Marcus and friends - Pheasant Hunt

Ethan Mulder-Austin De Boer-Jacob Faber-Marcus Altena-Austin Van Zee-Patrick Kooima


Marcus and his buddies went pheasant hunting yesterday and had a great hunt - we will be eating good tomorrow for dinner - thanks Marcus!!

Birthday boys and state VB

Mike celebrated his birthday last Thursday and we had small groups for young peoples on Wed. night - so we surprised him with a cake :)

Thur - Sat we went to Cedar Rapids, IA to watch Western Volleyball - I took Jamie and two of her friends and they made these shirts for Brandalyn Van Zee - their favorite player

Marcus and his buddies on Friday after the game

Marcus and Austin Van Zee

Kaylee was in our hotel(Bonnie's grandaughter) Western lost in the semi-finals - had a great year!

Sunday night Marcus' friends came over and celebrated his 17th birthday!!

Had a great time feeding and listening to them hang out - great times!!

Trapping Season is here!!!

Ready to go this morning - Jamie was excited to use her waders for the first time!!!!

Mike picked up Erin and Patrick Kooima also and they checked Patrick's traps as well - fun filled day!

They even enjoyed a packed lunch outdoors - was a very nice day - around 55 degrees and no wind.

Patrick and Marcus showing off their catches!!

Same place - 3 kinds of animals - muskrat, racoons and a mink.

Today they caught 27 animals which is great - looks like Mike is going to have a good week of weather and hopefully of catching many more animals.

Friday Night Football

This is the article that was featured on the news on Tues already - I have a feeling that this game is going to be packed and lots of fun - Neither team has ever advanced to the third round of tournaments and now both are there but only one team can advance to play at the Dome!!


11/03/2009 10:56 PM
HSFB: The Battle For Hull, IA
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In a day and age where co-ops are king, its rare for two teams to call one small town home. But that's the situation in Hull, Iowa for Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley and Western Christian. And when the two sides meet Friday night in the Class 2A quarterfinals, moving on won't be the only thing at stake. Despite cliches like "taking it one game at a time" or "it's just another game," not even the coaches can deny Friday's matchup between Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley and Western Christian is a little different. "It's a unique dynamic," said Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley coach Cory Brandt. "A lot of times, to go to the UNI Dome, you're playing somebody you don't know. But in this game, we're going to play somebody we're extremely familiar with and the people know everyone in town. It will be a lot of fun." The Nighthawks and Wolfpack are a combined record of 21-1 this season. That one defeat came when the two teams played each other in October, a game Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley won 31-21. "The first game we played, I'm pretty sure there was no one left in the town," said Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley quarterback Josh Vander Maten. "Everyone was at the game, it was filled up, everyone was supporting their team."So is it going to be like that on Friday?"Oh, I'm sure," Vander Maten said. "Plus some other towns.""It'll be a town divided, there's no doubt about it," Brandt said. "There's a pretty sharp divide between those for Western and those for us, but that's the excitement in it."Western Christian has been designated as the "official" home team for Friday. Is that a home field advantage?It depends on who you ask. "It's kind of nice for us, we get to be in the home stands and stand on the home side," said Western Christian head coach Travis Kooima. "It's a little bit of an advantage, but not much though.""That's our home field too," Brandt said. "We still consider that our home place, there's no doubt about it. But yeah, they're designated home, they'll wear that jersey, we'll stand on the other side, but it's still a home field for us." And while neither team wants to lose the intra-city battle, the fact that there is a battle is a testament to the town. "I think we have a lot of pride in that, having so many athletes from such a little area," said Western Christian running back Theo Bartman. "We're going at each other to go to the Dome, it should be really exciting and fun." Friday's battle will also pit student against teacher. Kooima is a former player for the Nighthawks and coach Cory Brandt. The two will come head-to-head at 7 PM Friday night.

GO WOLFPACK!!!!!

