Tag Archives: Minnesota

So this happened.

4 Jan

race reg

I signed up for my first sprint triathlon since 2011! I have been toying with the idea of getting back into multisport for a while, and what better way than to do the race hosted in Nevis, MN, my husband’s hometown? It’s on August 8, which is exactly 4 months after my due date. I will definitely not be the fastest I’ve ever been but I’m sure I will be able to finish! Even though running is out for the remainder of my pregnancy, I plan to join the local Y and start swimming and biking again. I haven’t consistently swam and biked since 2011, so I’m sure it’ll be a learning curve once again. I’m going to try to set up my tri bike on my trainer too in our basement, but I think that the belly will be too much in the way to ride it. We’ll see.

Regardless, I’m excited!!

I’ll be back in the next couple days with our Christmas and New Year’s recaps, plus a look back at 2014. Hope your holidays were great!

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Thanksgiving Weekend 2014

2 Dec

I had grand plans for Thanksgiving this year, but apparently God wanted to teach me a lesson in slowing down and letting go because things didn’t go quite as planned.

We hosted the big meal at our house for Travis’ immediate family, my parents and my brother. We’ve never hosted a fancy meal for that many people so it was a learning experience! Monday, I went grocery shopping after Emma went to bed. Tuesday, I deep-cleaned the house while Emma was at daycare. So far so good.

Wednesday, I attempted to repurpose an old tablecloth that didn’t fit our new table into a table runner and placemats. Well, somehow I got my math wrong because the table runner ended up being too short and then my sewing machine broke in the middle of the placemats. I ended up borrowing a tablecloth from my mother-in-law. It worked, but that wasn’t the plan! (Luckily, the table runner fits our table when we only have one leaf in it.)

Some more of our fall decorations:

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My parents, Travis’ brother and his girlfriend arrived Wednesday night and we had elk steaks, roasted vegetables and mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner. After getting everyone mostly situated, I hit the sack for an early morning – running the local turkey trot. Never mind that it was supposed to be about 0 degrees at the start.

Unfortunately, that plan got derailed as well because I developed a horrible sore throat and cough overnight that made me sound like a 50-year-old chain smoker. Running outside in the freezing cold probably wouldn’t be a great idea. So no turkey trot. Money down the drain.

Being sick also meant that I couldn’t help out in the kitchen much, since who wants a sickly person making their food? Instead, I took a nap, a long hot shower and directed people to where things were and what else had to be done. (I must admit, it was nice in some ways.)

The most important things though – food and family – were perfect. We all ate until we couldn’t eat anymore and enjoyed conversation, watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and playing Big Buck Hunter.

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Teeny tiny tableIMG_6055 (Large)

Emma was not impressed with the Thanksgiving fareIMG_6056 (Large)

Quick family picture in the single digits!IMG_6058 (Large)

 

The cute cupcakes that Travis’ bro and his girlfriend made

Everyone left that evening except my parents and brother. It was nice to have some extra time with them.

Friday morning, Travis and I headed to our 21-week ultrasound while my parents and brother watched Emma. Everything looks great! I have my 22-week appointment with my OB tomorrow.

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Legs up over the head

After my parents and brother left, it was Emma’s naptime – which, these days, means time for mommy or daddy to hold Emma for a nap. She was a little sick and we’re pretty sure she’s getting her 2-year molars. She’s been putting her hands in her mouth a lot, drooling up a storm and seems to be in pain quite often. Poor girl. After Emma’s nap, we attempted some Black Friday shopping but Emma had a meltdown so we just came back home.

Saturday, Travis’ uncle got married so we journeyed down to the Cities for the wedding. It was nice to see his extended family again, and Emma actually did really well. There was another little girl there her age and Emma walked right up to her and gave her a big hug. So cute! I am proud of Emma for being so friendly and outgoing.

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Eating a tide-me-over at McDonald’s before the wedding

Sunday, we went to church and then hung out at home until our date night! Some friends watched Emma while Travis and I went to Mockingjay Part One. It was good – different than the other Hunger Games movies and a little slow at first, but we enjoyed it overall. Then we grabbed a quick bite at Buffalo Wild Wings before we picked Emma up.

