The Many Faces of Lily

Here's a few fun pictures of Lily to make up for the upcoming surge of Birthday Ella!

Full House

Last weekend we had visitors! Our friends Bob and Amber and their daughter Brianna AND Chris and Abbie came to stay with us for the weekend. And they were all in our house! Andrew and I decided we wanted to host a golf event for some of the Knox golfers that included significant others and children. Most of their golf outings are for the guys only so we thought it would be fun to include everyone at one of the events.

The guys spent the weekend playing golf at the Chaska Town Course, Chaska Par 30, Deer Run in Victoria and Braemar in Edina. Abbie joined them for a couple of rounds too. The ladies visited Riley Lake and the Mall of America. And we all visited Golf Zone on Saturday night to play a bit of mini-golf. Time was spent engaging in lawn games, Euchre and Trivia Pursuit as well. I think we all had a great time and were completely exhausted by the end of the weekend! We hope to get everyone together again in the future!

I picked up the latest Harry Potter book on Saturday and spent Monday and Tuesday devouring the book. It was fantastic! I'm so glad I got through it before I heard anything about what happened!

In other news, we are having Ella's birthday party tomorrow. It's a Tinkerbell themed party and she is soooo excited! She's pretty much been talking about her birthday since the day after Christmas. And I think she can hardly believe that its finally here! Yesterday, as we pulled in to the grocery store parking lot to order her cake, she started singing, "It's my Tinkerbell birthday. It's my Tinkerbell birthday. Yeah!!" So cute!

She picked out the theme. She's informed me there must be balloons and candles to blow out. She specified green, blue, and yellow balloons. She is just so funny! The other day we were talking and I asked her if it would be okay if we actually sang "Happy Birthday" to her this year. And she said, "No." Then I asked her if we could just say, "1-2-3, Happy Birthday, Ella." And she said that was okay.

I think I may have mentioned before how Lily likes to push Ella's buttons. Well, she must have been listening to the exchange between me and Ella. The only song she ever sings all by herself is "Happy Birthday to Ella." And she looked at Ella and started singing it. Ella told her, "Stop singing, Lily." And Lily stopped, paused and then sang, "...to you." Oh my god, I laughed so hard! Lily is just such a character.

Just a cute picture of the girls

Lily's most current thing is carrying around an old purse of mine. It has a shorter strap so its just perfect for her to put on her shoulder. She walks around the house with it, finding stuff to stash in it; bits of paper, a straw, receipts, a Little People person. Then if we get into the car to go somewhere and she's forgotten it, all of sudden she says, "My purse! My purse!!" Such a girly girl already!

I've been playing around with my fun new camera so I've taken a lot of pictures lately. Just haven't had time to upload them yet. There's a few in this post to tide you over. And I think since I've been focusing on Ella more in the last few months, I'll put up a Lily photo retrospective. :-)

Sleeping at the lake

We have a full house again this weekend with Tom and Pat and my mom and Dave in town for Ella's birthday party. They'll all be staying with us too! And Uncle Ben and Aunt Jenelle are making the trip too!

Enjoy the end of July!

Back home, but no slowing down

After traveling 4 out of 6 weeks we are home now for a month and half. But we're not slowing down at all. Andrew actually traveled to Denver from Saturday to Thursday to go to a conference for work. He spent his time golfing, rafting, schmoozing clients and running around like crazy! He's back home again now. My mom and Dave have been here all week helping with the kids and visiting. We went to the Mall of America and the MN Zoo. Ella has thoroughly enjoyed the multitude of people available to "go play in Ella's room" with her.

Ella also started "summer school" which really is a speech therapy session but through the school district. It is located at the school where her preschool is though so she will be well acclimated by the fall. She had no problem saying good-bye to me and then simply said, "Hi Mom." when I returned. Hi MOM. What, is she 8 years old? She'd never said Mom before, always Mommy or Mama. My little girl is growing up!

She also started a feeding program with an occupational therapist. It's once a week and through Capable Kids where she gets her private speech therapy. It is designed to help introduce her to eating new and different foods and get her to move outside of her comfort zone with textures and colors. She is borderline with sensory issues and her food intake seems to fall into that category. She pretty much only eats white or yellow foods and meat (unless it involves sugar than it doesn't matter what color it is, of course). At any rate, our first session was very interesting and I think this will be very helpful.

