7 years old!

This past weekend we celebrated Isabella's seventh birthday!  She is really in to American Girl, and all she wanted to do for her birthday was get her doll's ears pierced at the American Girl store.  Although the American Girl store is hours away, we were on board with the idea, and made it a fun little vacation.  (It was also a lot less work than having several girls over for a birthday party!)

 

 

Isabella and her American Girl doll, "Star".  I swore she would never have an American Girl until  they had a super sale on them for a very short time right before Christmas last year.

 

She was amazed!

 

We even had a snack at the American Girl café, where they had a special seat for her doll, and special "food" for her doll as well!

 

We spent quite a bit of time at the indoor amusement park as well!

We even brought Grandma with.

 

When we checked into our hotel room that night, they asked what brought us there for the weekend.  We told them we were celebrating Isabella's birthday, and about an hour later a delivery man came to our door with a birthday cake and coloring books and crayons for the kids!  We couldn't believe it!

 

 It was even a rainbow cake!

 

Our present to her was a horse for her doll, she was pretty excited!







Spring Getaway!

This past Sunday through Tuesday we went on a mini vacation with Monte's parents. The temp on Sunday was 94! I could not believe how many people came up to us, upset with us that our kids were getting sun burned! But in reality, they were not sun burned, just hot! We had plenty of water, and tried to keep them in the shade as much as possible, and were only outside at the waterfalls for about an hour. My kids just get really rosy cheeked! Despite the rude comments and stares, we still had a great time. :) Oh, and is Jaymes in proper "form" in the Ergo here, does anyone know? This is the first time I've had him on my back, and he seemed uncomfortable. Maybe he just prefers to be in front, or maybe it was just the heat.

Rosy cheeked boy.


The highlight of the trip for Isabella, they went down this slide SO much!

Our little hand holder, he always has to hold one of our hands when we are outside now, or someplace different. That makes this mama happy (and relieved, and much less nervous about him darting off!). :)

Mini Vacation

Last weekend we went away for a quick weekend trip. Isabella loves butterflies, so we went to The Butterfly House, which is an indoor butterfly garden with over 800 butterflies from around the world flying all around. I'm actually a tiny bit freaked out by butterflies, so I was hoping I wouldn't have any land on me! Thankfully, I didn't have any land on me, but as soon as we walked in the door, one landed on Isabella that did not want to leave!

It was really neat to see, and quite educational. The highlight of our little trip, though, was the indoor water park at the hotel we stayed at! Monte and Isabella spent quite a bit of time there, as I stayed in the room while Jaymes napped.

This slide was a big hit!

Glad to be home

We just got back a couple of days ago from a little vacation. Well, vacation for the kids and I, but the reason we went was because Monte had four days of meetings/classes to attend. So the kids and I decided to tag along. We hardly saw Monte at all, maybe an hour a day. By the end of our stay Isabella was crying because she missed Daddy so much. Luckily, Monte's dad works for the same company, so I had my mother-in-law there to help out most of the time. Isabella had a blast with Grandma, they spent a lot of time in the pool, and I went swimming with her on the last day. We had a suite overlooking the pool, which Isabella was THRILLED about! We also spent one day shopping, which was exhausting. Jaymes really doesn't sleep unless he's in his crib, then he sleeps great, but you can pretty much forget about him sleeping anywhere else. So the day of shopping about did him in! I finally took him in the mother's lounge at the mall, where it was quiet and free of distractions for him, and he finally went to sleep, then slept in his carseat in the stroller for a while (I'm thinking I would love an Ergo, just seems like a lot of money, though). He also got his first tooth while we were gone! That made for an off and on fussy baby! So we didn't really see Daddy, had an over tired, off schedule, teething baby, but . . . Isabella had a blast, and I admit, it was fun to get away, plus spend time with my mother-in-law. I will also add, though, if we go on vacation this summer, we are considering leaving Jaymes with Grandma and Grandpa, then he can feel free to sleep in his bed until his little heart is content.

Jaymes even got his feet wet, and loved it! Hanging out with Grandma.

Jaymes is very happy to be home.

A new shirt, her and Daddy's favorite! The kids needed spring/summer clothes. It's crazy, I don't even hardly look at clothes for myself anymore, just head straight to the kids stores/departments. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only mom that does this!

Vacation

With the baby coming this summer, we weren't going to do much for a summer vacation this year. Then we decided if all went well at my doctor's appt. last week (which it did), and if he said it was okay for me to go (which he did), we would take off for a few days and have one last vacation as a family of 3. We left for the Twin Cities right after Church on Sunday, so we did our Father's Day celebrating on Saturday. I made Monte's favorite meal, Sweet and Sour Chicken, along with Father's Day cupcakes for dessert.

