Catching Up

A couple weekends ago, Andrew's parents and grandparents came to visit. We had a nice relaxing weekend with them. The kids swam at the hotel pool. We visited the Mall of America and ate at the Rainforest Cafe. Great-Grandma Iz and Great-Grandpa Nick really had a great time. They loved walking around the big mall and seeing all the interesting people. They got such a kick out of the girls too. We really enjoyed their visit.

We got to see them again Labor Day weekend, but in Wisconsin where we dropped Ella & Lily off at Tom and Pat's house. Andrew and I then drove down to Joliet, IL so we could see our friend Josh get married! We had a really nice visit to Joliet. Andrew got some golf in on Friday and I had a little retail therapy at the mall nearby. What a treat to go to the mall by myself where I could actually take time to try on some clothes. And I got a pedicure!

We spent the morning of the wedding having breakfast with Josh, getting a tour of the house they are building, and helping him run last-minute errands. Their wedding was really spectacular. They had it in a historic theater (very reminiscent to the Paramount Theater in downtown Cedar Rapids for any of our readers who are familiar with CR). When you walked in the tables were all lavishly decorated. The ceremony was speedy but very nice. The groom was very sweet and emotional. We enjoyed seeing some of the Knox golfers again and Andrew is looking forward to hanging out with them this weekend in Northern Wisconsin for the annual Carnival of Golf. Below are some pictures from the wedding.

The Kiss

Presenting Josh & Tawny Quinn

The happy couple with the Knox golf crew.

Blast from the Past

I took this picture the other day of Ella sleeping. It reminded me of how she used to sleep as a baby. I got to thinking, we must have a picture of her in that pose. Here she is then and now.....


In case you've been wondering, I don't think I've mentioned on the blog about Ella's obsession with wearing her nightgowns. Perhaps in many MANY of the pictures I take, you noticed Ella is wearing a nightgown. Whenever we go anywhere she gets dressed and then immediately puts her nightgown on again when we get home. Oh, my Ella, she always keeps things interesting. :-)

August Photos

There's new photos up in the August album from the last couple weekends of the month. There are a few more fun pictures of our trip to the North Woods in Wisconsin on Ben's website. Just click here. :-)

NFL Kickoff

Tonight the NFL season kickoffs with the Colts/Saints game. About 30 minutes before the game, John Mellencamp, Faith Hill, and Kelly Clarkson will perform. Andrew's company produced the graphics you will see in the background. Check it out on NBC at 7pm Central Time.

Here's some stills:

Into the woods to Grand's Tom's Cottage we go....

Two weekends ago we traveled into northern Wisconsin to visit Andrew's family's "Cottage". It's a red cabin in the woods on Little Muskie Lake near Minocqua & Woodruff, Wisconsin. It has a bedroom and loft that can sleep four each and a porch with a pull-out bed, as well as a living room, kitchen and bath. There's a path to steps that go down to the lakefront and pier where you can fish or take the fishing boat out on the lake. The Cottage, as the family calls it, was built by Grandpa Milt when Andrew's dad was young and was originally intended to be the garage. A house a little closer to the lake was in the original plan. They made the "garage" liveable for the time before the house was built, however the Cottage became so well-equipped the house was never actually built. And the family has been going up there ever since in the summer. Now that Tom and his siblings are older they alternate picking weeks to be up there. And now that the grandkids are getting married and some starting their own families, they are making treks there as well.
Andrew and I made our first trip there together back in the fall of 1998. This trip two weekends ago was our first trip back since then and Ella and Lily's first trip there. Tom and Pat and Ben and Jenelle all joined us for a fun family weekend. We walked along the streets of Minocqua checking out the shops and activities such as mini golf and a family fun center with some Chuck E Cheese-type token games. We took Ella fishing which she LOVED! She was beyond excited when she actually got her first fish with her own little pole. And every fish that was caught she wanted to touch. She would hold her index finger out to it and say to the fish, "I want to touch you okay?" Jenelle and I went out too and caught a couple blue gill, crappies, and a northern. We were very girlie girls though and would not touch the fish or take them off the hooks. :-) Lily fished a little from the pier as well and went for one boat ride, which was more than enough for her.



