Where have I been?

I realize I haven't blogged for awhile and some of you may be thinking that I dropped off the face of the earth! But never fear, I'm back (at least for today). The last 3 weeks have been incredibly busy and I'm still not completely caught up. I'll do my best to summarize what we've been doing since my last post.

On June 5, Dan's sister (Sara) and her family came down to Rochester for the weekend. It had been about 2 years since we had seen them (I think) as they moved from Rochester to Washington state. They stayed in a local hotel with a small waterpark. We took the kids over there one morning and they all swam and had a blast.

Soccer season has ended so we now don't have practice 4 nights a week and games on Saturdays. However, last week we had VBS at church so that took up every evening and more as I helped with meal prep on 3 of the nights. One night at VBS the snack was Cool Whip with a maraschino cherry on top (and maybe a few other toppings). Darin managed to snag 6+ cherries before someone noticed him taking all the cherries and stopped him. Afterwards he told me with a giggle and impish grin that he just LOVES cherries.

The weekend of the 13th Dan took the kids down to Rock Valley for my cousin's wedding and to visit his grandfather in the nursing home (I was working). While they were at the wedding, Natalie was running outside and pooped in her panties. When Dan discovered this, Natalie said, "Daddy, I pooped in my panties. But it's okay. I saw Mommy pack another pair." Since it was an evening wedding, the kids didn't get to bed on time and generally were not on their best behavior. Dan was quite relieved to be home but was wishing I didn't have to go back to work.

For the last 2 weeks Ellie and Kara have also had swimming lessons so that has put another dent in our daily productivity. But they've been having fun and the both passed!!! Ellie was worried she wouldn't pass since her goggles broke on Tuesday and she was convinced that she couldn't swim as well without them.

Last week I also did a OAMC session. My freezer was basically empty and it was the longest span I had between work days to get something done. It wasn't the greatest time to do it since we had swimming lessons in the morning and VBS in the evenings. But there weren't really any other options especially since our 2 vacations are coming up soon. So I did what I could when I could and stayed up late a few nights. I did get about 55 meals in the freezer, a few batches of scones, some snack mix and a batch of popsicles. I still need to make some mashed potatoes and another batch of popsicles.

Next week Kara will be spending the week with Dan's parents and Ellie will be going to camp so I'll only have the younger 2 at home. I'm hoping to get some serious school planning done since I really want to have it done before we go to Duluth next month and time seems to be running out. I've been working quite a bit more than I normally do so that has put a serious dent in my productive time but is helping to pay for our vacations. Next week (or the week after) I also need to go pick and freeze a bunch of strawberries. With the cool weather and rain that we've had this spring, they aren't quite ready yet which is fine with me since I'm not ready to do anything about them.

We've mostly given up on school until after our vacations are done and we start a new school year. Ellie is doing math almost every day and both girls are doing plenty of reading. We've done English sporadically and really need to finish that soon.

Last week I also took Ellie to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes tennis block party. It was basically a way to introduce kids through adults to tennis. She and I had a blast. A friend of ours from church was in charge of the event and did a great job. She's put several of them on in other areas but this was the first for Rochester (she's lived here only about 1 1/2 years). Ellie has decided that she'd like to pursue tennis and is willing to give up soccer to do so. However, tennis is much more expensive (if we are going to let her take lessons of some sort) so Dan and I need to find out what the options are and decide what we want to do about it.

Another thing that has happened in the past three weeks is that I went away for a girls weekend with my mom, my sister and my sister-in-law. We stayed at a hotel in Bloomington for free (using dad's hotel rewards points--thanks again dad!). On Friday night we had wine, cheese, crackers and bread while we chatted and laughed. Laurie had done some research on cheese/wine pairings and did an excellent job. Everybody's favorite was the Boursin-mmmmmmmmm. On Saturday we ate breakfast at the hotel. I brought a coffeecake and mom had brought a fruit tray so we munched on that before we went to the Landscape Arboretum which was beautiful. I left my camera at home but you can see pics of our weekend here (it starts with pic 29). After we spent the morning at the Arboretum, we dropped mom off at the hotel and the rest of us had lunch and did a little shopping at the MOA. Then we went back to the hotel and basked in the sun for awhile before we headed over the the Gardens of Salonica (a delicious Greek restaurant in Minneapolis). After supper we went to the Lowry theater and watched Mom's the Word. It was hilarious and we laughed almost the whole time. Sunday morning we met Dad, John and Ezra for breakfast at the Louisiana Cafe. Our waiter was quite funny. When we asked him if the coffee was any good, he replied that it was and he would tell us if it wasn't since he used to work at a coffee shop. He also told us he'd tell us "what sucked" on the menu and told us not to order the biscuits and gravy since you could get them so much cheaper at the grocery store. The food was delicious and the portion sizes huge!! We split a few meals since it would have been impossible for each person to eat a whole serving size. After breakfast we parted ways and I came back home.

