My Monster and His Big Sister

Monday, August 24, 2009

Jeremy flew to California recently to attend Isaac and Christina's wedding. Christina's maiden name is Elliott, and I really wanted them to get on board with joining us in the hyphenated Elliott club.....their loss.

A few days later the rest of the family flew to lovely Iowa, and spent lots of time hanging out with the kids.

Then we packed up and headed to northern Minnesota to spend time with family up there. We drove as far as Bemidji on Wednesday, and the trip was not so great for Anders. Lot's of fussing, dirty diapers, screaming and very little napping.

After a full day in the car, my cousin Robbie and January decided to take us out to eat. Sounds harmless right...think again. Robbie takes us on a 45 minute drive to get pizza with one little guy that was so sick of the car already. When we finally get there we discover the road is closed to get to the restaurant. They were putting in a new bridge and the only way to get there was to turn around and drive all the way around the lake. Lord have mercy. So what do we do, cross the construction zone with four small children (you can see in the picture that the restaurant is right across from the river). We walked around the crane, over a plywood "dock" and through the ditch. We had a good laugh and gave Robbie a hard time. It was good pizza though.

Here is January with our waitress whose name was January...crazy. I announced like a four year old that my name was Summer, she wasn't that impressed.

The next day we headed to International Falls to stay with my Aunt Darlene and Uncle Babe. The kids had a blast! They live on Rainy Lake so we did some boating, canoeing and LOTS of swimming.

Saturday we went to a magic show. Here is our cousin Maya and Sayla dressed as twins!

Saying goodbye to Rainy Lake. We love going up there and hope Sayla and Anders will also have good memories of there time up north!

Sometimes.....

she likes him!

Monday, July 27, 2009

So lately Jeremy and I have been talking about a new way to get Sayla to sleep at night. Our night time routine is frustrating and draining. It goes something like this.

Sayla goes upstairs, Sayla comes downstairs, Sayla goes upstairs, Sayla comes downstairs. When she does fall asleep, it's usually around 10:00 which is way to late for a three year old. Then about 4 hours later she makes her way down stairs again and ends up sleeping with Mommy in Mommy and Daddy's bed. This morning she burst into our room at around 3:00 a.m. and says "Good morning Mommy!" Don't even get me started on her bad and crazy dreams.

So needless to say, we have to do something different. I just haven't figured out what that is yet.

Here are some park pictures from the other day!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Anders Spits

Anders prefers to feed himself. When I do attempt to feed him, this is what happens.

I'm Trying to Recover

I am sooo tired today! It all started on Saturday when we woke up and headed to another parade. It's the great thing about small town Iowa, there is always a small town celebration going on nearby, and there's always a parade. This parade had the usual fire truck/ ambulance line up, but it also had these geese!

I'm sorry, but this is better than the Shriner's that drove the miniature R.V.'s! This was so cute.

So after the parade that we all enjoyed(including Sayla who usually strongly dislikes parades) I raced off to work for a closing shift. Then I hurried home to pack/wash for our girl trip. Sayla and I took off for the twin cities on Sunday morning for swimming and a trip to Valley Fair!! We loved it. Here are some pictures of the Chutes and Ladders Park in Bloomington and the pool.

Sayla floated around in the pool for a couple hours on Sunday! She didn't hardly said a peep.

Sayla and her cousin Riley heading to the top. This is only part of the park, it just keeps going....so fun.

Here is my nephew Keegan loving the park!

I have to say, it was kind of sad for our trip to be over. But then again I got to come home to this monster!

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Lots of Pictures!

Anders doing his weeding. Seriously, I turned around and the kid was almost under the car.

Sayla took this picture. She loves taking pictures. She got some good ones yesterday of the neighbors car, the flowers, my butt (she thought that was sooo funny).