Packing...

Thankfully we don't have tons of stuff since our annual moves help clean out junk. But still, packing is packing and I don't like it. It's even more challenging with a 17 month old wanting attention or unpacking as I pack. We've been packing mostly after he is in bed, which leaves his room almost untouched. I have boxed up his too small clothes and too big clothes but the rest I'll just toss into a box. We have his room, the kitchen, and odds and ends to finish up.

Our closing is tomorrow. I have some friends coming over tomorrow evening to help me clean the house and then we hope to get most of the moving done on Sat. I don't want to be in limbo too long. Another blessing is the house is only about 5 miles away so we can just through stuff in.

I can't believe this day is already here. When we set the closing date, I thought it would be a long month, but as usually we somehow managed to stay busy. My sister came up one weekend, Mike's cousin got married last weekend and then this weekend is it.

We are excited to get moved in, settled and get the fire pit dug!

THE house

The Friday before we left to help my sister move in in Madison, our realtor sent the usual email with a list of houses for us to look at. One house stood out because of the price and location. It was at the top of our price range but just 2 miles from Mike's work. One downside of where Mike works is all the house in that area are usually at least $100,000 more than what we can pay for. But not this house!! We drove by on our way out of town and decided it was definitely one to look at. I emailed our realtor and told him if this house is still available on Mon, we'd like to take a look at it.

Monday afternoon came and the house was still on the market, but barely. Apparently the seller's realtor had another offer to present but hadn't yet. This is usually pretty odd for a realtor to sit on an offer but we had until 7 that evening to put in an offer if we were going to.

The house wasn't a foreclosure which is pretty much all that we had been looking at so far. It was neat to walk into a house that had been cared for, currently lived in and had fresh flowers, music and the a/c running in anticipation of us coming!! So we put in an offer that evening and started the waiting. This is our second offer we had put in on a house, so we expected to have to wait like we did with the first house. Maybe about two hours later we heard back that if we adjusted our offer slightly we'd get the house. Thankfully it wasn't a price adjustment! We sent the adjusted offer back in and got THE house!

It happened so fast, literally one day, that we had a hard time believing we just bought a house. The funny thing is Mike has only been inside the house twice. My parents and grandmother were able to see it and they really liked the house.

A few details about the place: it's a story and a half house with 4 bed/1 bath, has two wood burning fireplaces!!!!, a huge unfinished basement and backs up to a lake. Now that lake part isn't too rare up here in the Twin Cities where there are tons of lakes. This lake is a wildlife refuge so no motorized boating is allowed but we are hoping we'll still be able to canoe on it.

So here we are, joining the masses to be first-time home owners!!!

(I'll post pictures when we actually own the house.)

What we've been doing

It's been 3 months since the last post and we've been busy this summer. Camping with friends, visiting with family, eating some great food and the occasional house hunt (that's enough for it's own post later).

In July, Mike surprised me with a backpacking trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota. We dropped Josiah off with Mike's parents for four days and headed west. We stopped at the Badlands National Park on the way and hiked a short trail to an overlook of the park.

We backpacked in the Black Elk Wilderness just down the road from Mt. Rushmore. We swam in Sylan Lake and hiked Harney Peak. At 7244 ft, Harney Peak is the highest peak east of the Rockies. On the way back home, we drove through Sturgis, where everyone one was getting geared up for the rally. We had a great time and the weather was perfect besides the afternoon thunder storms that blew through. Check out the photo albums to the right for pictures of our trip.

In August, we went on our third annual berry picking trip to Bayfiel, WI. Our friends and their brother's family joined us so we had six kids under 4 in tow. We camped along Lake Superior and survived the nightly thunder and lightening storms. The kids slept through it all while the parents were awake praying and counting the miles between lightening and thunder. We picked blueberries and raspberries and probably ate as much as we picked. We arrived to the farm late so many of the berries had been picked but we still enjoyed the annual berry pancakes the following morning.

That next weekend, we drove to Madison, WI to help my sister move in. Yes, that's right, Lauren is now 4 hrs east of us in Madison starting her Doctorate program in Music Education at the University of Wisconsin. She had many universities to choose from but this one seemed to have the best program and also it was closest to us! That weekend we also got to visit with my Dad and Grandmother who drove up with Lauren to help her move. And with Mom who flew in for about two weeks.

The Monday after all this visiting, we went and looked at THE house. Stay tuned to find out why it's THE house!

He's a walking!

