30 July 2010

1. We survived our return from up north last Friday. When we were in St. Cloud, I called Kasey to tell her that while the kids seemed hell-bent on making the ride home take as long as humanly possible, we'd be home in a couple of hours. As soon as the kids heard me talking to her they freaked out and wanted to talk to her. It was like it had been years since they'd seen her.

Kas pretty much spoiled us while we were gone. She mowed the lawn, took out the garbage on garbage day, and even scrubbed my kitchen floor. We even came home to this on our garage door:

As lucky as we were, I think the one who really lucked out was Wriggs. She pretty much spoiled him the entire time we were gone. She even texted us this pic with the subject entitled "livin' the dream"...

...that's him LAYING ON HER BED. That is a no-no in our house, but I doubt it took much convincing to get him up there. It's a bit blurry because she snapped it with her phone. She couldn't actually get his head because it was laying on her body! Spoiled much? He even went to BL Days and a softball game with her. Poor Wrigley hasn't gotten this much attention since our kids were born!

2. I was scared to report this last week as a favorite part of my vacation because I wasn't sure it was going to stick, but it is now confirmed official. Beckett is POTTY TRAINED! Woop woop!

He insisted one day that he was done with diapers. I know, you're saying "he's almost three, it's about time." If you know my history with the other two they were both exactly three years and three months when they finally decided they wanted to listen to my plea, so I was expecting this to happen around Christmas. I feel like we just got a raise! I've been buying and changing diapers for the past 6 1/2 years straight {with two periods where I had two in diapers at the same time}. HA. LE. LUJAH. His favorite part of the day now involves picking out a pair of undies {most likely monkeys if they are clean} or his other favorite: "boxew bweefs". CA-UUUUTE!

3. On Wednesday Tate had his last games of the Nearball season. {Nearball is baseball, except the coaches pitch to the kids}. The season was full of laughs. Tate improved a ton...his personality is still more of a bird watcher during the games than a player, but that will all come.

He loved playing with one of his BFFs, Braxton.

Eric coached his team this year as well. He had such a great time with the kids and Tate sure loved that he did it. Here he is showing Tate how to lead off during the last game...

It didn't hurt that E's BFF Gary {AKA Braxton's dad} was another coach, too!



Great season, Bluejays!! You sure were fun to watch!

4. Kasey works a lot of overnights at Canterbury, which means she needs a few naps to get her though the day. This works out fabulously for Beckett, who would love nothing more than for Kasey to be his permanent personal nap buddy. This is not an uncommon sight on any given day in our house this summer...

5. Tate and I went on our Back To School date this week. My mom used to take each of us girls on "dates" when we were little...just a day out alone with Mom and I LOVED them. I have done this a few times with each of the kids and they seem to love it as much as I did.

Tate and I went to "Ramona and Beezus" {which I highly recommend}, shopped for school clothes, ate Panera in the car during a rain storm, and got all of his school supplies. I have decided I am going to try to always take each kid alone school shopping. It is so much less stressful and it is so nice to enjoy your kids one on one once in a while!

23 July 2010

The Friday Five...Vacation Edition!

We are probably on our way home as you read this after a week on Lake Ossawinamakee near Brainerd where we rented a cabin. The cabin was perfect and while the swimming right at the cabin was pretty weedy and mucky, the lake was beautiful and there were plenty of places to pull up and swim or just jump in the middle of the lake.

It was a relaxing and fun filled week and will be hard to narrow down into just 5 things. So I will try to keep the words short and just stick in a bunch of pictures. Here goes...my favorite 5 things this week...

1. Grandparents

We were fortunate to have my parents go up with us on Thursday and stay until Monday when E's parents came to stay until we went home today. I hope that some day our kids realize how lucky they are to have the grandparents they do. They are beyond awesome.

2. Water Sports

Anytime we get to go on the boat is a good time for us, but using it every day of the week is heavenly! E made his goal of skiing all seven days in a row. I did ski too, but we don't need to grace this blog with any pics of that. I definitely got an upper body workout tubing with the kids and trying to keep them all on the tube...they are beginning to enjoy a wild ride and it takes all I've got to keep them all on! They are getting so brave! Both Aves and Beckett used the ski trainer for the first time this year and with some encouragement and modeling from their big bro even can wave, do "muscles", and make faces for the camera. Tate tried skiing on real skis a couple times...it was pretty hard without skis that were tied together and we didn't want to scare him from doing it, so we decided to wait until next summer. We hope to have them all skiing soon!

3. Fishing

There was a fishing trip every morning after breakfast {there are not many actual pictures of the fishing trips because I stayed home to run while the kids were out with Dad and the grandpas}. Tate is quite the avid fisherman and would pretty much do that the entire week with no rest. Tate graduated midweek to a junior rod and Beckett got his own Batman fishing pole towards the end of the week and is very happy to not be using an extra pink princess pole anymore!

4. Other Brainerd-y things

Nisswa Turtle Races

Lots of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox...the kids can now pick them out from miles away...literally {because they're that big!}



Pirate's Cove for our first ever round of family mini golfing

The golfing was pretty funny...the two bigger kids did pretty well. Beckett did it the way he was supposed to for two holes, then would just tee off, run to his ball, pick it up, set it down two inches from the hole, putt it in, and scream as though he got a hole in one. Hilarious.

5. Slowing down enough to really enjoy the kids at these ages

I have absolutely loved this summer of 2, 4, and 6. It is a huge difference from last year of 1, 3, and 5 when every outing I had three kids running in three different directions. They are all so funny, kind, charming, and challenging in their own little ways.

