Beauty Shop

How do you wash a little girls hair, when she has a cast on her arm that can't get wet? you play "Beauty Shop!"

This is the best part.....wrapping the towel like a princess (at least Emily thinks it looks like a princess).

Update: She has an appointment on Wednesday afternoon with an orthopedic over at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. we'll see about the cast after that....

One Little Monkey....sleeping in the bed

and last night, in her deep, deep sleep...after a tiring first week of kindergarten....she fell out of bed and broke her arm...
Emily fell out of her bed, for the first time ever, last night. She was in such a deep sleep, when I went into her room after hearing the loud THUD at 11:15pm, she was completely disoriented and had no idea where she was. When it initially happened, I didn't think it was too bad, so I tried to get her back to sleep.

But after a few minutes of crying, I realized that she really was hurt and not being her (overly) dramatic self. So, I called Dan, who was out with a couple friends last night and told him to get home....ASAP!

He came home and I moved Emily to her seat in the van and they headed to Children's Hospital ER. After a short wait of less than 5 minutes, they brought her in to get checked out. X-Rays and some other doctor stuff took place. A prescription of Tylenol with Codeine later and her arm wrapped up like this:

they arrived home about 2:30am. Unfortunately, Emily isn't able to participate in her much anticipated swimming lessons and inner city tennis that we had lined up for Saturdays this fall. Instead, she's is spending the day, snuggled in to her Shaggy Puppy Sleeping Bag and watching a series of princess movies on the portable DVD player.

She's got a pretty good set up in there, don't you think?

First Day of School

Big things happened around here in the last week.....Louie started his second year at Nativity Preschool (NELC) and is loving it! He is in a class of 9 kids, 7 boys. Mrs. Rogers sure has her hands full with that class.

When he was leaving for school, I asked him if I could take his picture and this is what I got....

Little Miss Emily had her first day of kindergarten at Cherokee Heights Elementary on Monday. Her bus picks her up at 7:05AM (early!) so she needs to be out of bed by 6:30AM (really early!).


Knowing that Monday morning was going to be a busy morning and also, not wanting to be the bus stalking mom, I decided to fore go the photos on Monday morning....I got her all dressed in her uniform and drove over to school on Sunday and took some photos. Good thing...
Here's a little run down of her day:

6:30am wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth
7:00am bus arrived to pick up (5 minutes early!)
7:50am arrive at school and go to classroom
8:05am school starts
8:20am breakfast (thankfully, she'll get a nice protein filled breakfast at school)
10:45am lunch
2:00pm snack
2:35pm school ends and get on the bus to go home
3:40pm arrive home

there is lots of fun kindergarten stuff going on during the day and she was wiped out when she got home. Immediately upon arriving home, she laid down on the couch and didn't get up until dinner at 5:15. Baths at 5:45, brush teeth, read stories and tucked into bed at 6:15pm! Whew! She was very tired and it took a while to wake her up in the morning.
Tonight, bedtime isn't going as well. She has been in her room since 7pm and I can still hear her moving around in there. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a good day.

A little info about her class: there are 7 boys and one girl (Emily). Ms. Sherrow, her teacher is wonderful! Emily is loving her new school and she's not even objecting to getting up at 6:25 every day.
New students were added to her bus route, so her pick up time was moved to 6:55am! CRAZY!

Louie's Birthday

Louie celebrated his 4th birthday in August. We started the day with his breakfast of choice....oatmeal with a candle in it.

Then, we opened a present from the Florida Jansen's....2 Leapster games: Finding Nemo and Batman! So exciting.

His birthday party was over at Wabun park again this year, it was a great day! Topped off with this masterpiece:

Louie loved his cake and all of the awesome presents that he received from family and friends. In typical 4 year old fashion, he's already planning for his next birthday....or at least Santa's upcoming visit in December.

4 years ago today.....

it was horribly hot and humid and I was 3 days from my due date with Louie.....



Unbelievably, this is one of three photos that I have of me pregnant, all three of the pictures, I was pregnant with Louie. Sadly, I don't have one picture of me prego with Emily. I thought we had plenty of time to take fat prego pictures later on....unfortunately, with Emily, there wasn't any "later on."
But, I remember this picture. Our friend, Audrey encouraged me to take a shot before we headed to the hospital in the next couple of days. So, I posed, a sort of irritated, disgusted pose.
I never enjoyed being pregnant, it was not a beautiful time in my life. But, getting two beautiful kids out of it was totally worth it!

Evolution of a photo...

2007 - in front of the otter tank at the Great Lakes Aquarium

2010 - in front of the same otter tank at the Great Lakes Aquarium

Not only did our kids grow up, but I also learned how to actually take a photo with my camera! Thank goodness! I hate looking back at the dark photos with a big flash glaring from them.

Keeping it Green!

and the boring details. We contracted a new garbage company in the last month. After we were getting nickle and dimed by the mega giant, BFI, I contacted Veolia. They didn't have a fuel surcharge and were't nickle and diming us for our trash collection.
Well, in the last year, we've had a ridiculous increase in the quarterly cost of collecting our trash. Ramsey County was one of the culprits, charging a huge tax, but when I took a closer look the fuel surcharge went from 0 to 65 in 8 short months. We were getting ripped off!
So, along comes the Garbage Man, door to door. Guaranteed ZERO fuel surcharge and minimal collection fees $22/month! Same size barrel, for what were were paying $39/month with Veolia. Sign me up!
This morning, I saw first hand why they don't have a fuel surcharge, their truck is just a little bigger than our mini-van sitting in the driveway.
(and bonus, they don't charge for that extra junk that you might try to sneak in once in a while!)

Target Field

We went to the Twins game the Friday night before the Fourth of July. Our kids have never stayed up for fireworks, so that night was a big treat! We arrived late and there was no line to sit in the big glove.

Target Field is beautiful at night.

Emily had her ears plugged, in anticipation of the fireworks. She really doesn't like loud noises.



It was a really fun night and a great time with the kids. They loved their first time watching fireworks.

Macalester Nursery School circa 1971-72

one of my facebook friends asked me a couple of months ago if I by chance went to Macalaster Preschool back in 1971. She thought that one of the girls in the picture looked like me....or at least like Emily.
She was right! I can't even believe how much Emily looks like I did at the same age.
There's a couple other kids in the class that I continued on to Highland Catholic with, Bruce Masters, Bridget Maher and Nancy Oswald. I would love to know who all the other kids in the picture are......

Target Field Fireworks