A Vote to Outlaw Holiday Weekends

Remember how our Mother's Day Weekend was, well, a little on the chaotic/disastrous side? Despite my comment about not having to worry about doing much to make sure Darrell had a better Father's Day, I'm actually saddened to say that I'm pretty sure my mother's day topped Darrell's father's day. If I try really, really, hard, I think I can come up with three highlights from the weekend:

1. Darrell got to go golfing on Sunday. Only nine holes, but that was probably okay because he re-opened his wound from his fun little knife incident (after getting the stitches out Friday, no less). Nothing major, just prolonging the healing (and pain) a little bit.
2. Despite throwing up a handful of times (and all but one of those times in his bedroom), Garrett managed to miss the rug in his room every time. Which we were very grateful for--cleaning his sheets, bamboo floors, and even the recliner was a lot easier than trying to figure out how we would clean his (mostly white) rug.
3. Even though William has been in underwear for less than a month, he had absolutely zero accidents all weekend (since Thursday, actually)--especially impressive since he had some pretty constant diarrhea (TMI? Sorry. But it's been the story of my life all weekend for both boys--we just didn't have to worry as much about Garrett since he was wearing diapers, although he did leak out a few times).

How's that for highlights of our weekend? For the worried grandparents out there, we took the boys to the doctor today, and as long as things get, ahem, "plugged up" in the next five to seven days (and they stay well hydrated during that time), they'll be just fine. Just a stomach bug (although he used a much fancier word)--which I should mention Darrell had as well. Only because it was truly the icing on the cake for his father's day. Maybe things will improve for his birthday later this week--although I'm not going to jinx myself and say that things certainly can't be worse than they were for Father's Day!

Memorial Day Fun

Guess what? I actually have quite a few pictures to share from the weekend (although let's be serious--I stole most of them from my friends off Facebook)! So rather than bore you with my mindless babble, I'm just going to let the pictures do the talking.

Loaded up the car Friday afternoon to head up to the Cities for a reunion with a bunch of my high school friends. This was the trunk before the cooler and pillows got added. Van shopping is definitely going to begin soon!

These boys were troopers in the car. Thank goodness for libraries and bags of "new" books to help keep them entertained!

What do you do when you are staying with parents of a friend who don't have any grandkids yet? Bring your own (borrowed) train set to help keep you kids entertained!

Our whole group of girls (including the one absent member Facetiming with us on my cell phone). We've been friends since at least high school, in some cases as early as elementary school

All of the spouses and kids that are now part of our group!

Saturday night the menfolk were nice enough to give the ladies a night out, which included a delicious dinner, tasty gelato, and a nice stroll in downtown Minneapolis

Sunday it was time for a barbeque. The middle picture is five of the six kids that were born in 2015, with birthdays ranging from February to December.

The unexpected "fun" of the weekend was leaving Minneapolis at 9:00 Sunday night so we could drive back to Sioux Falls in time for Darrell's parade Monday morning. Let's just say it was a miscommunication that was 100% Darrell's fault, but thanks to plenty of caffeine it all worked out fine

Silver lining of our little miscommunication was that we got to spend more time at the lake than we had initially planned on. The boys were definitely happy about that.

Someone even got to drive the boat!



I still get exhausted just thinking about the weekend, but it was so, so, so wonderful. I'm tempted to say that I wish every weekend could be like the one we just had, but I don't think my body could handle that much excitement and busyness (and the amount of caffeine necessary to keep up with everything!) that frequently. They sure are nice once in a while though!

It Might Have Been Mother's Day Weekend If...

You decided it was a terrible good idea to run a 5k

You spent the majority of the day on Saturday playing tag-team parenting with your husband because you both had multiple places to be.

You spent Saturday night baking your own Mother's Day desserts

Your one-year-old was sick and absolutely refused to sleep for longer than two hours at a time

Your children You got chocolate chip pancakes with sprinkles for breakfast

Your three-year-old refused to take a nap

Your husband decided to give you a break and take the boys for a bike ride

You had carry-out Olive Garden for dinner with your whole fan damily--but had to spend the majority of the evening wrangling two uncooperative boys

Your boys went to bed over an hour past their bedtimes and even though you just wanted to crash yourself you had fun stuff like menu planning to do



Sounds awesome, right? It really wasn't quite as bad as I'm making it sound (although if I'm being honest it definitely could have been a lot better). We finished the 5k just under our goal (30 minutes), so I suppose that could be considered a success. I willingly made the desserts (and got to try out two new recipes!), so I was actually pretty happy about that part (minus the whole miscalculating an ingredient and having to send Darrell to the store at the last minute). Darrell was super helpful getting up in the middle of the night with Garrett all weekend, so at least we were both feeling a lot little sleep deprived. And really, he was super helpful about everything with the boys all weekend--even though they were so out of sorts that it was pretty much impossible for one person to wrangle them, he did everything he could and even did things like make sure I at least got to eat my dinner while it was warm (which I'm sure was not the case with his dinner by the time he got back to the table).
The good news is that they both seem to be in much better moods, which I suppose I would prefer anyway since I don't have Darrell home to help me. And hey--at least I don't have to worry about doing anything too extravagant for Father's Day to top my Mother's Day!

