Cedar Rapids/Knosher Trip 2009

In the middle of June, we did our annual trip to Cedar Rapids and Galesburg for the Knosher Golf Tournament.

Shockingly, I don't think I have one photo from Cedar Rapids. I really have no idea how that happened! We traveled down to Cedar Rapids late on a Wednesday night and left the girls with Nana and Papi on Thursday morning to travel to Galesburg. We had a lot of fun hanging out with Bob and Amber and Chris, and then Garth later on in the evening. Amber and I did our annual trip to get pedicures while the boys went off to play a practice round.

We all had a lot of fun on Friday at the tournament which I realized was our TENTH one already! Boy does time go by quickly! Andrew's parents made the trip down for the tournament. Andrew really enjoyed playing on Thursday with his dad and I think Tom had a pretty good time on Friday playing in the tournament. And of course, we always have a great time seeing Harley and visiting with him!

Here's a few photos for you:



Amber, Bob, Steve Cottrell, Harley, Chris, Andrew and me.



Andrew's foursome

The other "young alumni" foursome. Not sure how much longer we'll be able to say "young alumni" but I guess everything is relative, right?

All the young alumni guys: front: Andrew, Steve, Garth, Bob. Back: David Marquadt (an '08 grad), Chris, Vince, and Jeff Ancelet.
You can see more photos from the tournament and past years by going here.

Friday afternoon we traveled back to Cedar Rapids and had a yummy dinner at my favorite restaurant The Greek Place. Saturday morning, Andrew and I met up with Amber and Bob again so I could photograph Amber's family (You can see those photos here). Then Saturday afternoon, I surprised Andrew with part of his Father's Day gift. He got to play golf at Cedar Rapids Country Club with our friends Molly and Derek and my mom. He had a great time and shot a 74 there!!

Sunday, Andrew made a nice breakfast (even though it was Father's Day--no one can make breakfast as well as Andrew!). And he spent the afternoon watching the US Open while I packed up the car. We went back home early in the evening.

Girls had a great time hanging out with Nana and Papi and we all enjoyed our trip!

The Garden Experiment Update

Oh, how our garden GROWS!

This has been so fun! Everything is growing very well and we've even harvested some green beans. They were absolutely delicious!

Corn is growing crazy high and we can't wait to see what we get from it. And the cucumbers are on their way as well. We also have cilantro and dill coming in well. I picked some of the dill and dried it and will save it for the next time I make dill dip or something else requiring the yummy herb.

Here's some photos of our garden from about a week and a half ago.

Minocqua 2009

We headed to Minocqua, Wisconsin to the "little red house" the first weekend in June (the same weekend we went last year). The girls and I hung out with Bubba and Grand Pat on Thursday and Friday while Andrew worked. We had fun at the beach, went fishing in the boat (but didn't catch much, just 2 small Northerns), played some mini-golf. You might remember Lily caught a 22-inch Northern on her little pole last year. She was so funny, I asked her if she wanted to try and catch it again. She said no, she didn't want to catch any big fish this year. :-)

Tom and Pat took the girls part of the time as well so I had a chance to blog and get caught up on things (that would be when I did my last real blog update...geesh!).

Friday night, Ben and Jenelle joined us and we all had a nice time hanging out. They went kayaking on Saturday morning while the rest of us checked out the shops in downtown Minocqua. We ate at Monical's Pizza for dinner Saturday night. And all eight of us took in a showing of Disney's Up! We didn't have the best weather on Saturday evening so we thought a movie would be a good plan. Up was really good, everyone enjoyed it!

Then Sunday, we packed the car up and headed out, but not before we stopped to play a round of mini-golf with Ben and Jenelle at Settler's Mill (I think that's the name of the place) and Ben beat Andrew by one stroke! Quite a feat!

Enjoy a slideshow of our trip! Sorry if this is a bit brief, but I'm trying to get caught up here. ;-) And I've included links to last year's Minocqua post which was very in-depth. We did many of the same activities.
Minocqua 2008--Part 1
Minocqua 2008--Part 2

Busy Busy Busy

I feel so bad for not having updated this blog more in the last month or so. We have traveled every other week since the middle of MAY! And the in-between weeks we've played catch-up with laundry, unpacking, repacking, picking up the house (who knew being gone so much could actually make your house messier!), grocery shopping etc.

