Feeding the Ducks

One of the highlights of the trip to Leech Lake this past week was feeding the ducks. Sarah absolutely loved doing this. She can say duck very clearly now and everytime she would see bread during the week she would get all excited and say "duck duck duck duck" about a hundred times until you brought her down to feed them. Of course, she liked to eat the bread too! Here are a few shots of Sarah and the ducks...

The Lake

Will post more later, but here's a preview of our week away at the lake.

Two!!

Hard to believe that 2 years ago today I was cuddling with this sweet little newborn....

And now she is all grown up and ready to take on the world!

Love you little monster....don't be too hard on us during the twos please- we are getting old!

The Swing

Sarah pushing Alexis. She is trying really hard to get out of the way of the swing, but is just not fast enough.....too cute!

One of my Favorites.....

Typical Sarah- angelic look in her eyes, folding her hands, plotting her next move....

Little Miss Muffet

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on her tuffet

Eating her tacos for breakfast.....

Rethinking the Best Policy

We have always tried to be very honest with our kids. We tend to matter of factly explain everything to them. So much so that when they were smaller and used the actual, appropriate names for their private parts and talked loudly about them in public, we did think we had possibly made a mistake. But, that aside, we tend to not make up too many things as explanations. This probably explains why every holiday that involves "magic" gives me a little guilt. I don't like lying. But, I will admit that tonight, I even surprised myself with the flood of lies that came out of my mouth. Here goes....

We had some strong storms tonight, strong enough that we took cover in the basement for a little while. This freaked the kids out even though I attempted to make it fun by reading Flat Stanley (still one of my favorite kids books). After the biggest threat moved over us and just rain, thunder and lightning were left, we came back upstairs and started getting everybody ready for bed. Alex and Anna weren't having it. They were feeding off each other with how scary thunder can be. Back and forth until neither of them were willing to go to their own beds. And so, after trying to calmly explain that thunder is not dangerous and it can't hurt you, etc, I hoped they would calm down. No go. So, I did what any logical parent would do- I resorted to a made up story. Yep, the one about God and the angels bowling in heaven making the thunder sound. They had never heard this and, since they are so used to us being honest with them, they bought it, the whole thing. When we watched the news and they showed some storm clouds, Alex was even convinced that he could see the lane where they would bowl and Anna thought she saw somebody up in the clouds getting ready to bowl. Part of me did kind of cringe listening to them buy into the lies, but when it made them willing to go to bed without screaming, I got over it. As I was tucking Alex into bed, I kind of thought he might ask me if I was really telling the truth, or try to call me out on the lie. But no, instead he just asked, "Mom, why do you think they don't play tennis instead? Don't they know how many kids they are scaring up there? Tennis is fun and it's not loud at all!" Yes, Alex, you are right. Tennis is fun and if only God and his angels could do that instead, there may be a lot less scared children in this world :)

Taking the Opportunity

For the last couple of years, it has been difficult, and sometimes impossible to do anything last minute. There are a variety of reasons for this. First, it was adding a baby to the mix- that makes spontaneity impossible. Then I went back to grad school and so my time was even further divided and spoken for. Add to the mix doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, my work schedule, kid's swimming, golfing, birthday parties, family get togethers, etc and it's a regular schedule nightmare. So, when my sister and brother in law invited us this week to go on a vacation in Walker MN in a week and a half, my initial reaction was well we have this, this and this so no, it won't work out. Then then mommy guilt started surfacing and I thought of the fun memories the kids would have. We haven't taken any real vacations with them (guilt) and we've hardly even had time to get them out in the boat this year (double guilt), every day I'm off work is spent at someone else's house for a party, get together, or it is spent at home trying to catch up on laundry and dishes (guilt, guilt, guilt). And so, instead of all the reasons we "can't" go taking over, I decided that we would go and I would just deal with all of those "can't" reasons by rescheduling appointments, figuring out the details and only letting the kids see the benefit of a family vacation. So, while this vacation was not what we were planning on doing with my week off at the end of July, I have a feeling that we will all be glad we took the chance and decided that just having fun and blowing off appointments and commitments for the week is truly in order. Our apologies if one of those commitments was with you- we hope you understand.

Landscapes

Chris and I argue about a handful of things, mostly the usual type of things, like dishes, laundry, etc. I usually chalk this up to the fact that we are both completely exhausted and there are just plain not enough hours in the day to get everything done, especially with a very rambunctious 2 year old. Chris is an awesome father and husband and he does a lot of things really well, including the raising of our children. However, there is one thing that absolutely drives me insane that has been known to result in "I'm not speaking to you for a week" fights. It is the lawn and the care of it. Don't get me wrong, I have yet to cut the grass so I can't complain about that. But, Chris and I have different viewpoints on what a yard should look like. My dad has always been a bit of a neat freak about his yard and always has perfectly cut grass and trimmed weeds and bright flowers. We have, at best, a hodge podge of plants and flowers and mostly just an overgrown mess. I would like something in between. For example, Chris typically does not cut the grass until it is pretty overgrown (not really his fault- he can only do this when I am home because of the aforementioned 2 year old) and then it takes him a couple of hours to cut it. Because of the length of time it takes to cut it, he doesn't want to bag it as well so all of the long grass clippings just sit there and turn into piles of unattractive hay in the yard.

Something like this..........

We have dead patches of grass and creeping charlie that is threatening to replace all of our grass...

We have toys everywhere you look and our pile of "wood that needs to be burned" just grows every year, along with the weeds that are coming up through the deck...

Ok, before you think I've gone off on a rant about my husband and his poor landscaping abilities, this story really does have a different point to it. We have argued about the yard since the day we moved in. And then, today, I had a realization. We were watching some old home movies of my mom, my aunts and my grandparents (dated 1963). There was a lot of footage of the outdoors, including their yard and a few of their neighbors yards. One thing that I noticed is that nobody had any "nice" landscaping. The grass grew in patches and the flowers were what grew wildly. But the funny thing was- it was ok. They were happy. And I bet that nobody even cared about how perfect the lawn could look. It made me wonder when our society changed and made us believe that you need to have a perfectly mowed, watered, pristine lawn to fit in? Because the truth is- we don't get much time as a family these days and if by not bagging the grass and not whipping the weeds, we can stretch this out a bit more- it is what we will do. It is what matters right now- not the grass, or the broken gate or the flowers. I'm sorry Chris for not being able to see the point you were trying to make all along. Life is short and before we know it, our grandkids will be watching videos of us and it won't matter if the grass got cut once a week or twice a month. So, if you come to visit our house this summer, you may have to walk through some tall grass or kick around a few grass clippings or broken toys- but just know that we are happy and that someday when our kids are bigger and don't want to spend time with us- we'll remedy the landscaping. But for now, while they still like to do stuff with us- we'll be doing that instead!

Caught in the Act....

Sarah...

Anna....

Alex...

Wonder who got in the most trouble?????