Ella has had a busy week, she also tried out a gymnastics class at a place called My Gym. She had fun and it was good for her to be in a group/teacher session. She had to follow directions and I think she had fun. She's never done anything structured before so it was new for her to not just run in and play.

Lily was lost without Ella. She just doesn't know what to do without her around to play with or watch. When we walked in the door, Lily came running saying, "Ella, Ella, Ella!" all excited and gave her a big hug! It was very cute. Lucky for her Ella's preschool is pretty much during her naptime so she won't even miss her!

In other news, our digital camera broke on 4th of July. Someone (ahem, I won't mention who) dropped it and it finally broke (this was probably the fifth time we've dropped it so it took a lot for it to finally go). However, I did get a fancy schmancy new camera out of it. I'm still learning how to use it. But I'm very excited about it and will probably be even more camera happy than I already am (I know, you're thinking, how is that possible?). And we will have lots of photo opportunities coming up in the next few weeks! Next weekend we are hosting the first annual Isaacson Golfapalooza event for Knox alumni golfers and families. Their other events are mostly for the guys so we thought it would be fun for us to all get together with wives and kids too.

The following weekend we will be having Ella's birthday party. Then my cousin Cindy's annual pig roast and Ella actual birthday the weekend after that. So like I said, we're home, but we're not slowing down! :-)

Hope you all are having a great summer so far!

Fourth of July--Racine

We spent five days in Racine around the Fourth visiting with Andrew's family. Ella and Lily did surprisingly well on the drive there. And we arrived to Grand Tom (aka Bubba) and Grand Pat sitting outside waiting for us with an arsenal of vehicles, bikes and trikes for the kids to ride on. It's funny, as Tom put it, much of our time there was spent sitting around and then it would be hurry up and go to an activity. We discovered Ella LOVES fireworks. She saw two small fountain firecrackers that Uncle Ben set off in the backyard and there was no stopping her from wanting more. Lucky for her, we saw three separate displays during the week!

Sunday, we had a turkey dinner with Andrew's aunt Sue and his grandparents. Then Ben, Andrew, Tom and I played nine holes at Johnson Park golf course. After a nice kid-free dinner with Ben and Jenelle on Sunday night, we picked up Ella and visited with our friend Phil at Meadowbrook Country Club. We were treated to a very nice fireworks display and could just barely see the fireworks at rival Racine Country Club too. Ella got her face painted and saw a smiley face firework. She was in 7th Heaven!

Monday, Andrew played golf with his cousin Tony while the girls and I hung out around the house with Grand Tom. We played outside and Ella drove her Jeep around and around and around the house. We took Ella to the dentist for the first time on Tuesday. And she had a great time assisting in the cleaning of my teeth. She helped rinse and suction. She might have a good future as a dental hygienist. ;-) Tuesday night we had a great time at Ben and Jenelle's annual July 3rd BBQ with family and friends. Ella and Lily had a lot of fun playing with all the little kids that were there this year. And we were treated to some "sparkly" backyard fireworks from Ben and Tom.

It's the largest 4th of July parade in the state of Wisconsin. The pre-parade consists of every fire engine and police car in the area (this would be a great time to rob a bank!) blowing their sirens for 45 minutes! Then you wait a bit and the actual parade starts and goes on for three more hours. Lily decided this was a good time to take a nap. Wednesday, the big day! We went to the 4th of July Parade which just keeps going and going.We rested for a bit after the parade and then made our way to Uncle Nick and Aunt Lisa's house for another BBQ. And then topped off the day with the third fireworks display of the week. We had a great view on the dock outside a friend's boat. These had to have been the BEST fireworks I have ever seen in my life! And I'm not exaggerating! They started off like a finale and went on like that for about 10-15 minutes. Then slowed down to one or two at a time for another 30 minutes and then finished with a great finale! It was fantastic and Ella got FOUR smiley faces! ;-)

After all those festivities we made our way back to Minnesota on Thursday. We really had a lot of fun with Andrew's family and my mom and Dave made their way over to Racine too. We're already looking forward to next year. There are photos on Shutterfly as well!

Girls Weekend 2007

Last year four friends from high school came to visit me in Los Angeles. We had so much fun that we decided to make it an annual event. We decided it was fun to visit a city where one of us had an insider's knowledge of things to do. So this year we all convened in Philadelphia. Erin J. had moved there about a year ago. None of the rest of us had been to Philly before so we thought it sounded fun.