It was a fun weekend! Unfortunate that I had to get sick (and am STILL sick) but such is life, right?

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Fall Fun at the Farm on St. Mathias

22 Sep

Last Saturday, Travis, Emma and I went to a fall festival with my mother-in-law and Trav’s aunt. It was a fundraiser for the Early Childhood Coalition here in Brainerd. We had a lot of fun!

The first thing we did was go through the corn maze.

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There were 8 different scissors you were supposed to find and use to cut your ‘punch card’. If you got them all, you got a treat (which ended up being a sucker). I think we found almost all of them.

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One of the bridges had a slide – that was fun (yes, I went down.)

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After the maze, we checked out the llamas and alpacas, and then got some food. I had a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie that was pretty tasty.

Then we went on the ‘hayride’. I thought it took us out to the pumpkin patch but it just went in a circle back to where we started.

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By that time, Emma was getting pretty tired so we headed back home for lunch.

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{Unrelated side note: My laptop died so I will be blogging from my phone more often until I find a replacement. Please forgive any spelling or formatting errors!}

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Cabin Time

7 Sep

In August, Emma and I drove down to my parents’ cabin for one last hurrah before lake season is over – unfortunately, Travis had to work so he didn’t come with us. Bah! We drove down Friday and back Saturday so it was short, but nice. We took the pontoon out to the local sandbar and around the lake.

20140815_170428 20140815_143618 20140815_170417 20140815_170420Emma loved throwing stuff in the water, so we hooked one of her toys on a rope.

On Saturday, we girls journeyed to the outlet mall in North Branch to do some shopping. I ended up buying Dress #5 for my brother’s wedding (finally, a keeper!) and my mom found a necklace to wear with hers. I bought Emma a shirt and some socks from Oshgosh. And I ate way too much ice cream – I ordered a single scoop and it was like 4 scoops. Emma also rode the carousel, which I failed to take a picture of.

Then the weekend before Labor Day, Travis, Emma and I went up to Travis’ parents’ cabin in Voyageurs National Park (right across the border from Canada!) with his parents and brother. It was a cooler weekend, so we didn’t spend as much time in the water as we would’ve had it been warmer, but we still enjoyed being up there. Emma slept pretty well the first night, and not so great the second night. Of course, the second night was when we agreed to have Travis sleep in the cabin instead of the bunkhouse so that he didn’t have to worry about making noise and waking Emma up. Well, that lasted about 30 minutes before I was down in the cabin requesting demanding backup.

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IMG_5835Can’t believe the summer is over already!

Emma is 17 months old today, so I’m hoping to post her update and our San Francisco trip recap in the next few days, as well as a Worth Repeating quote too! We’ll see if that happens. 🙂 

 

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Settling In

27 Jul

We moved into our new house a month ago tomorrow. It has taken pretty much that whole time for me to adjust to our ‘new normal’. It’s amazing how you can think mentally that you’re handling a situation pretty well, but your body reacts in a way that makes you realize, “Oh yeah, I am kind of having a hard time with this.” After getting food poisoning on July 4th, I was dizzy for about a week and a half, and then I got a mild cold. Nothing debilitating, just enough to make chasing after a toddler not the most enjoyable thing.

I think God was telling me to slow down, but true to form, I fought against it. I had a house to organize! Even though I want to be intentional with decorating, my OCD personality can’t stand seeing things sitting around without a home of their own. But I finally saw rest for the gift it is and napped during quite a few of Emma’s naps. 

This past week, I finally had the energy and health to tackle some of the piles around the house, which I’m thankful for. Emma’s room is finished, and I think I might even love it more than her original nursery. I’ll share pictures in the next couple of weeks.

I’ve also had the energy and motivation to start keeping a loose routine/schedule. Honestly, I was floundering when we first moved into our house because I had nothing going on. Whether it was hormones, spiritual warfare or just my self-pity kicking in, I was in a bad headspace for several weeks. I’m doing better now, but still trying to keep in mind that moving to a new state and city is hard. It takes time to adjust – so I need to give myself grace, and be ok with things being hard for a while.