We ate as some good restaurants (Minocqua Brewery, Auggie's, and Monical's) and enjoyed time hanging out around the Cottage. We made S'mores around a campfire one night, which I learned Andrew has never really done before! (Can you believe that?!)

All in all, it was a fun weekend. Oh, and Andrew and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary on Saturday (the 18th). Although it was nice weekend, I think I might want to celebrate just the two of us next year. Maybe we can go up with the whole family again, but on a different weekend. :-) I made the photos in this post small so I could include more. You can click on the picture to make it a little bigger if you like. New photos to the August album coming soon!

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!

Happy Birthday to Ella!

Ella turned four years old last Sunday! Hard to believe that she is four already!! I still remember the day she was born like it was yesterday and she was so little. Or how she used to sleep in her swing all the time. Or crawled faster than any baby alive and once she was walking there was no stopping her. She can be so goofy and silly and happy and cute. All the teachers and people she's met think she's so "delightful". They seem genuinely surprised and excited by how delightful and happy she is.

I've said before she has talked about her birthday pretty much since January. Every time we were at the grocery store, she would look at the birthday cake display and pick out which cake she wanted. About a month ago, I had her pick a cake and told her that was going to be her birthday cake and we started the countdown to her Tinkerbell party!

July 28th, we had about 20 family members over from my mom's, my dad's and Andrew's side of the family. Ella had been so excited, too excited I think. When the party started she, Lily, and her cousin Emilee went on a treasure hunt for little treasure chests each filled with a gold dollar. After that, they decorated crowns and picture frames with princess stickers. And then it was time to eat. About this time, Ella realized she was tired and a bit overwhelmed by all the attention. She felt it would be best to go up to her room and conk out for a bit. So we ate and waited. and waited. Then we tried to wake her up after about an hour and a half. It took 15-20 minutes to get her to wake up. I've never seen her so hard to wake up. But she got up and opened all her gifts and then had cake, so she was the belle of the ball after all. Thank you to everyone who came to wish her Happy Birthday and those of you who sent along birthday wishes!!

On her actual birthday August 5th, Andrew and I took the girls to Mall of America and Ella was Princess for a Day. Our friend Molly, who is also Ella's godmother, was in town and met us at the Mall. We watched Ella ride the rides for a bit including the merry-go-round! This is a huge feat because she has not been on a carousel for two years. The last time was a disaster turn with me and my dad at Valleyfair (an amusement park here in MN). She screamed the entire ride. But this time she WANTED to go on it. So we said okay. And she really enjoyed it. No screaming. She was smiling and said, "that was fun!" when it was over. After that we moved on to the Libby Lu experience where Ella received the Princess treatment. She loved every minute of it. The funny thing is that afterwards we went to lunch and while we were waiting for our food, Ella gave Lily the Libby Lu experience. Please see pictures at the end of Ella's birthday photo album to see what I'm talking about. It was so hilarious how Lily knew just what to do and listened to Ella tell her, "Okay close your eyes."

After that, we visited the Disney store and stocked up on Tinkerbell t-shirts and some purple sparkly mary janes that Ella just LOVES! That night my dad came over for pizza and Ella opened a couple more gifts including her "big" gift of a new bicycle. She and Lily took turns trying it out in the house before we took it out on the path by our house. She's still a little leery of it, but likes to try it out. :-)

Now she's onto telling what we need to do for Lily's "Nemo" birthday. She's decided all by herself that Lily will be having a Nemo birthday and there needs to be a Nemo cake and Nemo balloons. We'll see, I haven't asked Lily what kind of birthday party she wants yet. :-)

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!