This first video was taken two days ago.

This next one was taken today.

He can't stand up on his own yet without the help of something or someone. He has tried but it just looks like he's stuck in the touching his toes position. He's just got the hang of sitting from a crawling position recently. It's interesting to see in what order he gets things figured out!

And yes we do know that it's 2009 and there are much better quality video cameras out now. It does what we need it to do so that's good enough for now.

Good Ol Home Videos

But this time we aren't watching them on a VCR.

These are videos we've taken in the past month.

Posting for family enjoyment:

My sister sent this card congratulating me on surviving my first year of motherhood.

Josiah trying out his walker he got for his birthday.

As you can see he's gotten much better at it.

Starting to use the spoon.

Josiah 1st Birthday

For Josiah's first birthday (which was a month ago!), we had few friends over for cake and ice cream.  We live across the street from one of the 10,000+ lakes in MN.  Lake Josephine has a park with a swimming beach, playground, boat launch, fishing dock and numerous picnic tables. The weather was absolutely beautiful that day.  I know everyone enjoyed being outside.  

A local fancy grocery store offers free birthday cakes for your baby's first birthday so we took them up on the offer.  I had never been in the store before I went to order the cake but I did buy a few other things there to ease my guilt!  This store is carpeted and does not have your typical layout of a grocery store, I literally walked all over before I found the milk tucked away in the back corner.  Here is the cake they made for Josiah, it was delicious.  

I had the options of chocolate, white or marble cake, chocolate or white icing, balloon or flower decorations and what I wanted the cake to say.  This picture was taken after I started slicing!

I made a special gluten, dairy and egg free chocolate brownie for Josiah to chow down and boy did he!  I thought the brownies were pretty good but I didn't have any takers on them at the party, which meant more for me later!  We did give Josiah a few smaller pieces a couple of days later but he may have been burned out from the big one he ate.  I gave him that big of a piece for picture taking purposes but he probably ended up eating 3/4 of it, the rest fell through the cracks of the table.

Mike tried lighting the candle but it too windy for the little flame to hold.

Here is his nice brownie face and taking a break to chew on the fork, still no teeth at this time!

After downing the brownie, he need to laugh it off.  He loves the swing, even more so when his daddy is pushing him!  These baby swings are wonderful, I'm so glad the parks have them.  At first when he'd swing he had to hold on but now that he's used to it he'll flail his arms and kick his legs. 

His bud Joshua decided to join in on the fun.  Joshua is Josiah's polar opposite, lots of dark hair!

When we got home that evening we opened his presents.  The theme of the presents was blocks.  Three of his toys had different shaped blocks with holes to put them in , he loved them.  One of the block toys was a walker that he could push around.  There will be video of that later on!

It was a great 1st birthday with friends and sunshine!

Crawling...And Climbing?

Hello everyone! This is the very first post by the 'Mike' in 'The Mike and Lacy Show'. Lacy graciously allowed me to pitch in and provide an update, so here goes!

Since our last post, Josiah has continued to hone and develop his new found crawling skills. The video below was taken a week ago, about two weeks into his little 'experiment'. As you can see, he's made marked improvements in both speed and agility. The only downside is that he now gets into things he shouldn't about twice as often as he used to! (Yes, those are Christmas lights Josiah is trying to get a hold of. Don't tell anyone we still have them up ;)

Thus far, Josiah has approached crawling with the utmost prudence and care. And who can blame him? Bumbling around on your hands and knees probably feels pretty weird the first time you try it. But oddly enough, the same cannot be said for his attempts to go vertical. We don't know if he wants to be closer to where Mom and Dad are or if he just wants a new challenge, but he's definitely ready to go up. Lace had suspected that he was 'trying' to pull himself up over the last couple of days, but neither of us had actually seen him do it. Today he decided to show us (over and over again) what he's been working on:

Needless to say, we dropped his crib bed down to the lowest setting immediately after recording this!

Caution! What you see below may cause laughter.

Crawling

Josiah is 10 months old and on the verge of taking off!  As you can see below he is trying out this thing called crawling.  He's not consistent about crawling yet and prefers the side-winder army sprawl, but if he wants something, he goes after it!

He's been doing really well trying new fruits and veggies, he's not too crazy about chunky stuff and he likes his food warm.  I think avocados are his favorite so far.

