Emily had her first birthday party last Saturday. We headed down to Burnsville, to the Little Gym. It was really nice. I was very impressed with how they ran the party. I wish they weren't so far away. I would love to sign Emily up for a gymnastics session, she did great and was really good about following directions.
The girls started out doing some summersaults. Emily is a pro at those.
Then, they all ran around in a big circle pretending to be different animals.

Here's the monkey:

Then they were all pretending to be airplanes.

After while, they all layed down on this huge mat and the leader turned on the blower. It filled up to be a little bouncer and then the running began...

More running.....

Towards the end of the tumbling time, Cinderella showed up for a surprise visit to read a story about herself and then do some face painting. Emily went right after the birthday girl. She loves to get her face painted.

I (heart) Etsy!

Last week, another blog that I read occasionally asked what the different readers favorite Etsy stores were....Ironically, in July and August, I had been busy shopping on Etsy for various things. Etsy is such a cool place. There is a a kagillion things for sale out there.
I wanted to get my kids some cute, knit hats. I have a thing for hats. I've always been on the look out for something other than the regular old Target winter hat; when Emily gets on the bus there's always a couple kids with the same hat on.

so, I found these and they LOVE them:


and you know, we always practice good dental hygene and brush our teeth in the front yard....

I've got other Etsy stuff to share, but don't have time right now. I'll post them later. But, leave a comment and tell me what your favorite etsy stores are????

Emily's First Day of School

Emily had her first day of school today. She was very excited to ride the school bus again. She told Mary, the bus aide that she missed her every day.




We got a great report back, she had a very good first day today!

Gone Fishing

Louie got to go fishing with Grandpa Don last week. It was his first time fishing in a boat on the lake. Usually, we go fishing on the dock over at Lake Nokomis or Lake Hiawatha..

Louie caught his first fish!

Emily caught her first fish too!

Of course, Louie didn't want to touch it.

So excited!

Louie had his first day of preschool at Nativity today. As you can see from his smile, he was a little bit excited!



He was also really excited to finally get to use his pirate backpack. He and I found it on a random stop at Menards this past summer and he had to have it because of the skull and crossbones. Score! it was only $4!!! like every kid starting school, his backpack was wayyy too big; why do they make them so big???

When he got to his classroom, he had to move his apple to the tree to let the teachers know was there today.

And then, he played with playdough while waiting for school to start.

When it was time for us to go, I was saying goodbye to him; he grabbed my finger to ask if I could stay, "don't leave mommy!" Dan walked him over to the rug with the other 3 boys in the class and they started playing. He never looked back.
I got the report that he had a great day! He got to be the "special helper" today because they were making a line to go outside to the playground and he said, "it's just like Peter Pan, 'we're following the leader!' " So, he got to be the line leader and pick out the last story.
He's really going to love preschool....oh and while he was gone, Emily kept saying "I miss my Louie." She starts on Thursday, stay tuned!

the last day of summer....

We went over to the Wabun Wading Pool one last time on Monday, since it was such a beautiful day! I don't remember the last time that we had such a beautiful Labor Day Weekend.

We brought our friend Peter with us to the pool. Peter is going to be a big brother to a baby brother and sister in about a month...he's very excited.

I forgot to bring the bag with the snacks and drinks in it, so we had to resort to the ice cream truck...they loved it!
The pool was PACKED, but it was fun!

Louie's School

We went to Louie's preschool on Tuesday night, we met the teachers, the kids and the parents. It was so nice! Dan and I didn't know any of the other parents, so it was nice to meet them before the school year starts.
The teachers went through the daily schedule of events. The first thing the kids do is put their name on the apple tree when they arrive, so the teachers know who is there that day. Louie picked out his name right away.

This is the name board over by their rug area. As you can see, it's a pretty small class. Only 12 kids in the afternoon session, which is great! 2 teachers, 12 kids, perfect ratio! One of the teachers has been there for 29 years!

Of course, Louie found the one toy in the whole class room that has to do with pirates...


We went and saw the gym area and then the newly renovated playground out back. Louie had so much fun! He didn't want to leave; when it was time to go, he had the biggest tantrum he ever thrown in his short little life!
He screamed all the way home and then continued in the front yard. It finally ended when we made a countdown calendar to his first day of school.
He is so excited to start school and we are all excited for him!

I just found this on the video camera!

I just found this on the Flip video camera today...it is from our family vacation back in June. My brother, Mark and Jared took the Flip with them down the Giant Slide at Lutsen. The kids had a ton of fun!

s'mores

We made s'mores last weekend. Someone was a little impatient waiting for the coals to be ready so that we could roast the marshmellows. So, he passed the time pretending he was a pirate and having a sword fight with the lighter. No, we normally don't let our kids play with lighters; I don't worry about this one too much, I can hardly get it to work.

Once the coals were ready, we got roasting. They started out "toasting" their marshmellows.

I watched Louie carefully toast his...

but he wasn't interested in eating the s'mores or "lightly toasting" the marshmellows.

All he wanted to do was make them burn and flame so he could blow them out like birthday candles.

This girl, LOVED her s'mores and actually ate two of them.

It felt like the end of summer and it was a great way to cap off a really fun summer with the kids.

St. Kate's Pond

We walked up to St. Kate's to feed the ducks on Sunday night. There were lots of people there doing the same thing. It was really hard to take any pictures. I did manage to get a few of them sitting on this bench looking at the pirate ship stickers.

I showed Emily and Louie how to roll down the hill too, tuck and roll! And they had a blast! it was a really fun walk up there.

I thought this was a cool shot of Our Lady of Victory Chapel.