In the midst of all that emotional turmoil, Travis, Emma and I have been having great times with family. One weekend, we drove up to Nevis for a baby shower and then to Bemidji for my sister-in-law’s housewarming party. Last weekend, the 3 of us checked out the Brainerd zoo – Safari North – and fed farm animals and parakeets. Yesterday, we drove down to my parents’ cabin and went swimming and pontooning on the lake.

We’ve been meeting and reconnecting with friends too. This coming week, one of my good friends from college and her daughter are coming up to visit. I visited them in St. Cloud back at the end of June. I’m also one of 4 women from a local church in a weekly book study. It’s been nice to have weekly fellowship again.

Travis and I have checked out 3 different churches so far. They seem like all nice churches – it will be a tough decision! We have friends at one of the churches, though, so that is a definite selling point. Since this will hopefully be our church home for many, many years to come, we want to be patient and make sure that we choose the right church for our family. 

I’m hoping that as I settle into a routine again, I’ll be blogging more often. But I’m kind of obsessed with watching Burn Notice on Netflix at the moment, and that’s usually what I do after Emma goes to bed. 

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The (Unofficial) House Tour

17 Jul

I was going to wait to show you our new house until everything was in its place, but you might be waiting… for a very long time. So without further adieu, here it is. Prepare to be very underwhelmed by picture quality. (But this is the unofficial tour after all.)

We are in a development of ~ 20 houses about 5 miles west of Baxter.

Here’s our street:

20140717_193648And how our driveway looks when you drive up:

20140717_193655I mostly love that you can’t see our house from the road, but it does make meeting neighbors a little bit trickier. I’m guessing a lot of people buy a house like this because they don’t want to meet their neighbors (or at least not very much), but we do!

Here’s what the view is looking back toward the road from the middle of our driveway:

20140717_193549The front and back of our house:

20140717_194233 20140717_194315And our awesome view of the Gull River from the big picture window:

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Now, for the inside. This is your view walking in the front door:

20140717_200013And if you turn around, here’s the front entryway:20140717_200028It’s a very open floor plan, with the living room, dining room and kitchen being pretty much all one room. On the other side of the wall next to the refrigerator is the laundry room, and next to that is a door to the garage. There’s also a closet over there that we’re using as a pantry (love!).

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The open door in the bottom right picture is the ‘book nook’ (my office/guest room):

booknookAfter that doorway, the hallway makes a T. To the left is the master bedroom and bathroom:

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To the right, is Emma’s bathroom and bedroom.

emmasroomWe got her pink curtains hung up!

That does it for the upper floor. The stairs to the basement are right off the dining room/living room area. The first thing you see when you get down the stairs is the wall with the built-in bookshelves:

20140717_200654After you ’round the corner’, you see this:

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It’s a very long, skinny room which makes it a little interesting to arrange. This is how the previous owners had it, so we’re trying it out. Right in the middle of the room along the left wall is a sliding glass door that leads out onto a concrete patio. A few more pictures of that room:

basementI haven’t used the elliptical once yet. Sad.

The tiled space above is what we’re planning to one day turn into a 5th bedroom. To the right of that space is a hallway that leads to the downstairs bathroom and the 4th bedroom, which is currently Travis’ office:

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And that’s it! Whew, that took a lot longer than I thought it would. But I finally got wise and used an online collage maker (befunky). Why did I not figure this out before?!? So much easier.

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4th of July 2014

10 Jul

We had a very enjoyable 4th of July, even though I ended up getting (what I think was) food poisoning and spending most of the actual holiday on the couch!

Emma and I drove down on Thursday morning. Travis came down Friday night, since he had to work on Friday. My brother, SIL and nephew were already there when Emma and I got there. My younger brother and SIL came up for dinner on Thursday night – they spent the rest of the weekend down in Indiana with her family.

Friday, my dad and I ran to Walmart before breakfast for a few things, which is when I started feeling sick. I thought it was because I had drank 1 1/2 cups of strong coffee and not eaten much. After breakfast, we took a pontoon ride, which I enjoyed laying down.

