Bemidji - Post 1

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted.  No real excuse other than we've had a pretty busy summer!  We all went out to Bemidji this past week to visit with Ryan's family.  It was a pretty great trip, minus M getting sick, and then me getting sick when we got home.

We arrived in Bemidji on Saturday.  Picked up our rental car, stopped for lunch, picked up some essentials at Target and then checked into our hotel room.  I must say, I was pretty impressed with our room at the Hampton Inn!  If you're ever in Bemidji, I'd recommend staying there!

Main Room:

 2nd bedroom for the girls:

 View:

The 2 room suite worked out wonderfully for us.  That way we could put M down at bedtime/naptime and the rest of us could stay up without disturbing her.  There was a pretty nice pool there which also included a kids splash pad and indoor/outdoor hot tub.  Trina was a huge fan of the arcade.  And their free continental breakfasts were pretty good!

Anyway, after checking in and getting a nap for M, we headed over to Jerry's house to say hello to everyone and to pick up Trina.

M was super excited to see her big sister again and ran out of the house full speed to see her when she arrived!

The boys grilled out for us for dinner and while everything was cooking we took some pictures:

During our photo shoot all the kids went running down the drive way.  It took several adults to round up all 4 of them.

 During that time, the boys got silly...and thankfully I was able to grab a shot of it.  LOL.

After dinner, we spent time hanging out and Maddie and Cohen warmed up to each other and played together.

Uncle Nate and Uncle Ben were teaching Trina to play Heart & Soul and the little ones decided to join in on the fun.

On Sunday, Ryan went to his dad's house in the morning to help get some projects done and I stayed at the hotel with the girls so they could go swimming.

After they had their fill and M was blue lipped and shivering we decided it was time to head up, shower, and grab some lunch next door at the Green Mill.  In the hallway there's a giant picture of Paul Bunyan's head, and Trina wanted him to eat Maddie.

After lunch, I took the girls down to Lake Bemidji so they could wade around and have some fun.  M wasn't a big fan of the sand, lol.

Ryan got back to the hotel after nap time, showered, and we headed up to see Jayne in the nursing home.

After spending some time with grandma, we all headed back to Jerry's house and ended up watching a crazy storm.  The kids were pretty interested in the hail that was coming down!

More tomorrow!!!  I have 5 more days to get thru! 

Art in the Park 2013

Wow.  Sorry it's been so long!  We've been so busy since Trina got here for the summer!  It's been a fantastic summer so far.

M gave Trina a new nickname...."Tuna."  It's awesome.  We ordered her a Tuna t-shirt the other day.

We went up north for the 4th and it ended with nearly everyone getting some nasty stomach virus.  There was a lot of throwing up...by a lot of people...

Anyway, we went to Art in the Park yesterday.  We drove to the shuttle parking and walked to meet the shuttle and I about died when I saw the line of people waiting.  It has to be at least 3 buses worth of people...and I'm talking the big charter buses.  Well, as luck would have it the little senior transport bus showed up, parked right night to us, and told us to get on!  WOO!  We totally cut the line by a lot of people.

When we got down to the park it was HOT, very hot, and SUNNY, very sunny.  I didn't know how long we'd make it with the kids, but I figured we'd try to get as much in as we could.  Our first stop was for Ashley....Hawaiian Buns!  She loves them and we saw they were giving out free 4-packs of the buns as well as coupons for free packs at the store so we nabbed a bag for her, my mom, and ourselves.

It was pretty darn hot, so we stopped in the first aisle for some waters and a lemonade for me.  But, someone decided she wanted my lemonade instead and I totally lost it:

When we got to Main Street we ran into some of the chalk art!  Love it!!!

Then we ran into Trina's favorite -- the metal man.  I don't know how he does it ever year without melting, but he's a lot of fun to watch.

Right on the corner of the next aisle is the painting a person into the picture!  This artist has been her for a few years now and it's pretty awesome when she's done painting!

 Some more sidewalk art!  Gone with the Wind is in the middle!

 And a little town the street they had a reggae band rocking out.  They were pretty good!

It was right about now that my mom and I decided that we were entirely too hot.  I looked up and saw I still had a long way to go to get to the park and some shade...

But, we made it to the park, found a big patch of shade and took a load off.  Ryan and Trina walked thru the park to see what artists were in there.  Grandma and I sat down in the shade and let M run off some of her energy from being in the stroller the whole time.  After M seemed to calm down a bit we all moved over to the fountain.

Everyone felt a lot better after getting out of the sun for a bit.  And while we were hanging out in the park the temperature seemed to drop a bit, the sun hid behind some clouds, and a nice breeze was blowing through so the 2nd half of Art in the Park was quite enjoyable.  We went down the remaining aisles and bought a few things:

Not pictured there was also a bathing suit for Trina's new American Girl Doll, a pepper corer for dad, and a bunch of fresh kettle corn, roasted cashews & roasted almonds.  I think Trina and I ate like 2 lbs of popcorn and Grandma ate 2 lbs of roasted cashews, lol.

Toward the end we ran into the Duck Bus!!

 Trina made herself a pretty cool Duck Tape bracelet!!

And of course we had to get a shot in front of the Duck Tape Spongebob, tho I was a little surprised she chose him instead of Hello Kitty.

After this we called it a day.  We walked to the shuttle drop off so we could head back to the car.  And we ended up being down there for about 4 hours and left just before closing time.  When we got back to my parents' house, no one was hungry.  So we hung out with grandpa for a while and then headed home to put the kids to bed.

All in all it was a pretty good day and the kids had a great time!

The Garage of Doom.

Over Memorial Day weekend we decided to finally buy and install the garage organizers that my parents gave us a gift certificate for 2 years ago as a Christmas gift.  Why Memorial Day weekend?  Ryan gets 10% at Lowe's for being a veteran.

This, embarrassingly, is the before picture:

On Sunday, we went to two Lowe's stores to get all of our goodies.  This is what we went with:

On Sunday night we were able to get all of the cabinets put together.  The first one took a little while, but after that it was pretty fast.  Total, 4 wall cabinets, 2 floor cabinets & a jumbo cabinet.

It was late by the time we finished assembling the cabinets, so we called it a night and agreed to meet again in the morning after I emptied out the garage to finish.

Bright and early Monday morning I got up and started moving everything out of the garage so they boys could work.  This is what my yard ended up looking like:

Cabinets up!  Then the boys started measuring the walls to hang the rails.

And then disaster struck.

It started raining pretty hard, so my mom and I tarped the stuff in the yard and the boys closed the garage door.  We stayed on the porch to make sure no one took any of the stuff laying around.  All of the sudden Ryan came out with his hands bleeding all over.  Apparently there had been an accident.  My dad's pants got caught on the ladder, he fell, knocked Ryan off his ladder.  The end result was a broken fibula, fractured ankle bone, displaced tibia and muscles/tendons for my dad.  And, sliced up hands for Ryan.  My mom took them to the ER.  Dad couldn't get a cast because his leg was too swollen.  Ryan got stitches.

Dad ended up having surgery this past Thursday to have a plate put in to stabilize the fibula break.  :(

When Ryan's hands healed up enough, we got to work so we could put the garage back together and start parking there again.  It's not completely finished because, well, M has some health issues creep in to the mix too.  But, this is how it's looking right now:

Good enough for now.  We still need to hang some rails on the other side.  And the cabinets hung on the walls aren't finished yet, so we can't put anything in them.  But, most of the stuff is organized and out of the way, and I can park in the garage again.  We'll call it a win...after a serious LOSE on Memorial Day.