After some annoying flight details, Erin F. and I arrived in Philly on Thursday, June 21st and stayed in Erin and her husband, Dave's apartment near Penn's campus. On Friday, Erin F. and I took our time getting up and out and about, took the bus to Old City or the historic part of town. We walked around and had a cheesesteak sandwich at Jim's Steaks after waiting in line for a good 45 minutes or so. We enjoyed taking in all the old architecture and catching up. Despite a minor annoying incident where my flip-flop broke and I had to walk around for 20-25 minutes without a shoe before we found a place to buy some new ones, it was a very enjoyable afternoon. We joined up with Erin J. after work at our hotel and then picked up Claire and Allison at the airport. We dined at Positano Coast and had quite a delicious meal sharing several dishes.

Saturday, we toured the countryside visiting the Battle of Brandywine battlefield site for a picnic lunch. We took in a few historic sites including George Washington's headquarters for the battle. The gift shop there proved to be an amusement for all and we each left with our own revolutionary era basket weaving kit. We thought it might be entertaining to try and weave a basket in a hour as the package promised. And joked that perhaps we needed to complete a cheesy crafty souvenir on each of our future trips. ;-)

We traveled around the Brandywine area in the afternoon visiting the Longwood Gardens gift shop. We didn't have much time before they closed so we didn't pay admission to actually go in, but it looked like it would be absolutely beautiful. If you're ever in the Philly area, I would definitely check that out. We also drove through the campus at Swarthmore College. It was extremely beautiful there. Very picturesque.

Allison, Claire, Erin Jensen, Dave, Erin Friedline, Me
at Marigold for dinner

We arrived back in West Philly (yes, the Fresh Prince song was sung at least once during the trip) at Erin and David's apartment to rest for a bit and looked at her pictures from their trip to Africa. Then headed out to dinner at Marigold. Dave joined us for dinner and was entertained with our silliness and talk of band camp (yes, Claire attended band camp). We started getting a little bit too loud with stories and whatnot so decided to head back to the hotel. We started the basketweaving extravaganza around midnight. And despite the instructions saying it would only take an hour, we proceeded to plug along for the next 2.5-3 hours. They turned out fairly well given all the grumbling and profane words slung around.

Sunday, we toured the city on foot. We walked through an art market, the Italian market, got some water ice (a Philly phenomenon, sort of like a slushie), and had lunch in South Philly. There are two cheesesteak places across the street from each other. Pat's and Geno's. We decided to get sandwiches from both so we could try them and decide. I preferred Geno's but I think everyone else liked Pat's better. You be the judge next time you visit Philly.

We continued on walking around various neighborhoods to Rittenhouse Square where we took a breather and relaxed for a bit in a park (yes, I was complaining about all the exercise I was getting by this point). And continued on back toward the hotel stopping at the Naked Chocolate Cafe. YUM! We visited Elfreth's Alley, the oldest continuously lived in neighborhood in the US. The houses were really cool! There was plaque on one of them dating 1752. There was a sign in one saying it was going to be on the market, if anyone's interested! ;-) After our tour of the city, we cooled off in the hotel pool with a nice swim and some synchronized swimming from Claire, Erin J, and Erin F. Sorry we forgot the camera for that one. And finished on with a dinner at a fairly forgettable Italian restaurant (I can't even remember the name of it).

We said goodbye to Erin J that night because she had to return to reality and go to work on Monday and the rest of us sort of did our own thing Monday morning before we all caught our flights back home. I visited the Polish American Cultural Center. My paternal grandfather was Polish so I thought I would check it out. I learned that Poland had the second oldest Declaration of Independence (ours was first). And there was a painting very similar to the one of our founders signing the Declaration. I also learned Poles built the first factory in America to produce the first "made-in-America" products, which were glassware.

Claire and Allison went off to the Mutter Museum, full of medical anomalies. Claire told me on the plane about one set of siamese twins who had two heads and one torso/body. Interesting to hear about, but glad I didn't see it for myself.

We all made it back safe and sound, and had a great time! We are planning on Denver next year, home to Erin Friedline now. She's already scoping things out for us! Can't wait!! There are pictures on Shutterfly if anyone is interested. :-)

June/July Photos

I uploaded a couple new photo albums today. I promise real blog updates very soon! We've been traveling a lot lately so I'm still playing catch up and recovering. Check back soon!