The Muddy Adventures

July 17, 2014

Nebraska Reunion

Family reunion season! Love it! I apologize in advance for the crazy number of pictures. This is the brief version :)

This year we met at in Nebraska, not far from Lincoln & Omaha. The hunting lodge was a bit "rustic" but if viewed as very nice camping... it was a great place. Plenty of space for the kids to go crazy. We were right on the Platte River which would normally be awesome. This year the area has been blessed with a lot of rain which meant the river was very high and not safe for the kiddos to play in. Despite some rain, heat, and mosquitoes... we had a blast!

Did I mention this is is a hunting lodge....

This is how we do it.

This started approximately 7 minutes after the rain stopped...

These people were overlooking those two crazy kids and wondering the appeal of playing in mud puddles.

There was way too much fun with water guns with both the big and little kids.

Look at this little troublemaker....

These two have an adorable little bond

Some of the "big kids" ventured out in the river

The youngest two (the amazing baby T and Brody)

I am ready to gobble up this face

The Matriarch!

We had a rib cook-off. We ALL enjoyed the entries but these two were the official judges.

Look at those clouds! Luckily, this missed us but it provided a spectacular lightning show on top of some amazing fireworks.

Lily

We have been out of town for more than 2 weeks and have a ton of photos to go through and blog posts to write but I can't pass over a major change in our house.

We put our cat to sleep right before leaving for vacation. She had many names over the years. We originally named her Sammy but never actually called her that. She was just Kitty, until Kamden couldn't pronounce Kitty and it came out as Lily. So Kamden finally gave her the proper name of Lily.

Lily was Joe and I's first pet together and was with us from just about the beginning of our relationship. She ruled the roost with the dogs and was SO patient with the babies and toddler. I am sure Lily was aware that as our family grew (by 2 dogs and 2 kids) she continued to get further and further down on the totem pole since she needed so much less at the end of the day. We loved her regardless and didn't take the decision to put her to sleep easily.

She used to be (what I liked to call) "Petite Plus." She was a small cat but pretty darn chunky. Over the last year, she started to lose a lot of weight. Like half her body weight. She easily weighed at least 13 lbs at her peak and was down to 5.5 lbs in the end (despite eating and drinking plenty). She had kidney disease for the last few months. We put her on some prescription food and when her bloodwork showed normal kidney function but she was still losing weight, the vet believed she probably had cancer of some sort. We rescued her 11 years ago and she wasn't a kitten at the time so we felt she had a full and happy life. She will be missed.

Here are a few of my favorite photos of her:

Meeting Rocky for the first time