The Kole Chronicles

Friday, August 3, 2012

Sharp Shooters…on a zebra hunt?!

Back in May, my mom, Katy and I all decided to take a personal protection/firearm safety course – my mom talked us into it!

We were little balls of nerves on our way out to go shooting for the first time – but thanks to Tom (West MI Firearms Education) we didn’t wet our pants like we thought we might. We got comfortable learning what we needed to learn about how a gun operates discovered our awesomeness in being ‘cross-eye dominant’ and we even passed the class! Seriously though, Tom was a great teacher and was really patient with us and ALL of our questions (and was good at keeping us in line – we were not the greatest students! LOL!).

Here is my mom (on her way to a zebra hunt?) on our (hot) day on the range.

katy and i are so cool!

my mom, kay, and nick showing the targets who’s boss!

katy and i hitting some bullseyes (er sort of) and Tom supervising

We all felt very accomplished after the class – and especially having guns in the house – i feel a whole lot safer knowing how to safely use one if i ever needed to!

Retirement

Scott’s dad retired back in March – and in May, he had a retirement party at Dunton Park to celebrate.

We had lots of yummy food and lots of fun!

Our family and Jen/Paul’s family got Dad a pretty cool gift that we couldn’t wait for him to open (actually, we were afraid if we waited for him to open it, the kids would give it away…they were pretty excited about it!)….

We got him a scooter to bring up to the cottage so he could join the ranks with his other ‘croanies’ and be able to get to the marina or to get more bait or whatever else he might need to do…

We had the scooter just parked right in a spot by the pavillion where we were all set up and he had no idea about it, but the kids kept eyeing it up and were talking about it!

we had him open his present – which was a box with the title and keys in it…

checking it out over in the parking lot…

Scotty filling him in on on the details….

first scooter ride! :)

…”bye grappy!”

and a race with great grandma and dylan on great grandma’s scooter! lol!

we had a fun night all in honor of the hard work Dad put in over the years! He totally deserves this free time in retirement to do whatever he pleases!!! :)

here he is on one of the first days of retirement; fishing in the channel…for some giant perch!

Monday, July 23, 2012

HAPPY 60th

This summer, we threw a surprise party for my mom’s 60th Bday! This was something I had in the works for a few months before hand and it was so much fun to plan and pull together to be able to see her so surprised!
I did a ‘poker’ theme – because the day after her party, she was leaving for vegas!
Here was the invite that i sent out…

I had pics from when she was younger…grade school, middle school and senior picture blown up and we used them to decorate…it turned out cute :)

made giant dice for the centerpieces…

and just decorated with cards…

We kept the surprise! Only thing was how we were going to get her to our house with US controlling when she got there..we knew that if we told her a time – she would be early and we just didnt’ want to risk it, so we had to go pick her up….I had told her we were taking her out to dinner and that we were picking her up…then i went to pick her up alone and i just pretended that i was flustered because owen was throwing a fit and i realized half way there that she could have just come and meet us there…and she totally bought it because that’s totally something i would do….cars from her friends were parked in the church parking lot on the way to my house so i distracted her by giving her a gift right when we were turning the corner….totally worked….
Here’s the guest of honor walking into her surprise!