July is national ice cream month! What's your favorite flavor?
Submitted by LittleWiseOne.

I love ice cream.  I'm not big on chocolate alone.  I like a chocolate / vanilla twist or vanilla with chocolate hard shell on top.  Other favorites are maple nut, pecan praline, and rainbow sherbert.

What do you find interesting or unique about your family history?

• One of my great grandfathers immigrated to the U.S. from Denmark as ian infant on  ship which ended up sinking.  A passing cattle ship threw all the cattle overboard so they could pick up the passengers from the sinking ship.
  

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• The above great grandfather and another great grandfather from Denmark settled in the same town in MN before moving to MT where they homesteaded near each other.  They were both 100% Danish so I am 50% Danish.
• My paternal grandfather died before I was born so I never got to know him.  He began as a teacher on an Indian reservation and then became a rancher.  He started the ranch my dad runs today.  At the age of 54, my grandfather was flying his plane to check on things at the ranch and my Big Grandma was with him.  He had a heart attack and my grandma had to land the plane based on watching him over the years.  She didn't actually know how to fly.  She was a very courageous woman!  Here's an old photo of my parents with the plane.
  

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  My dad had it refurbished and still flies it out at the ranch.
  

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• My great uncle died on a ship during WWII from an infected tooth.  He was buried at sea.
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  My maternal great grandfather was a gymnast and would still walk on his hands to the barn into his 50's.
• My paternal grandparents got a lot of neat Indian artifacts from teaching on the reservation.  Here's me modeling some of them.
  

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• My mom was 16 and my father 18 when they married.
• The name Ray or Raymond is prominent on my side of the family and my husband's.  On my side, there's my great uncle pictured above, my brother, my uncle's middle name, and my son's middle name.  On Ray's side, there was him and his paternal grandfather.
• I have an aunt whose into genealogy and has done extensive research on my little grandma's side of the family.  Its fun reading all the information she finds.
• My dad was born on an Indian reservation.

What are your favorite recipes for a festive 4th of July celebration?

RHUBARB CRUNCH

Big Gramma

DIRECTIONS:

1.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.       Mix together flour, brown sugar, oatmeal, cinnamon and shortening.

3.       Place one-half of above mixture evenly in bottom of 8x11x2 inch pan.

4.       Cut up rhubarb and place on top of mixture.

5.       Combine sugar, water and cornstarch in saucepan, cook until thickened and sugar dissolved; pour over rhubarb.

6.       Place remaining flour mixture evenly over the top.

7.       Bake in oven for 30 minutes.

Its cooking in the oven right now and it smells soooo good!

What's your favorite song with "America" or "USA" in the title? Bonus points if you share it with us.

Lee Greenwood - God Bless The USA

What's your favorite time of day and why?

9 - 11 pm when the kids are all in bed and I can just chill.

Yesterday was the summer solstice for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. How did you celebrate the arrival of summer and the longest day of the year?

At a soccer tournament, of course!  We actually started on Friday.  Here's the rundown on the games:

Cody:

• Game 1 - Led 1-0 at the half.  Cody scored a goal and we were tied 2-2 until one of our teammates accidentally scored for the other team ending in a 2-3 loss.  Painful!
• Game 2 - First half went great which seems to be the story for this team.  We had a 2 point lead until our "Director of Coaching" whom none of us like decided to show up to coach the 2nd half.  He had Cody, our leading scorer last season, on defense or on the bench!  The game ended in a 3-3 tie.  Normally, that wouldn't bother us but we would've won if our parent coach had been allowed to keep calling the shots.  He knows the team best and did a phenomenal job with them last year.
• Game 3 - We lost 0-1.  The other team was really good so I wasn't too upset.  The boys actually played really well all weekend in were much improved from the previous tournament.

Jace:

• Game 1 - Ended in a 3-3 tie.  We led the whole game until the last 3 minutes when they tied it up.  Bummer!
• Game 2 - We won!!  Final score was 5-2. 
• Game 3 - It was a hard fought game but they lost 2-3.  Jace came really close to a goal and had 1 assist.  His team also played much better this tournament.

Jace dribbles

2 comments

Jace side kick

This photo is actually from the first soccer tournament.  The tournament photographer took it and it was up on their website.  Jace's team had just scored a goal to take the lead and Jace did 2 flips.

Jace flips for goal

Friday night, we went to supper at IHOP for the first time.  We've been meaning to get there for quite awhile.  Ultimately, we were disappointed.  I thought they'd have a lot more variety of pancakes to choose from and I much prefer Ray's or Perkins' pancakes.  Lily's chocolate one wasn't bad, though.  After supper, we went back to our hotel so the kids could take a swim.  It was a small pool with no "extras" but we had the whole thing to ourselves.  The boys were getting bored after awhile so decided that Ray & I would judge their different jumps into the pool.  They came up with names for them and even starting acting our characters.  It was the best time and I can't remember when I last laughed that hard with just the 5 of us.  Twice I was laughing so hard I couldn't speak and was crying.  It was a great family moment.

Between games on Saturday, Ray took the kids to "Kung Fu Panda" while I did some shopping for his upcoming birthday and business trip to Mexico this week.

What's your favorite type of donut?
Submitted by tomatshonino.

Glazed cinnamon.

How did/do you spend your summer vacations?

The only thing that was regular in our summer vacations was a trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota.  We always stayed at the Holiday Inn that had an indoor clover-shaped pool, hot tub, mini-golf, and ping pong.  Regular stops each year were The Flintstones, Reptile Gardens, Bear Country USA where my dad would always scare us to death by opening the van windows when bears were near, Rushmore Waterslides, Mount Rushmore of course, and the family favorite Storybook Island.  Even as a teenager, I loved The Flintstones and Storybook Island.  I think a lot of it was the nostalgia.  One thing that we really enjoyed in the early years was greyhound dog races.  We'd have dinner and then bet on the races.  Even though I wasn't really old enough, mom & dad would place bets for me.  Of course, I always picked my dogs based on which one was the cutest or had the best name.  I had surprisingly good results with that.  We were so disappointed when they closed.

This is the year my cousins met us there.  I'm in the red holding my brother and the rest are my cousins.

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Here we are at the Flintstones.  I'm on the left with my aunt and my friend is on the right with my big grandma.

Flintstones

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Ray even got to come with one summer when we were dating.

The last time we were there was when Cody was 2.  We're talking about going next summer and meeting Amy Sue and the family there.  It's an in between spot for us.

Why do you blog?
Submitted by littleduckling.

I think the main reason is to keep my family & close friends up-to-date on what our family has been doing without sending out numerous emails.  It also makes for a nice journal to look back on in the future.

What's on your "To-Do" list today? What are you most looking forward to and what are you most dreading?

1. Meeting at church to practice skits for Vacation Bible School next week
2. Laundry
3. Pack for weekend soccer tournament
4. Golf if we don't get rained out
5. Some spreadsheet work for my mom

I'm most looking forward to golfing and least looking forward to laundry.