A Weekend at the Lake

I have some awesome friends who allowed me to borrow their lake home for a little family vacation while they were away. They were also lovely enough to let me invite some guests. My identical cousin, Brenda, and her family came. Her kids are very close in age to my kids so they took to each other right away and became fast friends. We had a blast catching up along with my cousin Carl and his girlfriend and our other cousin, Nick. My brother and his family came too.
The weather was cool, but it only rained at night and gave the kids a lot of time for fishing.
And time for hanging out.
Look at these identical cousins. They look so much like Brenda and I did at this age!
This is pretty much what we did. Hung out on the dock. Fishing, talking, swimming, eating...
All of the kids tried out kayaking. By the end of the weekend they were getting around pretty good.
Carl and Nick fished a lot and caught nothing.
So Sadie had to show them how it's done.


We hope we get to do this again next year. It was so relaxing and fun. Family time just can't be beat.

Norway Beach

We went on our first camping trip of the year this weekend to Norway Beach on Cass Lake inside the Chippewa National Forest. It is a great campground with campsites tucked into the woods right along the beach so the kids only had to walk 20 steps to get to the sand! The water is still pretty cold, but they splashed around anyways.

We chose Norway Beach because it is only 5 minutes from where Dennis works and he was on call this weekend. We had to be close just in case Dennis had to go into work and it was perfect.

They also have nice paved bike trails. This is a new family moment: riding bikes together!! We didn't have to pull a kid, instead we had to keep up. What a fun and awesome change.

All weekend Sadie kept saying, "Mom, I just LOVE camping." And she does. I hope she loves it for life!!

A Heavy Heart

Our old stomping grounds in Arizona, The White Mountains, are on fire because of one careless camper. The winds are blowing and currently 389,000 acres have burned. Currently only 5% of the fire is contained and prisitine forest is being lost. Small towns in the area have been evacuated. This is called "The Wallow" fire because it is burning up an area called "Bear Wallow". Please pray for the winds to stop blowing, for the fire to be contained, for the firefighters fighting the fires and for the people who have been evacuated and for those who have lost their homes. I'm so sad, this area just won't be the same.

Here are some pictures of Dennis and me near where the fire is burning.
This is Mt. Escudillo, the third highest point in AZ.

These next three pictures were all taken in Bear Wallow. This first one is "our tree". Note: we did not carve our initials into the tree. Some other couple just happens to have the same initials. And this tree is miles off the beaten path, how crazy that Dennis spotted it.

A little winter wonderland action:

The edge of the Mogollon Rim looking down into the valley below:

School's Out For Summer!

Eli said farewell to his 19 K-1 pals yesterday. They were such a good group of kids, I just can't say enough good things about them or about Mrs. Vaughn, their teacher. Or about K-1 in general, it's been such an awesome, growing year for Eli and I'm so happy that we chose not to do kindergarten and to wait a year. However, I'm sad to say that he didn't get into the charter school we were hoping to send him to, Schoolcraft. Instead, he'll be heading to The Paul Bunyan Kindergarten Center.

The kids had two field trips the last couple of weeks of school. They walked to the local park for one and took the bus to the state park for the other. Luckily, we had great weather for both days.

Eli's best buds: Will, Eli, Ryan and Caleb

I can't believe the kids were playing in the water. It was 80 degrees or so out (which, btw, is super-hot for Northern Minnesota), but that water was icy cold!!

Now it's time for t-ball, camping, going to the beach and having fun in the sun!!!

Happy 65th Birthday Grandpa!!

On June 5, my dad and his twin brother, Ron, celebrated their 65th birthday. My aunt and uncle, Dad and Ron's siblings, hosted a birthday party in the twin's honor.

You are probably wondering why in the world these 65 year old men are wearing these silly hats. BTW, my dad is on the left and Ron is on the right.

The reason is this picture which was taken in Glendive, Montana when the twins were 2. So, they had matching hats and shirts and my aunt Colleen made cherry chip cakes just like grandma used to.
They were good sports and reenacted the event.

The grandkids helped blow out the candles!

The siblings: David, Don, Ron and Kathy. My uncle George couldn't make it and my uncle Jim passed away 10 years ago.

We had such a fun time. I'm so glad my aunt and uncle pulled this together so we could help celebrate. It was great seeing aunts, uncles, cousins and their kids.

Sadie's New Room

After what seems like forever (ok, only May) and a long list of "to dos", I'm happy to say that "Operation: move Sadie" is complete. You can see that there is still some pictures to find and hang and a night stand and book shelf need to be found, but you can get the gist. We painted it a lovely "Hawaiian Sky" and Sadie is happy with it even though she wanted pink. (Not that I had a problem with pink, I just figured she might grow out of pink in a year or two!) Because we only have 3 bedrooms, Sadie's room will double as the guest room so she needed a queen bed which takes up most of her small space.


I found this cute little vanity and chair at an antique store called "the Barn Chicks". Once I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for Sadie and it is!
Dennis and I moved onto the main floor into what was the guest room/sewing room. Eli is still in the same room, though I suspect they'll still be sharing space for awhile.

Emily's Graduation

This weekend our lovely niece, Emily, graduated from Bismarck High School. Emily, is the sweetest, goofiest girl around. She's heading to Black Hills State in Spearfish, SD to study Mass Comm. and photography, which is her passion. However, my prediction is that she becomes a teacher, because, well, she's just so good working with little kids that I can't imagine her doing anything else.

Of course I hardly got any pictures of the graduate, but I managed to take pictures so let's just be happy about that!

I think this is a miraculous picture because Sadie is posing with two people who really dislike having their picture taken: her Cousin Elizabeth and her Aunt Paula.

Gabe and Eli (with Grace in the background)Grandpa with Jake:

This is Jack, not to be confused with Jake, but we do it all the time anyways. Actually, we don't confuse them we know who is who, but we just call out the wrong name...

Sadie's Last Day of School

I realized this week that I hadn't posted any pictures of Sadie at her pre-school. Like Eli, she attended Enchanted Garden, a Waldorf inspired school at Frances' house. She very much so loved going to Frances' and it is a wonderful place for kids to grow and explore our world in a natural and peaceful setting. At Frances', Sadie :
Plays musical insturments, like drums, sticks, bells, violins, harps and cellos.

Made soup each week as well as pizza, bread, hot cross buns, muffins, and porridge.

Had many tea parties,


Did numerous crafty things like sewing and finger knitting,
and candle making.


They (Aaron, Elizabeth, Leanna, Luis, and Sadie) planted flowers,

played outside everyday (even when it was 10 and 15 below!),
Celebrated holidays, the seasons and the passing of time,

She colored and painted and designed silk scarves.
They played with scarves with so many ways, here they used them for blankies, but they dance with them, and hop on them and use them for wings and do all sorts of imaginative things with them. Scarves are more awesome than I thought.
What a wonderful year!!

Art Show and the Ry-Guy

Eli's school had an art show/bookfair/claymation/math and reading night. It was a fun family night. Eli's class made zoo pictures from wooden icecream spoons. There's a giraffe, bird and some other animals that I can't remember!Eli and his BFF, Ryan, aka "Ry-Guy" have to do everything the same. They call each other in the morning to see what each other is wearing to school. They check out the same books from the library. They're pretty cute together. Ryan also has a sister, Abby, who is a year younger than Sadie so playing works out great! They also happen to live very close to us and Ryan will be at the Kindergarten center with Eli next year and both families have requested the same teacher. So, we're hoping they're together next year too. (They're wearing the same outfit because they just finished soccer.)