I also have had less blogging time because my photography business is actually starting to take off a bit. I've had several shoots the last couple months and I have more on the calendar! YAY! I have my first non-friend, non-family member shoot on Saturday and I'm so excited. They are a referral from a friend of ours and I'm crossing my fingers that it goes really well. My big goal this summer was to break out of taking photos of people I KNOW and get some new clients. I'm also taking my cousin's SENIOR PHOTOS next week. Which makes me slightly nervous because senior photos are such a big deal. But at the same time I'm sure it'll go fine and be a lot of fun!

So anyway, these are the reasons you haven't heard much from me on here. But the girls are in summer camp in the mornings all next week and hopefully I'll be able to get a post or two up during that time.

Thanks for being patient! Hope you all had a fantastic and fun Fourth of July!! And are enjoying the summer! It'll be over before we know it!

Where in the World is Andrew?

I was actually going to post a photo of Andrew WITH US because he's not traveling for work this week. However, Andrew wanted this photo up instead. ;-) Apparently it's a very big deal to have your photo taken with these guys. They are THE game entertainment at the Brewers game. Check out the newest member of the Klement's Sausage Race.

New Photos!

I know, nothing exciting to post, except go to the photo blog to check out new pictures of the girls. I took their four year/six year photos this past week. I know it's a month or so early for Ella and three months early for Lily. But I like taking them at the same time because it's so much easier and more convenient. :-)

So go HERE to see some of the new photos! Studio-style and outdoor photos.

Where in the World is Andrew this week?

Answer: In San Jose, shooting the opening for the 49ers. He also made a side trip to St. Louis for a meeting with the Rams on Tuesday. Football season has officially started for us already!
We're off again next week for the Fourth and then we're home for most of the rest of summer. So hopefully I'll get all caught up on posts at that point. I know you LOVE the Andrew posts, but the girls and I have been having fun as well. :-) These are just nice filler. ;-)

Where in the World is Andrew?

Answer: Last week Andrew was in Houston "playing catch" with Matt Schaub, the Texans quarterback. :-)

Weekend o' Fun

Two weekends ago, we had a crazy time. We were actually home. You’d think that maybe we would just lay low, sit and relax right? No, not us! Ella had a soccer game Saturday morning. She played great! So proud of her. She really got in there and went after the ball. It's fun to watch her play. Even Lily likes to go to the games.

After the game and getting lunch, we headed home and proceeded to dismantle the guest room and our loft upstairs. We originally intended the loft to be an area for the girls to watch tv before they went to bed at night. But we haven’t really been in that routine for awhile now. We read instead (a much better routine!), so the loft was kind of wasted space and not really being utilized for anything. We turned it into my office/library. Now I have a really nice place to edit my photos and hang out in the evening if I don’t necessarily want to be in the bedroom when Andrew is working. And now our guest room is really our guest room and not a multi-purpose room like it was before. The project of course turned into a multi-day project and included a trip to IKEA for more shelving and accessories. Including a fun desk lamp that is solar-powered! How cool is that?! They come in lots of fun colors, you should be sure to check them out your next trip to IKEA. A great chance to make your office just a bit “greener”.



Saturday evening, Ella and I drove up to Anoka/Andover to see Emilee’s dance recital. It was very cute! Emilee did a great job in both her dances and it was fun to see her and Shawn in the father/daughter dance. Ella’s favorite part was all the sparkly costumes! While we were at the recital, Lily and Andrew had a date. They went out for dinner and then headed over to mini golf at Golf Zone. Turns out they had Cosmic Golf going where they had the lights off, music playing, and Christmas lights everywhere. They even had blue lights in the water, which really impressed Lily.

Sunday, Lily had her first birthday party for one of her little school friends, her best friend Hannah. She was sooo excited to get to go to a birthday party that was all her thing! The party didn’t start until 11am so we thought we’d go check out Schooner Days beforehand. Unfortunately, the website was wrong and Schooner Days didn’t open until 11. So we just walked around and looked at everything. Ella scoped the prizes and games out. While Lily and I were at the party, Andrew and Ella stayed at Schooner Days and had a good ol’ time. So good in fact, our house now contains a GIANT Scooby Doo—seriously, the thing is as tall as Ella—as well as a medium size purple Care Bear and three smaller stuffed animals.







Ella took these last two images. :-)
We’re going at Mach 10 pretty much through July 4th then hopefully, things will calm down a bit for the rest of the summer. Not sure when I’ll get everything updated again. But hopefully it won’t be that long between posts.

