fun on the farm...

This year our annual Isabella Family Vacation was at Mark's sister's farm instead of the beach.  We have been going on vacation as an extended family for the past 13 years.  You can read a few of our past beach vacation posts here, here, here, here and here.  This year the decision was made to take a break from the beach but still get together.  Mark's sister Melissa and her husband Mike own a 10 acre farm in Michigan and they invited us to all get together at their house.  We visited their farm in 2008 and 2009 and the kids all had a blast (those posts were deleted when I accidentally deleted my original family blog...).

We arrived on Saturday night after 10 hours in our new van and met up with everyone else at a horse show.  Our niece Mia barrel races horses and we were able to see her compete in 5 events.  It was so fun to hang out at the fairgrounds.  The boys loved it.

Their farm has 3 horses, a goat (named Sarah), a donkey (Jack), chickens and roosters.  They also own 4-wheelers which is John's favorite part of the trip.  He loves to ride on them and this year Uncle Mike allowed him to drive the 'yellow' one by himself (after he passed a safety test).  John was so proud of himself and I am so happy with Mike for giving him the encouragement that he did.

Luke's favorite part of the farm is all the barn cats.  Whenever we couldn't find Luke, we would just look in the barn and there he was talking to and playing with the cats.

On Tuesday, we went to their swim club for a few hours.  Instead of belonging to a local pool, they belong to a lake and it is awesome.  Since it was Tuesday, we practically had the lake to ourselves.  The water was so warm and shallow that all the kids could enjoy it.

We also went to a local air field and watched F-16s take off for a training exercise.  Uncle Mike is in the Ohio Air National Guard (I think he is the Commander, but I have a bad habit of promoting people that serve in the service since the ranks don't make sense to me).  Since we weren't on the base, I was able to take pictures.  They were loud and fast and fun to watch.

We also celebrated two birthdays while we were all together.  Mark's dad, Sam, turned 80 and our nephew Mitchell turned 12.  I think it goes without saying that we packed a lot of fun into four days.  But we still had some time for relaxing in the hammock.

We had so much fun on the farm.  Thanks Mike, Melissa, Matthew, Mitchell and Mia!!!