A Beautiful Northern MN Weekend.

We decided to make a last minute trip to Cloquet for the weekend.  I am beginning to feel like we live in our car; yet, I love fun summer weekends spent with family and friends.  Ryan was done working by noon and we were able to make it home in time for Annabelle's first dance recital.  She was SO cute and she did so well.  I took Kadence with me and left Landon and Kenzie at my parents with Ryan.  Kadence had so much fun watching all of the dancers in their pretty "farkly" costumes and she never stopped wiggling and dancing herself.

 

 I enjoyed watching the dance recital very much.  It brought back so many memories of when I was a little girl and had dance recitals at that very same auditorium with the same dance studio.  I was in dance from age 4-10 and enjoyed it so much.

I really wanted a picture of Kadence and Annabelle and this is what I got.  It is so sad!  This would be an overtired 4 year old who does not want a photo and really wants her flip flops that her mom didn't bring! Still cute!

We woke up to an absolutely perfect day on Saturday.  The sun was shining and it was very warm, finally.  The kids spent a lot of time playing outside on my parents' deck.  I love this sunny shot of Landon with those beautiful pine trees in the background.  It is crazy how I took all the beautiful trees for granted when I lived there.  We went to our ritual "Saturday morning breakfast" at the cozy and were then on our way!

It was a perfect day to head to Canal Park in Duluth for some walking, eating, and rock throwing.  The kids liked watching the lift bridge raise for the big boats.

Grandma Debbie and Kadence.  

Landon Gary.

Kadence and Landon throwing some rocks.  There is a rock beach with a never ending supply of rocks to toss into the lake.  The kids had so much fun!  

I really like this shot of my dad and mom. Dad was hanging with Kenzie while she took a nap in the stroller...Landon informed us later that Grandpa Ken was taking a nap, too!

I think this is what everyone wanted to do after our lovely day by the lake....except Kenzie.

What better way to top of a great day than with a campfire?  This was really the kids' first campfire and they were both fascinated with the idea and were really good despite their exhaustion.

One of my favorite things about Northern MN in the summer is that you have the most beautiful warm (and usually not humid) days and then the air cools off at night which is great for sleeping!

Landon and Kadence helping Ryan roast some marshmallows for their Smores.

I think they found their new favorite treat!  They were so cute eating their yummy treats and so excited!  After the older two joined Kenzie in the house sleeping, the four of us sat around the fire and chatted for awhile, it was such a nice evening for a campfire!  

Sunday was another gorgeous day and we relaxed outside and spent some time with the Skowlunds after they returned from their wedding in the Twin Cities.  Another great weekend come and gone too fast!  And...The trip home was much better than the previous weekend!

Sunny days.

 Kenzie Marie: 6 months

Landon Gary: 5 months

We have finally had a few nice days.  When I put Kenzie's white hat on to keep the sun out of her eyes and off of her bald head, all I could think of was Landon.  She reminded me so much of Landon that I searched for some pictures and found this one.  I see such a big resemblance between the two of them.  It is so fun to look back at baby pictures of Landon and Kadence and compare the three of them.  Love them all!

6 Month Check Up.

My sweet little lady is already 6 months and had her well baby check up today.  We saw our new pediatrician Dr. Jones-Dees for the first time.  She is very nice and Kenzie seemed to do better with a female practitioner.  Ryan works with her husband who is a surgeon at the hospital.  Here are her stats:

Height: 26.5 inches- 75th percentile

Weight: 15 pounds 9 ounces- 40th percentile

Head: 43.3 cm- 75th percentile

Growing and developing as expected!  Now if the stinker would just take a bottle...

Love this shot showing her two bottom teeth!

And this is how she felt about the shots that she got!

Memorial Weekend 2011

We headed back to the farm for the long weekend.  The weather wasn't fabulous, but the kids spent a great deal of time outside playing and getting dirty.  We finally got to see Aunty Arin after a long almost 2 months.  The kids hardly knew what to do with Papa, Grandma Sue, Aunty, and Leonard to play with.  On Saturday, us girls all headed to Aberdeen to visit Natalie and Olivia and the boys headed to the stock car races.  I thought Landon would absolutely love this considering his obsession with cars, but I think he thought it was just ok.  Ryan said he got kind of bored after a little bit but was easily entertained with Angry Birds...shocker.

Sunday was a pretty nice day and the kids helped Grandma Sue plant her garden.  Landon was a great little helper and stayed interested the entire time.  Kadence started out interested...

until she found some worms.  Then, it was all about the worms for the remainder of the garden planting. She liked to rip them in half and then say, "Now there's two worms, Mom!!"

Worms, dirt, water, mud, sticks, bugs, rocks...does it get any better?

Grandma and Landon planting.

Kadence making sure Landon's worms weren't escaping.  Too funny.

Another fun-filled weekend at the farm.  The drive home on the other hand, was not so fun.  There was an awful storm that we pretty much rode with and followed the entire drive home turning a 3 1/2 hour trip to over 7 hours.  We spent a good chunk of time stopped at two different gas stations.  The kids were so good, oblivious to what was going on and excited to get out of the car and have a treat!  I on the other hand, was holding it together for my children, but so scared I felt like I was going to throw up.  I am not a storm lover.  To top it off, when we returned home we had no power until 530 am Tuesday morning.  Lovely.  

Another long weekend come and gone too fast (aside from the not so fast car trip home).

Time for some food.

Little Kenzie has hit the food milestone.  This is yet another reminder that she is growing up so fast!  She is sitting up much better now and spends a lot of time playing in her high chair.  She has two teeth now and I am thinking she was finally ready to try some solid foods.  I have given her the baby mum-mum rice cakes a couple of times (more for entertainment) but since she has the two teeth, she actually bites off of them and gets pretty big chunks in her mouth.  She might need a little more time on those.

She thought she was pretty cool though.  And...DO NOT take one of these away once she has it in her hands, bad idea.

Kenzie had her first bites of solids last night which were some yummy avocado thinned with breast milk.  Don't lie, you are jealous.  I think she did very well for her first time.

Although I have done this twice before, it's still equally exciting.  I am going to try and prepare Kenzie's food myself.  We'll see how that goes.  She's so sweet.  Love her to pieces!

A little boy's dream...

They have finally removed the giant dirt pile from our backyard.  I knew that this would be quite entertaining for our children and I was very glad we were home when they came to do it.  I did not realize just how entertaining this process was going to be.  It has been so fun to see the excitement in the kid's eyes as they watched these very large machines demolish the dirt pile that was just a few feet in front of them.

The kids spent a good portion of the past day and a half out on the deck playing and watching.  When they weren't outside, they stayed near our window just to make sure they weren't missing out on anything.

It was so cute, Landon immediately found his trucks and started playing.  I could see the wheels turning in his little head and he was mocking what the people were doing right outside of his door.  He had so much fun.

I on the other hand, am glad the extremely loud noises have finally lessened.  Here's to sod in view and a large yard to run and play in, finally!

Girly Girl.

Kenzie got earrings like her big sister this last weekend.  Kadence was about the same age when she got her earrings.  Kenzie did pretty well with the piercing, just cried during and then was fine afterwards.  She has even been really good about letting me clean them.

So pretty!  At least she will look like a girl until she gets some hair!

Big sister Kadence just after she had her ears pierced!  Already over 2 1/2 years ago!

Love these girls!