Sleeping arrangements

Starting in Grand Forks, our family of 5 shared a hotel room. I was pretty worried about how this was going to work out as if one little person doesn't sleep, no one is going to sleep.

Even though they were bed hogs and slept in crazy positions, the kids did so well! They went to bed fairly easily and slept past 7:30am most days!

Grand Forks

We made the trip to Grand Forks last week to visit my grandparents. The great grandparents adore their great grandchildren so we try especially hard to visit at least once a year.

We have some top favorite things to do in Grand Forks and we were able to get to most of them this time.

The kids all love "digger park" with the scooping toy to dig with.

Mom and Dad love the Mexican restaurant, La Capana. It is so delicious, it doesn't even matter to me that we are far, far from the Mexican border.

Amelia loves when great grandma Nona reads the special Mickey Mouse book to her. If Amelia had her way, poor grandma would read it over and over again.

I always like to walk or drive by "wobbly park" at least once to remember playing there when I was growing up.

Occasionally we stay in a hotel and have access to a pool. Everyone is a fan of waking up and jumping in the pool!

This time Gemma was a daredevil. She loved to jump in and discovered she loved jumping in backwards and head first. She jumped without holding my hand or checking to see if I was ready.

When those tricks got old, she starting taking off. I would out her on the side of the pool to jump in and she would sprint away from me towards the ladder into the deep end. It didn't matter if I was there or not, she was going to jump in. Luckily, grandpa and grandma ran interference on the side of the pool which kept her out of the pool before we were ready.

This is a good reminder about why I will not be going to the pool by myself with all 3 of the kids.

William really started to put things together with the swimming. All of a sudden, he can swim. He was thrilled to be able to show off to the family his new skills. He was even able to prove he was able to swim back and forth unassisted in the deeper end of the pool where he wasn't able to touch. Last week, that wasn't possible! Great job William!!!

June 30

We set most of this day aside to spend with Grandpa Heidt. It is so convenient to have him in the same town as my parents. We always enjoy spending some time catching up with him!

This fun day included play time at Grandpa's house, eating lunch at a restaurant, a trip to the park, an adventure to the riverside to hunt for rocks and some treats.

Somehow, the only picture of all this fun from my phone is of the kids playing at the park. This toy is perfect for 3 kids or even 4. I thought I might get a decent picture of all 3 kids smiling....think again!

At the park, William attempted to play tag. There weren't any other tag aged kids playing, so he decided to play with Mom, Dad and Grandpa. I think William was VERY surprised by how speedy his grandpa was while chasing him. He might be a grandpa, but he can still sprint to keep up with my first grader!

After the park, I took Gemma for a nap and the kids went on another adventure with Daddy and Grandpa. When they got home, the kids had lots of good stories to tell:

"We hunted for rocks by the river!"

"The river was SO full! It was going very fast!"

"They told me not to go by the river, but I didn't listen, mom. I just wanted to see better. It was fine, mom."

"We got to b right by the river! Daddy said it looked flooded. We weren't supposed to go any closer, but later we did."

The look on John's face was quite funny as he heard what the kids took away from this particular adventure. It should also be said, that I know Grandpa and John wouldn't put the kids in a truly dangerous position.

Minnesota/North Dakota Trip 2014

We try to get to North Dakota at least once a year to visit my grandparents. They love their time with our kids and it brings back many childhood memories for me.

We left home on Friday, June 27th and came home July 5th.

Here is a quick break down of our trip

June 27 - travel to Rochester
June 28- Spend time with grandpa Heidt, family portrait scheduled
June 29- Trel to Grand Forks, ND to see Kelly's grandparents with Kelly's parents, sister and niece.
July 1- Travel to Cragun's Lake resort (near Brainerd, MN)
July 4- drive to Rochester, parade, fireworks
July 5- drive home

We really packed it in and had a LOT of fun together. Hopefully, I'll be abel to pull together some pictures of the fun we had together!
Sent from my iPhone

More crazy

We worked on our landscaping all day Saturday and then gave John Sunday off. It only seemed fair as it was Father's Day.

We've been working at it ever since a little bit at a time.

During that time, a few thighs have become clear.

1. We filled our original area and didn't seem to make a dent in the huge pile of rock.

2. There is a huge pile of rock in the driveway, which means John can't park his car in the driveway now.

3. The rock needs to go somewhere as it is killing the grass and annoying to play musical chairs with the cars to go anywhere.

4. Rocks are heavy.

5. Kids are helpful for the first 15 minutes of a project and then extremely detrimental to project completion.

6. The rocks are a different color when they are dry. I probably wouldn't have picked this color if they had been dry. Thankfully, I like the look, even if it wasn't what I originally had in mind.

7. Rocks are heavy to move.

8. We need more projects to use up these rocks. We now have covered the initial area, extended the landscaping to the front porch on the right side of the house, installed tree rings and plotted out another retaining wall section on the side of the garage. The pile of rocks on our driveway is still giant.

9. Perhaps I AM the better estimator despite my inaccuracies?

I love crazy, round 1

This happened the day before Father's Day. For some time now, we have been talking about replacing the mulch in front of our house with some rock. The challenge has been finding a time when both John and I are home AND the landscaping place is open (not to worry, I did go and look at the home improvement store. I tried to like the rock available there without success.)


On Saturday, we didn't have plans and the rock place was open. We poked around and found a few options that would work. It was a gorgeous day- it was only 80 degrees with a great breeze.

We went inside to price out a few options and were surprised by the estimates. It was going to cost less than we expected! That never happens! As we were finishing up, the sales clerk asked if we wanted rock delivered today. She told us they were having a slow day and had room for another delivery in the early afternoon.

I looked at John, fully anticipating an emphatic "no!" From him.

Instead, John said, "weeeeeelllll, it is a nice day to work outside..."

To which I promptly told them where to deliver a giant pile of rock before he could change his mind.

Luckily (or not, depending on your point of view), John likes to be very accurate, even when he is estimating. Suddenly, he was no longer satisfied with my rough estimate of how big our area to fill was. I had estimated the area to be about 12 feet by 12 feet (these were biggish numbers I picked out on the spot because they sounded good. Not because I measured or anything). According to the landscaping experts, I would need 2.5-3 tons of stone.

John preferred to go home, measure and recalculate on his own how much stone was needed.

This was a good thing, because I was WAY off in my estimation. WAY OFF. This isn't surprising because I am not a great estimator. According to John's calculations, we would need 4-4.5 tons of stones to get the job done.

I called it in and we were set for a delivery time of 2pm. It was now 11:30 and we had done nothing to prepare.

We hadn't moved the mulch.
We hadn't trimmed the landscaping or checked the condition of the landscaping fabric. We didn't have lunch made for the 3 kids who would surely be hungry any minute now.

Which is when John looked at me and said, "I love crazy."

I replied as I always do, "you knew that going in and you married me anyway!"

And then we got down to work.

Everyone helped scoop and move mulch from all the landscaping in the front yard. Halfway through, we enjoyed a lovely picnic in the front yard. At 2pm, our rocks were delivered and we worked until 6pm.

And we weren't done. Not even close!

Gemma sings

Here is Gemma singing here favorite "frozen" song, 'Do You Want to Build a Snowman?' It is tricky to catch her at this. Usually she belts it out, but when she sees the camera, she quits. She would much rather look at herself!