Summer Fun

We had a rare weekend home with no visitors last weekend. But that doesn't mean we sat around twirling our thumbs. :-) The girls spent Saturday night at my dad and Clare's house and Andrew and I actually got out to dinner and a movie (Harry Potter 5, finally!). The girls had a great time at B-pa and Mee-ma's. And really enjoyed going to the Minnesota Children's Museum with them on Sunday. While they were at the Museum, Andrew and I went to a Knox College Twin Cities Alumni Event. We met with about 30 alums at a St. Paul Saints (farm team) baseball game. It was a lot of fun and we saw a couple people we hadn't seen for years. One couple lives just a couple miles from us! We're hoping to get together with them sometime soon for a BBQ or something. They have a little boy just a couple months older than Lily.

The girls and I have had some fun outings lately. A couple weeks ago, we visited the MN Zoo with our nanny friend, Jody and little Ari along with Ari's two older sisters, Gaby and Maddy. We ventured to the outside part of the zoo for the first time and visited the "farm" they have there. We saw baby goats, pigs, cows, and chicks. Lily was pretty much afraid of everything except the baby chicks. And Ella had a great time petting the goats. They also have a butterfly garden (very reminiscent of the one we saw outside the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles) that Ella just loved! Lily was also afraid of the butterflies. BUTTERFLIES! Who is afraid of butterflies?! Aww, that's our Lily.

Last week, we visited the Arboretum in Chanhassen. We visited the Japanese Garden and then walked to the sensory garden. The sensory garden has buttons to push throughout to learn how flowers, scents and other "garden-type" things affect you through your senses. We walked on a path through the woods and a wildflower garden to the area with the little houses we played in on a previous visit. And then made our way back to the car. The girls really enjoyed themselves and it was really nice to not be rushed and just enjoy being outdoors. Of course, it might have been even more enjoyable if it hadn't been 85-90 degrees and sunny. But it was a fun outing, none-the-less. And of course the arboretum provided a nice back drop for multiple pictures for my camera-happy self. Please see the August photo album for fun pictures.

We have more fun things coming up that I will report on in the future. In the meantime, we are getting prepared for Ella to go to preschool this fall. We're getting her schedule organized (between school, playdates, speech, her feeding program, gym class, etc) and buying school supplies. She has a new Tinkerbell backpack (and lunch box even though she isn't going for lunch, but I suppose we could start using it for our snacks on outings).

Since I don't seem to mention him much, thought I would throw an Andrew report out there too. :-) He's been working hard lately. The Famous Group worked with 8 NFL teams this year doing various graphics packages, including the Vikings!! He also will be working on the Super Bowl again this year. Now that the teams have officially started pre-season, its slowed down just a little bit. He's also been able to get some golf in, playing in a couple Golf Galaxy Tour events. He won low net score for the tournament he played in last weekend and actually won a little money! He's looking forward to the Fourth Annual Knox Carnival of Golf taking place in northern Wisconsin this year, hosted by one Mr. Arthur "Garth" Gilster.

Dare I say, I'm looking forward to the calm of winter? Hmm....wondering if it will actually calm down or be just as crazy busy as our summer? We shall see. But I'm getting ahead of myself now.... Although, we've had some very crazy storms in the last week so weather-wise maybe winter would be nice (remind I said that in six months when I'm complaining about winter!). Lightning EVERYWHERE, constant flashes all over the place, huge winds, rain, hail. Just really incredible, and scary. I haven't seen storms like this ever that I can remember. In fact, I'll sign off now and add pictures later because we're having one right now!