Doggie Memory Lane

I happened across this online and it brought back so many memories of the Kennedy Kids and dogs. Library books, charts, magazines were daily reading and discussion.  Perhaps the Kennedy Klan GrandKids will have fun with this as the Kennedy Kids walk down their memory lane.

These were the childhood favorites:

Darla ~ Newfoundland

Brent ~ German Shorthaired Pointer

Jared ~ Great Dane

Lauryn ~ Great Pyrenese

Davis couldn't make up his mind but his heart flipped out for this Australian Shepherd stating if we could adopt her he would pay for all her food and vet bills. Tennisyn aka Tess was an amazing dog.

Logan ~ Rhodesian Ridgeback

And Kaden kept changing his mind - Newf, Golden Retriever and Australian cattle dog! And he ended up getting a Red Bone Coon Hound, reminiscent of childhood reading Where the Red Fern Grows.

Janessa ~ Bernese Mountain Dog

Jillaine ~ Golden Retriever (but only the ones out of the Scottish breed lines)

Lehman ~ Beagle

Maryn- Australian Cattledog aka Red Heeler

As a teen, Lauryn bought a Coton deTulear and had one litter of pups with Vashti.
Vanna was one of the pups that she kept.  

And this is what we bred and had for pets! Cairn Terriers
They were the best - Taryn, Kirby, Reba & Lacey!
You gave us great memories!

A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow. Ontari-ari-ari-o!

On July 22, 2014, I (Beccy) flew to Ontario to visit my Dad, celebrate my cousin Susan's birthday, attend the Shantz reunion, celebrate my Dad's upcoming 80th birthday, visit with family, see 2 of our daughters and 6 of our grandchildren.  And few more delightful events also took place which you'll see in the pictures below or in another post.

Grey, Brooks, Kenna (Darla's children) playing in the park at my parents home. Darla herself spent many happy hours playing in this park.

What would a visit to great-Grandpa's be without shelling some walnuts?

The walnut trees that were planted in 1980 or 1981 on Grandma Haas' farm outside of New Dundee, Grandpa Shantz's house and our house is Dickson Hill and were not even as big around as your baby finger.

These seedlings are now full trees measuring between 10 and 16 inches at the stump. It is recorded in the book The Trail of the Black Walnut by George E. Reaman that the Mennonites ended up in Markham and Kitchener area from Pennsylvania because they saw black walnut trees they knew immediately it was good farm land.

Brooks got a haircut.

Went to see AJ (my cousin's son) play ball.

Beccy & Uncle Ken

Rochelle & Beccy

Dad/Grpa Shantz took me to visit my birthday twin ~ July 26, 1958.
I am a few hours older than Diann Zinn. 

Beccy's grandfather, Sylvanus Shantz built this house for Diann's father in 1955. She moved back home when her father in his 90's had poor health. She still looks after her mother who is now 93.

Grandpa still has three varieties of grapes growing in his back yard.

 

We went for a drive to see the horses and buggies.

Susan Shantz, the 50 birthday girl!

'Great Grandma' Dorothy Bennett with Brooks, Kenna, Grey, Canaan, Mattea & Kayla

Lauryn, Dorothy, Beccy, Darla

Dorothy & Beccy

What is a holiday without a trip to McDonald's?
Everything when you've never had honey with your nuggets. Go Canada!
And magnificent when the server thought Beccy, Darla and Lauryn were sisters! :) :) :)

And then a trip downtown Toronto

A crystal 'curtain' ~ a dream come true for these three little girls.

And the holiday ended with a trip to my sister's cottage on Pigeon Lake in ON.

Advent Blunder

okay...MINE, not yours! Something that I keep having to remind the kids of....

Sooooo I put the packs of Kool aid in the envelopes and genius me thought how kind it was of you to include the sugar neatly in a ziploc bag. Then questioned myself as to why there wasn't a full cup of sugar, but thought...wow Mom is being conscious of the sugar content for the kids...good idea..maybe it doesn' tneed the full cup anyway?? Soooo I set Mattea to work making her very first jug of juice alone...she measured and poured and stirred...I got the cups out for all the kids and watched as they all happily took a huge gulp. I should have realized something was up when Canaan (a kid who guzzles juice because he doesn't get much of it...) looked up at me with a huge frown and slammed his cup down. Then Mattea goes..."oh Mom this juice tastes so bad!!!" 

Then there's me..."oh c'mon its Koolaid...stop with the drama how bad can it taste"....poor Mattea humoured me...and took another sip, and goes "Mom YOU taste it...its really really gross!!!" soooo I took a big chug and realized....yeah...that wasn't sugar in those bags!!! And this WAS the worst juice ever! LOL....SOOOO hindsight...I should have looked at the recipe for the playdoh??? I am going to assume that is what the carefully measured salt is for? LOL

Sooo I need to go and remove those bags from future Kool aid days (I split them up so we have 3 days of getting it, instead of each kid getting their own - they will all share it anyway!:-)). 

And also have to keep reminding the kids that its MOMMY's fault...Grandma Kennedy did not give them bad juice with salt in it!!! LOL

anyway just thought I'd share...and I quickly made up another jug for them to show them that Grandma would never send them something that tastes that awful...it was Mommy's mess up!!!! 

after that...they quite enjoyed their sugar filled koolaid:-D but I will say, it took me a long time to get that salt taste out of my mouth!!! LOL...that was ALOT of salt!!!

 

(sent by email from Lauryn)

Layover excitement!

Layovers are never exciting. Well, unless you get to meet family at the airport.

 We had lunch at the airport with Lauryn, Mark, Mattea, Kayla & Canaan on our way through Toronto. :)

Lauryn, Canaan, Maryn, Dave, Jillaine, Kayla, Beccy, Mattea, Lehman (picture taken by Mark)

All the girls....and Canaan!

Mattea wondered if she could marry Lehman!

 Then on our way home we met up with Grandpa Shantz, Caralyn, Keeley, Tatum and Holden. :)  We missed being able to see Trevor & Teegan. :(

The best layovers a person could possibly want...spending them with family! Swiss Chalet may or may not have helped too!