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The rest of the day, I pretty much just laid on the couch. More family arrived around dinnertime. I was feeling slightly better – enough to be up and moving around some, but not enough to eat any dinner. I stayed up just until Travis arrived and then hit the sack – so I missed the fireworks this year! 😦 Around midnight, I ended up throwing up a couple of times. I felt better the next day, but then I got a massive headache and have been extremely dizziness since. So weird. I went to the doctor on Tuesday and she said it should go away in 7-10 days. ::Here’s hoping.::

Anyway, our family reunion was on the 5th so that day, we all got dressed up in our Superhero costumes. I didn’t take any pictures the whole weekend so I’m waiting on the people who did to post their pictures. My SIL Jen was on the ball as always (with taking pictures AND uploading them), so that’s where all of these pictures came from. 😉 Thanks Jen!

10527555_10101510482827512_6214095437906051171_n 12488_10101510482967232_8160426312722380331_n 10487195_10101510482612942_7356252945640392589_n We of course ate a lot of good food too (though my not feeling well kept me from digging into the sweets and booze!).

The evening of the 5th, our group activity was an obstacle course that me, Travis and my parents put together. My uncle Roger told the story that the Iraqis had a huge stash of beer that they were going to pour into the Red Sea so we had to go in and save the beer! The first obstacle was zigzagging around 5-gallon buckets with pool noodles sticking out. Then we had to cross over a kiddie pool balancing on a 2 x 4. The next was crawling under “laser beams” – string attached to tall wooden stakes. Then we ran into the “burning building” – painted cardboard hung on the garage with a cutout for the door – and grabbed a water balloon – the “beer” – and carried it down the driveway on a shovel. Once that was accomplished, we threw 3 tennis balls at 3 cups to knock them over – which was “killing the bad guy”. Three people raced at a time, one from each of 3 teams. 100 points per person were possible – 30 for the obstacles, 30 for the water balloon, and 30 for the cups (10 each), plus 10 for being the first one to finish in your round. It was a lot of work to plan, set up and tear down, but everyone really enjoyed it! I think we have to do something like that every year.

The 6th was the best day weather-wise, so we spent a lot of it out on the water. We went swimming, floating, paddleboarding, jetskiing, waterskiing and kayaking. Emma loved being in the water, once she got used to the temperature.

We even got the dogs in on the action (though they didn’t get wet at all).

10500334_10101510493151822_2413368952540722719_n 10492140_10101510500876342_7304979035915219610_n 10447861_10101510493236652_6122080517151365786_nThe night of the 6th, it was just my immediate family left so we all went out on one last pontoon ride (except for Travis, who took a nap).

10501717_10101510500946202_8798094127552864707_n 10435843_10101510493670782_3730429239130951360_n 10456816_10101510494079962_5195454766865633883_nThe next day, it was time to go home! Sad. But we’re looking forward to next year already – the theme is Disney! I am so dressing up as a princess.

I’ll post more pictures of our costumes once those get uploaded to FB. Looking at you Jayme!

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Help Me Readers!

2 Jul

I have some dilemmas and I’m looking to you readers for advice. Here they are:

– Emma is stuck between needing 1 and 2 naps. If I keep her up long enough to just take 1, she gets overtired and won’t go to sleep without me rocking her. If I put her down for 2 and she actually falls asleep, her bedtime ends up being around 9 / 9:30, which is too late. I want it around 7 / 7:30 – 8 at the very latest. Lately, she has a hard time falling asleep early enough for 2 naps. She used to be awake for 3.5 hours between naps; now it seems like she can go between 4 – 4.5 hours before needing one. Any ideas? If you’ve made the transition, what did you do?

– We’ve stopped using cloth diapers because Emma soaks through them in about an hour. Putting 2 inserts in helps but makes the diapers so bulky. I’ve thought about buying new inserts but just haven’t taken the time to research. I’d like to keep using them because we have them, but I don’t want to change Emma’s outfits 5 times a day. Thoughts?

