family fun

we have been waiting for months for my sister and her 4 kids to come and visit. they finally got into wisconsin on saturday evening! yay! joel, lauren and myself went over to my parent's house(where they will be staying) yesterday to spend the day together. of course everyone had grown so much. little remi is almost walking on his own. elle is just the sweetest little girl and lauren is so thrilled to have someone to play with her. micah and toby adore their uncle preston and spend lots of time hanging out with him, getting lots of football games in. now all we need is my little guy to be born. his due date is tomorrow and they will be here until around the 20th of july. so i know we will all be together soon, i'm just hoping sooner rather than later! :)

little remi is not so little anymore. he weighs about as much as lauren! what a cutie.

he is very good at telling you how big he is, "sooooo big!" and he's not lying! :)

football time!

bubbles are always a hit!

off to the trampoline!

a great day for the beach

this past saturday joel, lauren and i made our first trip to the beach. even though it is only june the water was so warm and clear. lauren had a great time playing in the sand and "swimming" in the shallow water all by herself. she and joel ventured out a ways to a dock where she could jump off and have joel catch her. i think she could have done this all day! we all had a great time and i hope that was the first of many outtings we will make to the beach this summer. maybe next time as a family of 4! :)

you know you are a true midwestern girl when.....

our little gardener

this spring, my wonderful husband built me two little box gardens. i love gardening and the challenge of trying to make things grow and then of course the reward of eating fresh vegetables. lauren apparently shares this love with me and is always ready to go out and "work" in the garden. she is also great at watering, even though it ALWAYS ends up with her being completely soaked from head to toe. but as long as the garden gets at least a little bit of water i won't complain! :)

mill city park

on jodie's last day here we went into downtown minneapolis to have coffee and walk to a park by the river. unfortunately it was really chilly, so our visit was brief. we did get a few quick photos before rushing back to the warm car.

"uncle" cheese's

this past week joel's mom was visiting from wa state. the weather was beautiful at first, but towards the end of her visit it got really cold and rainy. so since we were limited to finding something fun to do indoors, we gave chuck e. cheese's a try. lauren's never been there before, but she's seen the advertisements for it on pbs. and for some reason she always refers to chuck e. cheese as uncle cheese's. so when we told her we were actually going to go with grandma she was very excited. it was rather crowded and lauren seemed a little overwhelmed at times, but she tried lots of different rides and games, even though she spent the most time on a small slide. but she did have fun and i'm sure we'll go back at some point but hopefully not in the near future! :)