Weekending, Birthday Party Style

If it hadn't been for the fact that we celebrated a special boy's third birthday this weekend, I would have a very boring weekend to report. Friday and Saturday were pretty run-of-the-mill, with the small exception that I spent any and all free time I had working on William's cake for his party. Sunday Darrell started the day with pancakes, and we let the birthday boy put some sprinkles in his to make them extra special. Our birthday boy then decided that he didn't need to take a nap after church (despite the fact that he was acting exhausted at church and threw two pretty substantial tantrums before lunch), so we made it over to my parent's house a little early for the party. It was a little hard to explain to him that he had to wait for everyone else to get there before he could open gifts, but thankfully it was nothing that a little Thomas the Train distraction couldn't solve. Once the whole family arrived (no big celebration this year; just my family) we broke out the cake and presents. And let me tell you, William was pretty thrilled to see this in front of him:

It was definitely a labor of love, but I am so glad I did it and am pretty proud of how it turned out. Gift opening was a bit of a slow process because he wanted to play with every toy he opened instead of opening more gifts--but I suppose there are worse problems to have. We then stayed at my parent's house to eat; my sister and her husband were providing dinner because they came in third in our little March Madness bet. Darrell, myself, and William took second (so we had to provide drinks), although the results from this year will forever have a little asterisk by it. You see, Darrell and I have won the past two years, so we decided this year that William's bracket would count toward our family average. Well, as it turns out, Darrell and I would have won if it hadn't been for William's bracket (although the boy deserves some credit--he really didn't drag us down that much and he actually beat my mom. Not bad for a kid who knows nothing about basketball and picked teams solely based on images of the school's logo). So Mike and Macy got to enjoy a victory, even though Darrell and I had brackets that were better than both of theirs. We'll see if we are feeling generous enough next year to let the brackets the boys fill out count toward our team average or not... I'll probably wait to decide that until after they've filled their brackets out ;-)  We put the boys to sleep there so we could stay up and play cards--which resulted in us staying up way later than we probably needed too--but it was a lot of fun and definitely something we don't do often enough any more.

I promise that an updated William post is coming soon--Darrell and I are seriously blown away when we think of how much he has changed in the past year and even though I know I'll never be able to do him justice in a blog post I'm sure going to try!

Weekend Review, Easter Style

Hope you all had a blessed Easter weekend! Ours was nothing if not busy--but we did our best to enjoy every minute of it!

Even though Darrell works for a Catholic hospital system, they don't get any time off on Good Friday (boo!) and since the Good Friday service at our church is too late to take the boys too (double boo!), Friday night was basically just a normal weeknight in this house. Saturday was when the fun started, though. After swim lessons, Darrell took the boys to my parent's house so he and I could have our first (but certainly not last) Date Day. Well, technically, first I went shopping with my sister-in-law for a few hours while Darrell got a few chores done around the house, but then Date Day started! Even though Mother Nature decided to dump snow on us (again!), Darrell and I jumped in the car and headed out for lunch followed by a handful of errands--the liquor store, Menards, Kohls, Target, and the grocery store. Nothing glamorous in the least (welcome to life as a parent!), but it was so.nice. to just go out and run errands without worrying about getting the boys in and out of the car seats (especially in the snow!), without worrying about nap schedules, without worrying about having snacks, without worrying about potential meltdowns, without really worrying about anything at all. We even got done a full hour before we had to go pick the boys up, so we relaxed on the couch with some Netflix and then I got dinner started while Darrell braved the snowy/slushy roads to get the boys. The rest of the night was pretty low-key: dinner, baths, bedtime (for the littles), food prep for Easter, a little more Netflix (we are this.close to finishing "How I Met Your Mother"), and then bedtime for us.

Easter Sunday started with breakfast at church (of course, the boys had round one of breakfast at the house because naturally they were up early and NEEDED to eat as soon as they woke up), followed by church and then lunch with my parents, siblings, and their spouses. The adults attempted to play a few hands of cards while the boys napped, but William decided he only needed a 45-minute nap (probably because Grandpa promised to watch Thomas with him after his nap), so we didn't get much card-playing done. Instead, we sat around and socialized while the boys ran around and kept us entertained. Oh, and the Easter bunny paid a visit to my parent's house, and my boys' reactions to their baskets is so fitting of their personalities. When William found his basket, he immediately grabbed the Thomas the Train toy out of it and left the rest of the basket in its hiding spot. Garrett, however, immediately grabbed one of the food pouches out of his basket and pretty much ignored the toy (and everything else in the basket). And of course, we attempted to take a nice family picture, but, well, things don't always work out the way you plan with two young boys.