Memorial Weekend and More

There has not been much slowing down at all since we got back from Hilton Head! We spent Memorial Day weekend recuperating, doing laundry, and getting the house into some semblance of order. We had really nice weather although it could have been just a tiny bit warmer. But we couldn’t really complain about sunshine after our rainy vacation. As with most Memorial Days, we decided to grill out and we invited my dad and Clare over to join us because we had plenty of food to spare. The girls helped Andrew get the corn ready. And I made a blueberry crisp for dessert that turned out fantastic! And it was soooo easy! Let me know if you want the recipe because seriously, it was so yummy! Everyone had seconds.



Ella was gung ho about getting our new pool out (the whale pool bit the dust last summer—the neighborhood will be sad, as many people know who we are once we reference the whale pool). Now, we have a bigger rainbow wave pool! Who needs a whale pool anyway! But alas it was too cold to really enjoy it.

This past week we also visited Ella and Lily’s preschool for their Spring Sing concert and graduation parties. They sang about ten songs in the gym and then all the kids and parents adjourn to the classrooms where each child gets to wear a graduation hat, receive a certificate for finishing that year of preschool, and have their photo taken. Very cute! The girls did a great job singing as well. We have some video that I may try and get posted (but don’t hold your breath waiting for it—you know me).



That's Hannah, Lily's little friend from preschool and their friend Nate.



Those are Ella's good friends from school (l-r): Jentina, Emma, Ella, and Kayla with Ms. Debbie.

Then June 1st and 2nd were their official last days of school. They just have a play day and can say good-bye to their teachers. Because there are two teachers and 3-4 helpers in each classroom, the girls brought a bouquet of flowers in so they could all share.

We spent Tuesday afternoon going through all the girls summer clothes from last year and trying everything on so I could figure out what they needed. And unbelieveably, all of Ella’s clothes from last year fit Lily absolutely perfectly this year! So Wednesday, I was on a mission. A mission to get every errand I could think of done! I knew the rest of Eden Prairie schools were out starting next week and then there would be children and moms out EVERYWHERE. So we got the girls’ hair cut, bought Ella some new summer clothes, dropped books off at the library, visited the bookstore, stopped in at Target, got fish food and filters at the Pet Store, and got gas all in one morning! It was fantastic and the girls were real troopers keeping up with all the running around.

And now, we’re up north in Minocqua, Wisconsin visiting the Cottage (aka “the little red house”) with Tom and Pat and Ben and Jenelle. We just can’t get enough of each other I guess. And that’s also the reason I have time to sit and get this blog caught up finally!

(I scheduled this post to spread them out a bit...if you're wondering about the timing and whatnot.) ;-)

A Week in Hilton Head

A few weeks ago, the Isaacsons invaded Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. When I say the Isaacsons, I mean not only the four of us, but also Tom and Pat and Ben and Jenelle. We all flew in and met up at the airport on Saturday, May 16th. Then caravanned (sp?) in two vehicles from Savannah to Hilton Head, enjoying the lush scenery as we drove by. Everything was so green and there were so many trees! It was gorgeous. Everything including chain businesses such as fast food restaurants, and shopping areas were built with plantation style architecture. It was really interesting.

We all stayed in a rented vacation home in Palmetto Dunes. The house was fantastic! Perfect for all of us! There was a bedroom/bath on the main floor for Tom and Pat, twin beds in a room with a bathroom for the girls, another bedroom leading to that same bath for me and Andrew, and yet another bed/bath for Ben and Jenelle. There was a pool, a huge kitchen, family room, ping-pong table and a 12-seat movie theater in the basement! Seriously, total luxury!

We made it to the beach on Sunday for a bit before it started to rain just after lunch. Unfortunately, the rain continued for the next 5 days! Apparently, South Carolina has been in a drought for three years and it decided to end when we showed up. We tried to make the best of it though. We explored the many areas of the island and managed to get outside for some fun during the breaks in rain.

Andrew, Ben and Tom managed to get out to golf a few times. And the girls (meaning all of us girls) shopped, painted pottery, shopped some more, and just relaxed. We also got some biking in with the girls, which was a ton of fun. And Jenelle and I made it to the spa for a much needed pedicure and facial. Ben and Jenelle also got in some kayaking and tennis. There was a small children's museum as well that provided an afternoon of fun for us and the girls.

