The Florida Cousins

A couple of weeks ago, the Florida Jansen's came for a visit. We had so much fun with them!

Emily and Louie loved spending time with their cousins. Emily even got to hold little Justin, he was only 6 weeks old, still has all that hair he was born with.

On Sunday, we went to Grandma and Papa's house and had lots and lots of family pictures taken. More on those later . . .

We made it through the whole weekend without any trips to the emergency room with one of the kids!

It was sad to see everyone go home on Monday night, but we had lots of fun with them.

Leaves!

Oktoberfest!

We went to Assumption's 150th Anniversary Oktoberfest Celebration on Sunday afternoon. It was so much fun! There was face painting, a pumpkin walk, beer, rootbeer, a huge polka band and lots of food. Emily and Louie had a blast! The kids got their faces painted when we first got there, Lou wasn't too sure about that. Emily didn't care. Then Dan and Emily won a punkin in the pumpkin walk. Emily was so proud of herself! There was a guy with one of those organ grinder music box things, he didn't have a monkey though??

We went and had some dinner with "the Ladies." There's a group of women at 9:30 mass every Sunday, they love watching Emily and Louie grow up. Emily always puts on a show for them. This week was no different, except it was at the party instead of in church.

After we ate, Emily was intrigued by the HUGE polka band and wanted to dance. So, she grabbed Louie and they went and danced. He wasn't fast enough for her so she found a better dance partner a little later. We were very tired when we got home and went straight to bed. It was a great celebration!

St. Cloud

I had a conference in St. Cloud this past week, Dan and the kids came with.

We had a great time. Emily and Louie loved playing in the pool.

Emily also discovered that she has much more in common with Auntie M, like her auntie, Emily realized that she loves to lounge around in bed. Everytime we were in the room with some down time, she would jump up on the bed and pull the covers up to her chin and lounge. She even decided that she had to eat her dinner in there on Thursday night.

It is not a habit that will continue when we got home.

Fall is here! Yeah!

Finally, the fall weather has arrived and we can start wearing the new fall clothes. Well, Louie can. We haven't gotten to the store for Emily's fall clothes yet. Maybe this weekend. Here's a couple pictures from the last week. Louie got this cute outfit last year for a baby gift. It was too cute for a newborn, so we got in a size for when he was walking. He thinks he is so cool with his vest on, he LOVES wearing it!
We went outside that morning to look for trucks. Lou loves trucks and runs to the door whenever he hears one drive by, even down on Cretin. He'll hear the garbage trucks at 6am and yell "cruck!" He gets very excited, thinking he might get to see one.
Emily thinks it is funny to walk around the house with her eyes crossed. I keep telling her that they are going to get stuck that way, she doesn't listen.

The Big Game

Dan and Don reffed a high school football game last Friday afternoon. MH was there to capture the event on camera.

State Fair

Last Friday, we ventured to the Minnesota State Fair. It was so much fun. We took Emily and Louie's cousin, Billy with us.

We arrived at the fair at 8:30 in the morning, got a great parking spot and it was off to have fun and eat lots of food on a stick. The first thing we did, go and have breakfast. We headed over to the Miracle of Birth Center to see the baby farm animals. There was a lamb that was born at 5:30 that morning, it was so cute trying to stand up on it's wobbly legs. There was a calf that was born the day before and there was a litter of 14 piglets being born while we were there. I'm not sure if Emily liked that or not???

After the baby animals, we went to the DNR building and looked at the fish, then we headed over to the Grand Stand to see all the "crap" that is "as seen on TV" being peddled. We had fun in there, we saw the world's biggest belt buckle too, the thing was the size of a turkey platter, literally. It was all fancy and glittered too. UGLY.

It was a beautiful day, but started to really get hot. We headed home after a few hours.

Messy Room!

Remember when I said that Emily liked to empty out her drawers on her new bed?

Well here's what that mess looks like:

Bedtime

Last night, we tried a new strategy to get Emily to sleep a little faster. I went through her room and removed everything that could cause a potential distraction. No more butterfly lights, no more pots and pans, no more excessive stuffed animals, no more table and chairs, no more tea set and only 10 books!
Emily's room was stripped down to the bare bones last night and voila, she was in bed asleep in about 15 minutes. I heard the cupboard door open and close twice and when I checked on her a while later, she was in bed sleeping.
Hopefully, she'll get caught up on her lost sleep and get rid of the cold that she's been fighting for the last few days.

Also, I'm pretty sure the Louie will be wanting a toddler bed soon too. He thinks it is the greatest thing ever to climb and jump on! It is a little indoor play gym for he and Emily everyday.

Part 4

Everything seems to be going well with Emily's transition to the toddler bed. She is really enjoying the independence of it. Sometimes, enjoying it too much.
The last couple of nights, she will be very quiet in her room for a while. The fun begins after about 30 minutes, we'll hear the clanking of her tea set. On Saturday night, she was was having a tea party with Snoopy at the table. Then, fell asleep sitting up in the princess chair.
Sunday night, she had another tea party but did end up asleep in bed just a short time later.
Her stretches of playing are getting shorter. The novelty of playing after the door closes is wearing off. We're ok with it all because she's not trying to get out of her room or laying on the floor in front of the door crying. She's always been good about sleeping and going to bed at night.