At least William is smiling even if his eyes are closed, right? Sigh.

 And even though this next picture is from today, the ordeal that is being documented started on Easter Sunday, so I figured I'd go ahead and share it anyway.

Highlight of the morning for William and Garrett? Watching my car being towed. Lowlight of the weekend for Darrell and me? Discovering Easter morning that my car won't start (after we've already buckled both boys into their car seats). No word yet on what the problem is, but since we were already planning to get a van sometime this calendar year, if it isn't a fairly quick (and cheap) fix, we probably won't bother repairing it. Not sure what that means the interim will look like, though, since we haven't exactly started shopping for vans and I'm not very confident driving Darrell's stick shift... But I guess we'll cross that bridge when/if we get to it!

Halloween 2015

Happy November! Hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Halloween. I can't believe we're in the homestretch to the end of the year--between Thanksgiving and Christmas the last two months always fly by--but thankfully the weather around here hasn't quite gotten the winter memo yet. Not only was I able to take the boys out for a walk (without blankets, hats, mittens, and coats), but after we got home William and I played with some bubbles outside for at least half an hour while Garrett was napping. And I even had to take my jacket off because I was getting too warm. It was wonderful.

And thankfully, we had the same nice weather over the weekend for Halloween. Granted, the costumes for the boys were probably better suited for cold weather (just playing the odds!), but there was just enough of a breeze that I wasn't terribly worried about them getting too hot. Instead of "traditional" trick-or-treating this year, our church hosted a "Trunk-or-Treat" event that we attended--as well as decorated our car for! It was a little last minute because these past few weeks have been crazy with sleep deprivation, sickness, and busy schedules, but I think it came together pretty well. I wish I would have been able to throw coordinating costumes together for Darrell and me, but oh well. Such is life. At least I remembered to take some pictures!

Our Zoo/Jungle-themed car

Close up of our fierce little lion. He was probably the hit of the event; it was pretty fun to see people's reactions when they realized we had an actual baby in our trunk

Our little monkey collecting his goodies with Grandma and Grandpa

It didn't take him long to figure out that people would put candy in his bag if he walked up to them with it. The whole saying "Trick or Treat" and "Thank You" was a little bit more challenging of a concept

Hanging out with his buddy the Minion!

And this last picture isn't technically from Halloween; we had a little photo shoot with the boys in their costumes a few weeks prior so we could put together some cards to send to the grandparents and great-grandparents, but I love this picture too much not to share it here!

Labor Day Camping 2015

For years, Darrell and I have been carrying on his family tradition of going camping Labor Day Weekend. We had to take last year off due to back-to-back weddings (Happy Anniversary Mike and Macy and Linda and Paul!), but we were ready to jump right back in the saddle this year, kids and all. But let me tell you something. Camping (in a tent, no less) with a 6-month old and a toddler is no walk in the park. In fact, here is a list of things it is NOT:

1. Relaxing
2. Calm
3. Easy
4. Stress-free
5. Relaxing (did I say that already?)

But you know what? Despite all of those things that it certainly isn't, it can actually be enjoyable. Six hours in to the trip I would have been hard pressed to say that, but as we found a groove, we actually managed to all have a good time. Admittedly, I don't think the boys would have noticed much of a difference if we had gone camping this weekend, gone to the lake, or just hung out at the house. And while those other options may have been more relaxing for Darrell and me, we realized that powering through and camping this weekend was an investment in the future. Because we want to make camping something the boys grow up with--and something they love. By starting them young--and busting our tails to make the weekend as carefree and enjoyable for them as possible--we hope to do just that. Plus it provides ample opportunity to take lots of adorable pictures :-)

Nap time in the great outdoors

How we found William the first morning. Apparently the whole sleeping bag/sleeping pad thing needs a little work

Morning story time in the tent

We all found a way to relax around the fire



Everyone loves a good s'more

Cutest little baby at the campground

Cutest little toddler at the camp ground

Family hike!

Our little trail blazer leading the way

My little hiking buddy

Nom nom nom!

Up at the top of the lookout tower

Wordless Wednesday

 

 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We do have pictures on our real camera that aren't poor-quality iPhone pictures... But there's no guarantee those will be uploaded and edited in the next two months, so I figure something is better than nothing.

(If you think that "two months" is hyperbole, it's not. Things are getting all sorts of crazy in this house this spring. It's going to be to-do lists and organization central all up in here.)