On a side note, on my way up to the cities for the girls weekend, there was a brief shower of rain. But afterwards I saw the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me or I'd have stopped to take a photo. It was a double full half-circle rainbow and the colors were extremely vibrant. On the primary rainbow you could even discern between the blue, indigo and purple. And it was such a stark contrast to the dark sky that was in the background. It really is too bad that I didn't have my camera.

Well, that's about all the news around here. Till next time. . . .

At least it smells clean

I was greeted by a surprise today when Natalie woke up from her nap. I knew the minute I opened her door that it was bad news. Before she went to sleep, Natalie managed to get the large, mostly full bottle of baby powder from the top drawer of the changing table. She proceeded to spray the room, the floor, the walls and her crib with it. After she emptied the bottle, she did go to sleep. How, I don't know. I am quite certain I couldn't sleep while lying in a pile of baby powder. She'll probably get some nasty lung infection from breathing all the powder while she napped but hopefully not. Unfortunately this had to take place on a day when I'm going on very little sleep since I worked last night.

So I got her up and threw (okay, not literally) her in the tub. She looked like an old lady since her hair was all white. And then I proceeded to clean up the mess. Her crib sheet and pillow had a very thick layer of powder all over it along with the stuffed animals that were in her crib. I shook out the animals and threw the sheet, pillow and blankets in the washer.

Then I took the changing table out of the nursery and started the rest of the clean-up. Unfortunately, the space under Natalie's crib has been sort of a catch-all place for toys. And they were all covered with powder. While cleaning out the area under the crib, I did find at least 7 barrettes. :-)

And on the positive side, at least the nursery smells clean!

Natalie helped rake today

Natalie helped rake the new dirt and compost we put on the garden today. Check it out--I especially love the last pic. :-)

Update

I haven't posted what we've been doing in school for awhile so I figured I better do that before I completely forget. We haven't been doing school very consistently the last couple of weeks due to Memorial Day and my working schedule. Also, Ellie went over to Emily's on Thursday to help with her garage sale. To her credit, she did work ahead on her schoolwork. Next week we won't get as much done since I just got the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in the mail yesterday. I had planned on having them take the Stanford Achievement Test (that is what they had taken at Schaeffer) but discovered that they don't allow you to give it to your own children unless you have at least 2 other children (not related to you) taking it at the same time.

Math: Ellie has finished Saxon 54 and is now working on some Singapore math while she takes a break from Saxon. Kara is almost halfway done with Saxon 2.

English: We've done a few lessons but not as many as planned. We've been doing just bits and pieces of Ellie's since she knows some of it.

History: The girls have been listening to Jim Weiss read their history chapters on CD since our afternoons have been a little busier and I haven't been reading it. They have been hearing about how Hinduism began, about life in India and about the Great Wall of China.

Science: We began studying Jupiter.

Reading: Ellie has been reading Mary Poppins. We started reading Follow My Leader for our read aloud. Darin has done a few lessons in OPGTR and Explode the Code. He gets so excited to "do school." It's quite cute.

Art/Music: Hasn't gotten done except that I got a movie from the library that showed clips of The Magic Flute.

Latin: Ellie finished a review lesson and another lesson. She has 4 more lessons and the final review before she is done with LC1.

Mulch

We had some mulch delivered to our house late last week so that Dan could spread it this past weekend as our flower beds were in serious need of it. So that is what Dan spent the weekend doing while I worked and slept. Here are a couple of pics of the flower beds. The neighbor behind us has a beautifully landscaped yard, but she is retired and spends lots of time working on it. And yes, I know that there are still weeds in my flower beds (it hasn't rained enough or at all so it makes weed pulling difficult and almost pointless) and that I need to edge. Just notice the mulch!!! :-)

New tree and new hair

Dan took Monday off and we went and picked up 2 pear trees--a Lucious and a D'Anjou. They aren't very big right now but they should start bearing fruit in 3-4 years. Since we will most likely be in this house when they start bearing fruit, we figured we might as well go ahead. Someday I'd love to have a yard large enough so that I could have pear, apricot and apple trees. But since right now we've got a very small city lot, we chose pear trees (Dan's favorite fruit which incidentally I didn't know until a few months ago).