At the beginning of Jan. we discovered that he was allergic to milk after we gave him a spoonful of yogurt.  Then we had him tested for other allergies and he is pretty much allergic to everything.  He highest levels were for milk and wheat, but gluten, soy, egg white and nuts were positive also.  He's had some eczema and minor skin rashes off and on, but we thought that was mostly due to the dry winter weather.  It turns out it was all allergies from the food I was eating.  So guess who gets to go on a everything free diet for a few months!  I was and still am planning on breast feeding him until he turns one.  It's frustrating though that one of the reasons to breast feed was to decrease his chances of having food allergies!  Either way I don't regret having chosen to nurse him.

This past Fri was our 4th wedding anniversary.  Since I'm on a limited diet, we went to Fogo De Chao.  It's a Brazilian steakhouse where they bring around a variety of meats on big skewers and shave off pieces for you.   It was unbelievably delicious and all you can eat.  They also offer a salad bar for you to get your veggies in but we only went once and didn't fill our plate.  It's expensive but well worth the money.  They are located in a lot of big cities, so look one up next time you have something to celebrate!

Well that's a little bit of what's been going on with us.  

The child-proofing begins

Josiah's started playing roly-poly on his bedroom floor.  He no longer just flops around on his blanket.  He rolls until he can't go any more.  Just a little while ago he bonked his head into the bottom of his little rocking chair.  It left a red mark but it's already gone.  So now there is a blanket in front of the chair.

Next thing I know he'll be crawling!!

6 Months

Josiah turned 6 months this past Tues.  Wed. he had his check up and shots. We also started him on rice cereal that night. Below are two videos of his first tasting. I'll warn you ahead of time the first one is about 3 minutes long and the second is about 4 minutes. I didn't edit them because one, I'm not really sure how and two, I know our families want to see it all. If you are not family, don't feel obligated to watch the whole thing.  He makes some pretty good faces in the first video, so you don't miss much not watching the second one.

More cuteness...

Two post in one day!!

I should be getting supper started but...

The first weekend in Oct we took advantage of the beautiful fall weekend and went camping up along the North Shore of Superior.  We didn't get to the campground until after dark only to find out they were completely full as were all the other state parks along Superior!  Apparently you had to reserve a site 3 weeks in advance.  We just don't work that way.  Thankfully there were two forest campgrounds just down the road that had plenty of space available.

That night the temperature went below freezing to somewhere between 25-27 degrees.  It was cold but I surprisingly stayed warm if I didn't move, Mike didn't have as much luck.  Usually we have the aid of sleeping pads to soften the ground and keep us warm but yours truly didn't pack them!!  So we did not really enjoy our sleeping that night.  You're probably wandering how Josiah did during his first below freezing night.  Well, he didn't sleep as good as normal but probably because he was too hot!  We had that little guy wrapped up snug on top of a folded blanket and sleeping between us.  So we didn't end up staying another night since we didn't know what the temps were going to be.

I think Mike was more than eager to get out of the tent in the morning to get the fire started. We had a great breakfast of skillet hash: eggs, tater tots and bacon all cooked in bacon grease. 

 It was good and rich!  You can only get away with that when you're camping.

Hanging at the campsite with Dad

We enjoyed a nice relaxing morning cooking breakfast.  When we finally packed up, we went driving.  Usually Mike's not up for this, but he was that day.  We ended up driving to Ely.   Ely is a popular place due to it's proximity to the Boundary Waters, which is a popular canoeing destination in MN.

We ended our drive back at the state park we were going to spend the night.  We went for a short hike along the Baptism River.  

The fall leaves were pretty but we only saw one really red maple, the rest were birch trees and evergreens.

The following weekend was the University of Sioux Falls 125th Anniversary.  This is where Mike went for his undergrad and is only one hour past his parents house.  We stayed at his parents for the weekend and went to Sioux Falls on Sat to visit with Mike's college friends and one of his professors.  We had a good time visiting.

So that catches you up on our events. Somewhere along the way Josiah started sitting up.  He doesn't have any teeth yet but I keep checking.  Two boys born a few days before and after him have their bottom teeth in.  Mike and I didn't get any teeth until we were at least one, so I'm hoping he'll be the same way.

One more post will get you caught up to the present!

I'm a slacker...

I keep telling myself I need to post more often.  By the time I sit down to do another post there is sooo much that has happened I don't feel like going through it all!  It's been over a month since the last post! 

Well here's brief summary of what has been going on: (I have to read my last post to see where I left off)  Ok, ok, it's been WELL over a month since I've posted! (Now I'm looking at our calender to remind what has happened, sad.)