– Our new house has almost 2 acres but there’s no fence. We don’t want our dogs harrassing the neighbors so we have been taking them out on a leash all the time. We don’t like the extra work and the dogs are going stir crazy now, since they’re used to running around like idiots in Nevis. We’re thinking about/planning to get an in-ground fence. Anyone have ideas or experience with that? Brands to recommend? Did you trench it in yourself or hire it done? Are there other alternatives we’re not thinking of? (We’ve tried leaving them on long cables but they hate it.)

– Northern Minnesota has TONS of bugs. Our house is on the river and in the woods, so bugs are everywhere. Emma gets bit by mosquitoes every time we go outside. I know it’s pretty much a fact of life here but I would like to find some way to prevent her from getting so many bites. Not going outside is not an option because Emma loves being outside. Does anyone know of a baby-friendly bug spray or have any other ideas? I plan to ask our pediatrician next Monday too. If she has ideas, I’ll let you know!

Thanks for any and all help!

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Beach Day

17 Jun

After almost nonstop rain for days, today was gorgeous. So Emma and I went to the beach in Nevis – her first time at any beach! I think she enjoyed it.

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The water wasn’t incredibly warm but Emma was brave and waded in up to her waist. She also enjoyed splashing her feet in the water as I held her on my lap.

It still amazes me what a difference humidity makes. It is only about 80 degrees today but it feels much warmer. In Colorado, 80 would feel a little too cool for the beach!

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Memorial Day Weekend 2014

29 May

Sorry, didn’t mean to leave you hanging with my last post, but I’ve been busy pinning ideas for our new house! A couple weeks ago, we drove down to Brainerd on a Wednesday evening to look at just 2 houses – one we had found on the MLS and the other had been recommended by our realtor based on the other house. Looking at the pictures online, we were pretty pumped about the one our realtor had sent us but it’s always different in person. We also weren’t sure if it had a 5th non-conforming bedroom – since Travis works from home, we would like to have 4 bedrooms, plus an office.

When we arrived at the house though, it was just as awesome as we had thought it would be. And the basement has a large area that could totally be closed off for a 5th real bedroom, so that pretty much sold us. We put an offer down in the next few days, they countered (which we mostly expected), and we accepted the counter. The inspection was done last week – we asked for a handful of things and they agreed to all of them, so now we’re on to the appraisal and closing on June 20!

We won’t move in until the following weekend for a couple of reasons: 1) Travis’ parents will be in Alaska the weekend we close and it’d be nice to have their help, and 2) The current owners have cats. Travis is allergic, so we’re going to have the ducts and carpets cleaned, plus the whole house deep-cleaned. We’re also going to scrub the rooms that Travis will be in the most with a denaturalizer product to kill the cat dander and ‘germs’. But the owners chose paint colors and stuff wisely, so there are only a few things that I want to change before we move in.

So that’s the story. I’m not pregnant again, if you were wondering. 😉

On to our holiday weekend…

We drove up to Handberg’s Marina on Crane Lake on Saturday morning and got up there by about 11:30 (it’s almost a 4 hour drive!). We loaded all of our stuff into the boat and set off for the cabin, about 30 minutes by boat.

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IMG_5769 (Large) IMG_5766 (Large)The weather this year was PERFECT. Couldn’t have asked for anything better – well, except the water be warmer I guess. The ice had just gone off the lake the week before so only a few brave souls jumped in for a few minutes. I waded in the water a decent amount while cleaning pine needles off the beach, but that was as far as I would go.

Activities during our cabin stay included:

Emma swinging…

IMG_5778 (Large)And napping. (Emma’s getting a bunch of new teeth right now, so when she napped in the swing, it was a relief to not have to battle her!)

IMG_5802 (Large)Lots of playing in water warmed by the sun on the dock (don’t worry – we watched her like a hawk, and rigged up some shade after these pictures were taken.)

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IMG_5798 (Large)Campfires

A canoe ride

The dogs enjoyed themselves too. Both our dogs and my sister-in-law’s 2 dogs were completely wiped out the second day. Everytime we went into the bunkhouse, they followed us hoping it was naptime!

IMG_5799 (Large) IMG_5771 (Large) IMG_5780 (Large)Hope you had a good holiday too!

 

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