Monday evening at 7pm - the Western Christian Wolfpack football team is taking on Eagle Grove in the second play-off game post-season - YEAH!!!! Both teams have a record of 9-1 - we have to travel to them which is 3 hours away - I think its north of Des Moines, I know that it is past Fort Dodge a ways. We are taking Jamie out of school at 2pm and leaving around 2:30 - we hope to be back by 1am and we really hope we come back with the win!! But they are already winners in our eyes - fun times. Marcus gets to leave Western at 1pm on a chartered bus with the football team - stop on the way at Subway and on the way home they get Papa Johns pizzas - a large pizza per 3 football guys - it will be a great, fun day for the guys. GO PACK!!

Pollema pictures!

Dad and the boys - I had this in order - accidentally deleted it - so now it's first

Here are the pictures we took one Sunday afternoon for my mother - this of course is my favorite!! Love it and the two awesome kids in it!!

Mom and Dad and all the grandkids and one great-grandkid

Mom, Dad, and the 5 children with their spouses

Mom's favorite picture

Mom and her girls

5 kids

Bonnie and her family

Bonnie's oldest and her family

Belinda and her fam :)

Our children

Barry and his family

Brad and his family

Becky and her family

The whole works! Was quite a bunch to get together but all worked out great - Fun pictures to have - in all we took over 400 pictures that day - she just snapped, snapped, snapped!!

Pre AR Trip - AR Trip - Post AR Trip

Mike has his annual gourd harvesting party on Thursday - before we left for Arkansas.

These are Karson and Aubrey Vander Ziel (Sue Leloux's grandchildren)

Aubrey, Karson, Jaycie Van Zee is in back, Mike and Sawyer - they were all excited Mike let them all take a bag home! Jamie helped too but she took this picture - I was at school for my last pie making day - Jamie is 8th grader and have lots of last time things that I need to help with this year - YEAH!!

On Saturday - the 10th we made our way to Arkansas and met Pugsley for the first time - he did not like us very well at first and jumped on either mom or dad's laps fast when we showed up.

Sunday afternoon we hiked at Roaring River - this is from the top of the falls there - it's quite pretty there at this time of the year.

I tried - not very good at the self-protrait pictures but you can see a bit of the trout farm in the background.

We did enjoy watching the deer each morning at the feeder - if you look really close their are two more in front of the big tree - they are watching the dogs coming up and yes they ran away right after this picture.

We ate supper at Famous Daves on Monday night - with everyone - I ate way too much but it was very good - I took this opportunity to take a picture with my sister-in-laws - love them both dearly - was great to be all together.

The Altena family - Love this picture too - the pig in the background with his arms open wide is such a nice touch :)

After supper on Monday - we all went back to mom and dads and Pugsley was way excited that night - he didn't know quite how to act with so many people around - Mom is trying to get him to settle down here!!

Tuesday was 4-wheeling day - what fun - Mike and I ready to go!! Make sure you take note of my nice riding gloves :)

Rich and Cindy ready to go - now note Rich's gloves - he couldn't find his and had to settle for these gorgeous orange ones - half way through the day - he asks me where I got my gloves and I said these are the ones Cindy gave me to wear - well they were Rich's gloves (I didn't know) we laughed about that - but he was just glad that he didn't lose them!

We went through alot of water that day - and made is through them all - fun - you can see my boots on both sides of the 4 wheeler - I was holding them straight out.

This is how Rich goes through the puddles after he sees how deep they are.

For this steep decline Cindy and I choose to walk down and wait to be picked up again at bottom.

Mike was leaning way back on the way down.

Well they needed to get back up and Rich didn't quite make it and got stuck here on a tree trunk. The rocks were way slippery from all the rain.

We had to get out the wrench to help pull him out of this one but all worked out well and we found another way to get the second 4 wheeler up.

Here we are under a tree on the way back - was truly a super fun day and something we don't get to do around here. Thanks Rich and Cindy.

Thanks to everyone in Arkansas we had a blast and was a super fun get-away. Thanks mom and dad for feeding us too all the time - we just finished off the party mix last night.

Well, we got back home in time for FOOTBALL FRIDAY and here we are bundling up the night - boots, rain gear, hats, mittens, winter coats and all - even hand warmers.

Western Wolfpack beat Sioux Center 27 to 0 - one more regular season game on the 23rd and playoffs start on Wed, the 28th - GO PACK