So that's it...my fave five from the week. These actually are only a FEW of the pics I edited last night. They actually look better in color and if you want to view the whole album you can find it here!

Hard to believe its over again. Did we want to come home?

Heck no!

I just have to give out a shout out to E, who gave me a big ole' push to go up north this year. I wanted to work on saving our money for our two trips next spring/summer, but he reminded me how much we need this.

Now, onto the laundry!

16 July 2010

1. Last weekend was Corn Chaff Days in Hector. Kasey and I brought the kids to the farm on Friday and E joined us on Saturday. The kids were the perfect age for the parade and loved every minute of it! Tate was the winner of the collecting the most candy. I think he got as much as all the other kids combined...not that it mattered because we threw it all away the next day...after the dentist entry a couple weeks ago I am guessing no explanation is needed.

Here is our entire group, plus a few other parade viewers...my dad is missing because he is busy with Lion's all day.

2. Sunday morning Eric was installed as a Council member at church. He is the Outreach Commissioner this year and could use some prayers to help steer our church in the right direction. There are so many wonderful people there...including a bunch of them standing in this picture...but we need great leaders to lead us to our full potential.

Sorry for the poor quality pic...it is hard to get the lighting right in church and I didn't want to make a big scene so I only snapped two and this is actually the BETTER of the two!

On a side note, one of Eric's fellow council members is Gary, the Commissioner of the Education committee I'm on, and has my kids and I addicted to this song. It plays in our car at least 4 or 5 times before the kids let me listen to something else.

3. Since we had the camera on Sunday so I could snap the previous horrible pic, we thought it would be appropriate to take a pic outside of Panera, which we frequent after church almost every Sunday. This tradition started when Tate was a baby. E would always be running off to an open house or off with clients, so we would quick eat as a family and go our separate ways. It stuck and now our kids wonder what's wrong if we don't go there after church!

E snapped this pic which I thought was cute because it shows how excited and happy they are every week when we are there.

Then I wanted to be out of the picture so I snapped this one, which I think is hilarious because they insist on posing for every picture. Its not like I make them take a lot of pictures {dripping with sarcasm here} so I don't know where they get it from. I blame my own mother who passed the camera always in your face gene onto me. =)

4. I have never been to Europe or used a bidet, but I have a feeling I now know what it feels like. If anyone would like to drive to Shakopee and borrow my two year old, you could go and try to use the family bathroom at Kohl's, try to hover, and then have him continue to insist on flushing the most powerful toilet known to man. It was a nice experience for a Monday...just sayin'.

5. Monday and Tuesday were just too beautiful not to be on the water. I should have really been getting ready for our upcoming vacation, but summer is too short to waste with laundry and cleaning!

Monday afternoon Kas and I took the kids to the beach. It was the PERFECT temperature and sunlight.

Then on Tuesday we spent another fun day at CJ's brother's pool and this time I actually remembered the camera. Kasey, Leah and Wyatt joined us, which made for even more of a party!

Thanks for the fun water days, girlies!

9 July 2010

1. My kids love each other. They are the best of friends...but then 10 seconds later, the rivalry gets to them. This is especially bad between Aves and either of the boys. So last week, when T re-learned to ride his bike and was rewarded with a Razor scooter, Aves was less than happy. On Saturday, she woke up and said, "Mom and Dad, we're going to take my training wheels off today." If you know Avery personally, you can hear the matter of fact you're going to do it whether you think its a good idea or not kind of voice. So while I took the kids to get haircuts, E took the wheels off the bike. When I got home Ave immediately needed to jump on to try. I held on for a nanosecond and she was off. No looking back now.

Needless to say we made a run to get a pink Razor that day, too. =)

2. We decided to boycott the boat on Saturday and Sunday since it was going to be so busy for the Fourth. On Saturday Eric's mom and dad came over instead. We had a nice afternoon of talking and some grilling. The kids were nicely playing as we were sitting in the driveway just chatting and watching them. All of a sudden Beckett disappeared around the side of the house...seconds later I heard water. I started to go to see what was going on and was met with a stream of water spraying from the hose and quite the devious face...

3. Again, deciding to avoid the boat on the fourth, we decided to take the kids to the Twins game. It was Beckett's first game ever, and overall they did really well...it was hot but we managed to last through the 7th inning.

4. Monday we were hoping everyone would be back at work and took the boat out on Prior Lake. Kasey and Eric joined us.

Long story short, we got caught on the lake in a unexpected downpour for about an hour. The above pic was one of the only ones I snapped before it started sprinkling. The next pic I got was this one...I was huddled under the windsheild with Beckett and the only person I could really get a picture of was Eric...can you tell how hard it is raining? I don't think the picture really does it justice.

All we could do was keep bursting out laughing. We were definitely not the only ones that got caught out there. Kas and Eric went home in their car and brought the van back to rescue the kids while E and I waited in the rain to pull the boat out. We had to wring a few things {meaning everything} out before we could take it home.

We will laugh about this day for a long time.

5. The kids and I got to spend time with two of my college BFs this week. Tuesday we spent four hours swimming with CJ and Paige at CJ's brother's pool. I forgot my camera...drat. We are planning on repeating next week because we had so much fun, so I will have to get some pics that day.

Then yesterday we took Leah and Wyatt to our favorite fountain park. The kids love it there and apparently even water-hating Wyatt loved it!

Until next week, my friends...peace out.