I didn't bother printing off directions for the hotel, because I figured we could just plug in the address in our GPS. Little did we know that it was a brand new hotel, so the GPS couldn't find it. It was quite the fiasco trying to find it, but after some help from St. Anthony, we stumbled upon it! It had an adorable little toddler waterpark area, which Isabella LOVED!

She got in the big pool with Daddy the first day, but the next two days she just wanted to be in the pool pictured above, she had so much fun!

We spent one of the days at the Mall of America, we went to Underwater World
there, and had a blast. Isabella could not get over the fact that there were sharks swimming over her head (you walk through a tunnel where everything swims all around and over you). This picture was taken there, the pictures taken in the tunnels didn't turn out very good because of the lighting.

We let her pick out a souvenir from our trip at the gift shop there. She chose a purple sea turtle, and that thing has hardly left her side. She took it everywhere with her while we were on vacation.

Here we're eating lunch overlooking the theme park, Nickelodeon Universe. I love that she loved just watching all the rides and activities, and never once wanted to go on any of them.

We also went to the huge Cabela's in the suburb we stayed at, ate at some of our favorite restaurants, and went to an amazing outlet mall

with 100 outlet stores! Monte told me I was an absolute pleasure to shop with while pregnant, since I wasn't about to buy any clothes for myself right now, ha! So I didn't have a desire to go in any stores for myself. Monte got some great deals on clothes for work at the Old Navy outlet. There was a book store there where I got two big Taste of Home cookbooks for $4 each! One is all desserts (of course!) and the other is all freezer cooking recipes, that might come in handy with a new baby.

The only bad part of the trip was that after walking around the Mall of America all day, I was up almost all night with contractions. I took my medication, which slowed them down some, but the medication has some bad side effects, so then I was up because my med was making me short of breath, and my heart race. But thankfully, all seems to be well, and I'm back to having my normal random contractions every now and then.

It was such a fun trip, and so much fun for us to see Isabella having so much fun!

This was in the hotel before we left, once again she's not letting go of her sea turtle.

Mini Vacation

Monte had a Dr. appointment yesterday afternoon. Since it's a couple hour drive, in a much bigger city, we decided to go the day before and do some fun things. The zoo there is bigger than our local zoo, so it was fun to see a few more exhibits there. After the zoo, we headed to see the waterfalls, it was so much fun, Isabella loved it! We also got some shopping in, mostly browsing, but I did get Isabella some things for fall/winter. And of course we had to go swimming in the hotel pool. Monte's appointment went great, he's doing GREAT, it was basicly just a check up with some lab work.

We had the stroller with, but she wanted to walk everywhere. After an entire day of walking at the zoo, and then all around the waterfalls, she had blisters on her feet. Thankfully Daddy saved the day, and carried her at the end.

Wrapping it Up

I was just thinking these vacation posts have been drug out, we've been home for an entire week now. But I'm glad that I took the time to document it, because it will be nice to look back on. There are so many reasons to blog, I would say that my number one reason is to record family memories for us. I love looking back at posts from a long time ago, but sometimes it makes me sad to see how fast Isabella is growing up. :(

We spent one day in the little town of Keystone. It's basically a big tourist trap, with tons of cute little stores and shops, places to eat, etc. We love going to the taffy shop there, and watching them make taffy (but more importantly buying and EATING the taffy!). Isabella insisted we take her picture on this weird donkey looking thing.


Another thing we did while out in the Black Hills was wine tasting. We fell in love with Prairie Berry winery out there, and had to go two times! On our way home we stopped at the famous Wall Drug, which is where the picture below is from. It was a wonderful vacation, I was sad to come home, I could have used another week out there. :) But oh well, all good things must come to an end. And I was so happy to see that all my flowers didn't die from lack of watering when we got home. Our wonderful neighbor came over and watered for us.

Hiking

We made sure to get Isabella back to the camper every afternoon for her nap. Everyday, Monte's parents insisted that they also just wanted to stay at the campground, and relax while she was napping. They also insisted that Monte and I go do things by ourselves while she was napping. So almost every afternoon he and I went hiking in the Black Hills National Forest. It was very rough terrain at times, and also very remote. I was fine with it until we heard a RATTLESNAKE one day!! There were so many trees, rocks, etc. that we didn't see it, but it was loud, and unmistakingly a rattlesnake. Apparently they only rattle when they sense danger nearby, their rattle is their warning. Were WE the danger it sensed?! I'm guessing so! So with that, and also all of the warnings out that there are mountain lions in the area, I was DONE hiking, although I love it otherwise. That was definitely a scary moment for me, but if you ask my husband, he'll tell you it was the hightlight of his trip - hearing a rattlesnake in the wild.

And by the way, we opted to spend our alone time the next afternoon (our last day there) at the mall . . . just a little safer. :)

Hiking in the Black Hills National Forest