Not long after Josiah and I returned from TX, Mike and his brother went on a road trip out to California to go surfing for a week.  They only surfed for a day but took the week to travel, they hit several places on the way out to to CA: Vegas, Zion, and Hoover Dam.  They had more planned but they aren't as young as they used to be.  While they were enjoying themselves out on the road, my mom came up for the week.  We had much planned also but didn't get it all in.  We did go the Science Museum to see their Omnitheater movie about the Great Lakes.  The following day we drove up to Duluth for the day.  I always love going up there.  Lake Superior quickly became one of my favorite destinations since my time at Honeyrock.  We drove along Skyline drive above Duluth and ran into alot of bird watchers.  Early Sept. is when the hawks, eagles and other raptors start migrating south and Duluth is the place to watch.  We also went down by the harbor and watched a freighter come through the canal under the lift bridge.  It was really neat to see it up close.

Here it comes...

Closer...

There it goes under the lift bridge.

As you can see it was a beautiful day!

Josiah was mesmerized by the water.

I think this is the most sun he's had in his entire life, can you tell?

Josiah is waking up from his nap, so I'll stop here and try to continue during the next nap time.

Only in Texas...

is every other vehicle a SUV or bigger and can you go to a Mexican food restaurant and have the waiter ask if you want tea, water or Dr. Pepper!!! Man, I missed Texas!!

Josiah and I just spent 10 days down in Texas. We flew down the Tues before Labor Day and came back last Thursday. We had a great time and he did really well flying. I'm sure all the business men and women on our morning flights were excited to see me walk in with a baby, but thankfully he slept the whole time!!
The first few days we spent time in Abilene with my grandmother, Dad and Lauren. During the weekend we spent time with our Labor Day crowd (all of mom's college roomates and families, who we've gone camping every LD weekend before any of us kids were born). This time we stayed in a hotel which I didn't mind since it was hot! I've been spoiled by being up north already...
The last few days we spent with my mom in Dallas. My good friend Bethany also got to meet Josiah, we had a good visit with her!
And were able to see my Aunt, Uncle, cousin and her family. Here's some pictures from that visit:

Josiah, Lisa and cousin Ben

Cousin Ben was nice enough to let Josiah use a swim diaper, it worked even if a little big!

He didn't like his first time in the pool but...

he adjusted, you know he doesn't mind if he's chewing his fingers.

Josiah, Ben and Ben's older brother Kyle.
Three blue-eyed stud muffins!!

During this busy but fun month, Josiah started rolling from his back to his stomach and grabbing his feet!!

August was a month of many firsts:

• boat ride
• plane trip
• time in TX
• swimming
• rolling over
• grabbing feet
• getting licked by a chihuahua...just kidding Mike!!
• sticking feet in Lake Superior
• meeting friends and family
  

WOW! August flew by....

I'm not even sure where to start but I'll try to catch you up on everything we've been doing! I'm at Panera enjoying ME time and catching up on this blog.


The first weekend in Aug. we got together with Mike's college friends and families at a cabin north of here. It's seems everyone has cabin up north in MN, they even have a weekend cabin weather forecast on the evening news. There were six families that came from Minnesota, Wyoming, Illinios and Iowa. We slept outside in a tent and went to sleep to the sound of loons and people talking around the campfire. The weather was absolutely perfect, warm enough to swim during the day and cool enough at night to wear pants and sweatshirts! Josiah went on his first boat ride around the lake, he didn't say if he liked it or not? I already new most everyone or had at least met them once, but it was really nice that two other mom's had little guys too. We had a mini la leche group! I didn't have to hide away while I was feeding Josiah, instead got to talk to the others a lot.

The following weekend went camping again with one of the couples from the previous group. They where one vacation the whole time and we met them up in Bayfield, WI. We went berry picking at a farm up there. Bayfield is right on Lake Superior and by the Apostle Islands. It's a beautiful area that would be great a great place to live if you could stand the harsh winters! Funny thing is this time last year we were pregnant but didn't know it yet! So technically, this is Josiah's second time to be there. This is us last year!!

The blueberries were huge and very tasty! And the weather was a lot warmer! Here's some more pics from this trip this year:

Full moon coming up over Lake Superior and Madeline Island

Blueberry bushes

Some berries where the size of quarters!!

Blue Vista Farm

Our happy little guy!!