Finally Friday, the last day we were there, we made it to the beach again for over FOUR hours! It was so much fun. It was low tide, which happened to leave a sand bar just a little ways out with a little lake of water between the waves and the shoreline. It was perfect for playing in the water without having to pay attention to whether the waves were going to knock you down (you know us lake people). ;-) Lily found little puddles “just her size” (as she put it) to play in and was perfectly happy. Ella splashed around in the water and even befriended a little boy and played with him for awhile. I had so much fun taking photos of the girls in the water. Here are a few of my favorites!





We ended the last night of the trip by all making wooden airplane gliders and having a contest flying them off the front porch of the house. It was so nice for all of us to finally be outside.
And here’s a really long slideshow of all our vacation photos (are you annoyed by my use of the slideshow yet? Or give it a thumbs up? Yes, I’m lazy. It makes posting so much easier!):

A Garden Experiment

I had a very nice Mother’s Day weekend this year. Andrew did ALL of the laundry in the house, which was terrific! He took care of all the kids’ needs and totally spoiled and pampered me. LOVE it! Why, can’t every day be Mother’s day? ;-) I guess it wouldn’t be as special then and I’d probably be pretty bored with not much to do. Notice, we have turned it into Mother’s Day WEEKEND instead of just DAY in household. I'll take that for now.

My mom and Dave came up for a visit too so we had a nice time visiting with them. We had a truly fantastic meal at Santorini’s. I’m not sure why I’m such a fan of Greek food. Maybe it’s because I don’t get it very often, maybe it’s just darn good. But Mmm mmm…LOVE IT! I actually made the reservation at the restaurant a couple months ago knowing they get filled up and I wanted to make sure we got in at the time we wanted. Quite fun too, it was prom night in Eden Prairie so we got to see all the girls in their pretty dresses. I think that was Ella and Lily’s favorite part of the meal.

On Sunday, Andrew and the girls and my mom worked on setting up our new garden in the backyard. The girls were really interested in planting something this year so we thought we’d pick a few things and see how they worked. Andrew got cement blocks and set them up. Then he and my mom turned the dirt over. Ella and Lily helped put the seeds in and water it. I’ll periodically update you on the progress of the garden. As of right now, we have a few things sprouting so I’ll have to take a new picture.

We planted cucumber, sweet corn and green beans in the actual garden bed. The girls each picked out four different types of flowers too. We started those out in little containers, but some of them didn’t germinate. We do have sunflowers coming up though and we’re going to plant those in with the cucumber. We also have some star vines and one other kind of flower coming up that we’ll plant out front (can't remember the name of it at the moment).

We had no idea what the garden was going to do this year so it’s a complete experiment. We’ll see what happens. Here’s a little slideshow of the garden creation:


We finished Sunday out by heading to Grandma Betty’s house for some ribs, cheesy potatoes, home-made cole slaw and fun. Ella had a great time playing go fish and crazy eights with everyone. It was a nice end to a nice weekend.

Oh, and here’s one picture of Lily being a “mommy”. Apparently, I wear my sunglasses pretty often that she thinks that's part of the Mommy ensemble.

Andrew Visits the Masters

Yes, this was from APRIL. I'm finally getting it posted on here.

Andrew has worked with the Atlanta Thrashers/Hawks for the last several years. When his client Peter Sorckoff scored tickets to the Monday practice round of the Masters, he asked Andrew if he wanted to go. Andrew had to stop and think about it and reluctantly said, "YES!" (do you sense my sarcasm that Andrew had to actually think about his answer).

It was like a dream come true for Andrew to walk by the fairways and greens of Augusta. He couldn't believe some of the things there that were so clearly "Masters" such as, the old time prices for lunch. Also, everything there had a Masters label on it instead of the brand name (ie: Masters BBQ chips instead of Lay's or whatever).
This photo is sort of blurry; obviously, it's Tiger teeing off, but can you spot Andrew in the background? red hat, orange coat? Hmm....maybe I should start a new feature on the blog, a weekly Where in the World is Andrew? post. What do you think? ;-)

And now, a new addition to the blog...you ready for it....hold on to your seat, because it's very exciting. That's right, a photo SLIDESHOW! My friend Renee put one on her blog and I immediately asked her how to do it! Whoo hoo! Now I can show you lots of photos and not have to upload each one! Enjoy this one and I'm sure there will be more to come!