austin gets to help coach. There are about 9 kids in his team and he has loved every minute of it.

Luke's love for the letter "O" meets Cheetos

You can't tell at all that Ashley is pregnant. We had so much fun when they came to visit, and Ben and Austin got the patio doors fixed!!! We hope they'll include us on their agenda every year when they visit Ben's family. Thanks for coming guys!!!

This is what Jensen does at Luke's baseball games. He loves his little friend, Lilly. He's a real lady's man though, he flirts like this with every little girl at church.

A real baller


Coach Austin Kramer - we miss him!!!

Aunt Shawna's Visit

Jensen's new favorite way to play "peek-a-boo"

Luke and Jensen are generally best friends though recently Jensen has been going through a growth spurt and has been grouchy for the past week which leaves Luke saying things like, "I don't think we can have another baby, Jensen is too naughty. Well, maybe we just shouldn't have another Jensen."

Austin was so proud of this piece of artwork. Go Cougars! Gotta love sidewalk chalk

Shawna and Jensen renewed their friendship pretty quickly.

He followed her around...

and shared his food with her!

Luke was not so charitable

Cute little devil

It's not possible to get a good picture of Austin and his sister Shawna so I guess this one will have to do. The others looked like awkward engagement photos. I guess they do look like brother and sister afterall. Thanks for coming Shawna!