By the time we actually got around to planting them, the weather was turning colder and it started to rain. So the rest of us went inside and Dan and Darin planted the trees. Darin reveled in his day with daddy which just reinforced Dan's conviction that he needs to be home more. Dan also took Darin out for breakfast that morning and they ran to Menard's together. It was a great boy bonding day for both of them.


Here are a few pics of them planting:




Yesterday I cut Natalie's hair. It was very sad day. I loved her long hair and the ringlets that she had, but it was such a nightmare to comb her hair everyday and she would just scream because of all of the snarls. So I cut it and said goodbye to her long hair. She's still quite cute.

A delightful weekend

We had a wonderful extended weekend in Duluth and the weather turned out much better than expected. We got to Duluth around 1:30 on Thursday and headed straight for Grandma's as we were very hungry. It was even warm enough to sit on the deck and we got there right when a ship was coming in.
After lunch we picked up a malt and a pizza for supper and headed out to the cabin.

Thursday evening we went for a walk and found this boat. As Dan says, we rented a boat and this was all we could afford:
This is the scene Friday morning:


On Friday we stopped for breakfast at The Vanilla Bean . Their food is wonderful and I had french toast made from bread pudding which was very, very yummy. After breakfast we went hiking. We had planned on stopping at the Superior Hiking Trail office (which is right across the street from The Vanilla Bean) in order to get a brochure on the several loops that are available on the trail. However, we were done with breakfast at 8:15 and the office didn't open till 9:00. Since we knew we'd be hiking most of the day, we didn't want to wait around. So we decided to just drive aways until we saw a Superior Hiking Trail sign and we'd just go from there. We went about 10 miles north of Two Harbors, saw a sign and parked in the parking lot. The sign said that it was 4 miles to Nestor Grade going one direction and 2.7 miles to Encampment Creek the other direction. We figured that we'd do both and that would be about the right amount of hiking for the day. So we started on the hike to Nestor Grade. We didn't really know what Nestor Grade was but figured it would be an okay destination and that we'd just turn around once we came to it. This is Nestor Grade:

Yep, friends, this was the destination of our first hike. Turns out Nestor Grade is the name of an old railroad line. Not only was our destination not all that we had hoped, but this particular section of the trail was particularly marshy.

After we got back to the parking lot, we rested and ate out lunch. We had picked up sandwiches from Amazing Grace and packed them in a cooler.

An aside about buying our sandwiches--Amazing Grace has great sandwiches and they are typically quite large. When we went to get them on Thursday, there was a new kid working there who apparently hadn't had enough training. I always get a hummus sandwich loaded with veggies and this day was no different. I told him I wanted a black bean hummus sandwich so he sliced the bread and put a razor thin amount of hummus on one half. Then he asked if I wanted any hummus on the other half. Um, yeah. Hummus is the main ingredient of the sandwich!!! Normally I have to tell them not to put so much on as they usually really slather it on. So the kid puts a little hummus on the other half of the bread. Then he looks at me and asks me if that was it. It was actually quite comical. I just wanted to laugh but figured he probably wouldn't appreciate that. So I told him that I would also like some veggies on it. It was just a comedy of errors as he forgot to put my cheese on and when he wrapped Dan's sandwich, he laid the saran wrap right in the tomato juices from where someone had been slicing tomatoes. And when I gave him (and another coworker who had to help him with the register) the coupon for 1/2 off one sandwich, they thought that 1/2 of $4.50 was $2.75.

Back to the hiking--after lunch we were tired but decided to hike the other leg of the trail that we had planned since the previous destination was not what we had planned and it was short in comparison. It may have been shorter but it was much hillier (is that even a word?). Here is Encampment River (it's a close-up, not the full view of the river):
It was a better destination than Nestor Grade but I don't think we'll hike this section again either. Next year we'll do some better planning.

Here are some pics of other things we saw on the trail:

Anyone know what this plant is? We found them in several marshy places.
On Saturday we just hung out at the cabin. This is the scene to which we awoke:
It was a gorgeous morning!! The water was calm and the sky was blue. We thought that we were going to have colder weather and many more clouds. Periodically a breeze would blow and it was really cool to watch it move the water and how the sun would reflect on that part. We had a good day reading, napping and setting our goals for the year. As the day progressed, the weather became a bit more unpredictable. It would be blue skies and then a storm cloud would come in, then blue skies and then another storm cloud. Here are two pics of after one of the storm clouds came through:


This was a really cool scene. After the second storm cloud came through, the skies were still pretty dark but this boat came along and the sun seemed to be shining right on it. And it was such a stark contrast since the boat is mostly white. It was really a neat thing to see. The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Sunday morning we again awoke to sunshine but it was much cooler. We packed up, stopped for breakfast at Chester Creek Cafe and drove home.