Josiah in Mike's hat...

Wyatt in Mike's hat.

After all that fun, we drove home with the driver's side window down because it broke and with a faulty driver's seatbelt buckle! So we took the slower scenic route through WI.
Mike has spent the last few weeks working on the Explorer. All these things and more would quite working right after we bought new tires!!! The Chilton and Hayne's manuals and Joe's salvage yard have become Mike's new best friends! By the time we're done, the Explorer will be made of more used parts than original. Also each of the used parts have come from every state we've lived in minus Idaho.
Okay time for a new post...

Josiah meets Chewie

What better way to celebrate a 3 month birthday than to introduce our son to Star Wars. The funny thing is we're not huge, huge fans, we just grew up watching the movies.
The Science Museum has a Star Wars exhibit going on right now. They have all the original costumes and model ships used in the movies. It was neat to watch how they filmed the ships flying and how they came up with the sound effects. Since CGI wasn't around back then, they were creative in making the movie.

In the omnitheater, a special effects movie was showing on how they made the model cities in Star Wars and how they blew up the capital in Independence Day. Josiah added his own special effect to the viewing. We went Monday night so very few people were in the theater. We sat away from everyone else so I could feed Josiah while we watched the show. Mike was burping him afterwards. Josiah's special effect was too much for the disposable diaper and Mike's hand, shirt and pants were the back up. As Mike was laying him down in the aisle for me to change him, he discovered the extent of the effect. He was a little grossed out and I was laughing a lot. Afterwards, he just shrugged it off being in Dad mode and we finished looking around the exhibit.

This is Josiah smiling at me while waiting for Dad to wash off in the bathroom. He's smiling cause he knew what he did!

Lumberjack Days at Stillwater

Stillwater is the birthplace of Minnesota and is on the St. Croix river that is the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. Back in the day lumberjacks would float logs down the St. Croix to the mills there.
So each year the have a festival with concerts, lots of good fried fair food, inflatable toys for kids and competitions. This started on Wednesday and ended tonight with a big fireworks show that we did not stay for. And silly me took our camera but didn't think about getting out to take pictures, I'll see if I can get some from our friends.
The competition for the lumberjacks consisted of sawing, chopping, running and climbing on or up logs. It was very impressive! The Outdoor Channel was filming it and will be airing it the fall.
They also had dogs competing on distance jumping and retrieving and vertical jumping. We saw mostly the dog competitions which where world championships. The dog that won the distance jumping beat his world record twice. The highest jump for the vertical was 7ft 8in.
At the end they had a dogs and logs competition. This involved the lumberjacks and dogs doing a relay in two teams, it was a lot fun to watch.
As far as the food was concerned we did pretty good only spending $20 on 5 things: 2 drumstick icecreams, a corn dog, cheese curds and a big refillable cup of root beer. The drumsticks were a deal at $1 each. Since I didn't grow up in a land that sold cheese curds, I've always been skeptical, but really it's just fried cheese. And we all know anything fried is generally good, but I'm not going to try the fried snickers.

(Side Note having nothing to do with Lumberjack Days...Sonic just opened up their first one in MN a few weeks ago and plan on opening 35 more in the twin cities in the next 5 years...How can they be the All American drive thru if they aren't ALL over America??...But none the less I am excited about this hope to go visit Sonic soon...after the 30 min wait to get in the parking lot is over!!! I believe the Minnesotans knew what they were missing.)

Josiah was a trooper the whole time, as long as he can eat, sleep and poop he doesn't mind were we drag him to!!

A Good Visit

Last week my mom came up for a visit. We had a good time running errands and playing with Josiah. The last day she was here we tried to take pictures with Josiah smiling. We really should have done it in the morning since that's when he's all smiles.
Josiah's starting to grab things more and I think it's intentional. It's more like if it is by his hands he grabs it but he's not reaching for things yet. He's making all sorts of sounds now too. It's great. We have a video camera so maybe I can catch him giggling. He usually just stares at the camera so maybe I'll have better luck with the video camera.

I love my Nerd!

I've always thought Mike was a well rounded computer geek.

Who's the Cool Non-Nerd?

That would be me!

We'll see how Nerdish Mike is when he gets home. He's an IT guy, how nerdy can it get?
This weekend he is doing a very non-nerdish thing, haying. He went home to help his dad and brother bale hay.
Fortunately my mom is coming to visit tomorrow so I'll only experience single-parenthood for less than 24 hours.