Woodbury Lakes Holiday Open House!

Saturday we did our first Christmas event of the season! We finally all felt good so we headed out to Woodbury Lakes for their Holiday Open House. The tree below is not the big one they lit up because that happened too late and too cold for us! But when we walked by this sparkly tree Linnea kept saying pretty pretty so I thought I'd snap a picture.

We will visit Woodbury Lakes again and see the bigger one and get a picture.

We also hope to see Santa the next visit...

We missed Santa but we did see Rudolph and the band the Okee Dokee Brothers were also performing! A quite chilly outdoor concert but we danced and sang with them for a lil while! A few of my friends and their kids were there too so that was great to see them.

Then we found the real reindeer! Linnea is in the yellow petting it!

Looking at it with grandma.

And we even got a picture with Rudolph! Frosty was there too and my mom got a great family picture with us and Frosty and that will hopefully be posted soon!

Here are the reindeer that took us on...

our first sleigh ride together! We just went a small circle at the end of the parking lot but it was very fun and holidayish!

After the ride we headed over to Chili's for dinner with my parents and Chris's mom and sister Allison. Linnea suprisingly made it in her high chair for all of dinner! If we could get her to do that at home that would be great!

It was a great night and hopefully next year it will be tad warmer and we can make it to the lighting of the tree, Santa's entrance(apparently on a fire truck!?) and the fireworks set to Christmas music! I just love the holiday season!

The Plague Hit Us All!

Sooooo we had quite the week! Chris and I only went to work 2 days...no the remaining 3 days were not spent on a vacation or just laying around relaxing. They were however spent laying around, running to the bathroom and cleaning up Linnea and her crib. Yep. We can now say we have experienced a puking toddler. And it is terrible. The worst. Sunday night we went to bed after making lefse feeling fine. Linnea still had what we thought was a three week cold, but other than that we thought we were okay. Around midnight Linnea cried and we were just going to let her cry for a few minutes because that is usually what happens between 11 and 12 every night. She cries for a few minutes and then gets over it without needing help. Well the cries turned into screams and then coughing and then we heard her puking. Poor thing! So we got her changed, bathed and let her curl up with us and we made it until morning without anymore episodes.

But when she awoke she had another one. So we changed her and cleaned her up again. We headed downstairs to relax on the couch with a movie. Chris and I both took the day off thinking that would be easiest on all of us. After some water and saltines Linnea threw up again. We decided to head into the doctor. We went to a different one than our usual since they dont take walk ins and Chris had just been there on Wed and they thought she was fine.

We were happy with where we went because the doctor confirmed what we thought all along. Linnea has another sinus infection. She had one Memorial Day Weekend and was prescribed Amoxicillan which helped very quickly! And the same thing happened this time. We gave her her dosage and then she slept for three hours! She wasnt 100% when she woke up but she was getting better.

So Monday night came, and I finally got to take a shower and as I was getting out I thought, hmmmm, I'm not feeling quite right so I quickly got into to bed thinking I was just overtired. Well about an hour later that was not the case. I definitely was sick. Stomach flu! Then about an hour or so later Chris got sick. Same thing. Thank goodness my mom has Tuesdays off and she was able to come help with Linnea. We didnt want to send her back to daycare quite yet so she got to cuddle with grandma.

We made it through Tuesday (barely) and Linnea went to daycare Wed and I went to work. Chris was still on his deathbed so he stayed home Wed. Wednesday night Linnea puked in the night again so Thursday I was home but Chris made it to work. By the evening she was back to her happy self so Friday everyone was back to work and daycare.

As much as I enjoy cuddling with Linnea and watching all her kid shows and movies, Id rather have her feeling well and playing! Let's hope we dont have a repeat of this week anytime soon or ever at all would be nice, but I doubt that will happen! And thank you Amoxicillan and second opinion doctor for curing Linnea! She seems to be recovered and so do we! hooray!

Lefse Making

Every year for the past maybe 3 years or so we have been making massive amounts of homemade lefse just before the holidays together as a family.

Aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, everyone.

It is amazing to think that at one time just my grandparents made the lefse. Just the two of them. It must have taken all day.

With all of us working it still takes 2-3 hours and thats not including the preparation that happens the night before.

We all take turns doing the different tasks, rolling the balls, flattening them and flipping the lefse on the super hot burner.

Good job Erik and Dwight!

Most of the gang.

We had kids around this year so they had to be entertained by someone...

Who better than Brian! Well actually he entertained them during the cleanup. He and his family could only make it for dinner. Linnea slept through most of lefse making so she didnt need to be entertained. Jake was happy in his exersaucer and Dylan did a great job of entertaining himself and playing with grandpa and uncle Chris. It was a great day and I can't wait to eat more lefse on Thanksgiving!

SNOW!!!

It snowed! It snowed! It snowed!

If Linnea could express her feelings in words, I'm sure that's what she would have said Saturday morning.

Here is someone who is looking an awful lot like Randy from a Christmas Story. We really need to get her updated winter clothes. She will be 2 soon and this is a 12 month snowsuit! Oh well. It worked for the 10 minutes we lasted outside.

All ready to go! Snowsuit on over jammies with cute new boots from grandma!

Linnea just grinned when she looked out the window and loved looking up at the flakes falling down.

she may like snow as much as her mommy!

It's a little difficult to walk in though.

And hard to get up and not fun when heavy snow falls on your head from a tree. That happened and then it was time to go in.

Poor thing has also been struggling with a cold for three weeks, so being outside wasn't the most fun thing for her. More on that later...

We must have got around 6 inches here in St. Paul but I know some of the suburbs got dumped on with at least a foot! It sure is beautiful and I can't wait to ski in it! This stuff was the wet, heavy snow so no good for skate style cross country skiing.

But warm enough to play in and build a snowman or go for a pleasant run!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Friday was a Great Day.

Friday I had the day off for conferences. Now I am sure in the future I will take some of these off days and use them to get stuff done around the house or have a "me" day but I wanted to be with Linnea again this time. So she had the day off from daycare too and we went to one of our old favorite storytimes at the St. Anthony Park Library. Here she is after storytime playing in the kids section. So that was the first good part about this past Friday. I got to spend it with my daughter again!

The second good part was that Chris and I got to spend the evening at a movie and then coffee/wine shop! My parents came over to watch Linnea after eating some white chili I made in the crockpot.

Before we left we got to see the grandparents and Linnea having some fun with the paper towels. Who needs toys or tv when you have grandparents like these and paper towels :)

My parents enjoyed their time with squirt and then enjoyed watching the Blind Side which we had rented from Netflix. Funny thing is the last time they watched Linnea for us at our house in Sept they started the movie. We haven't returned it yet so they got to finish it!

Meanwhile Chris and I enjoyed Inception at the Riverview, my all time favorite movie theater in South Minneapolis. There is a cute wine bar and coffee shop across the street so we stopped there and had a drink and listened to the live music.

What a great much needed date night!

A New Look

After weeks of watching Linnea wipe her hair out of her eyes, Chris decided to cut her bangs last week!!

I'm not gonna lie, at first I thought they were a little too short but the more I see her this way I realize they are just fine. She sort of looks like an indie baby! (a.k.a Zoey Daschanel, the cute blonde elf in the movie Elf)

As you can see Curious George is on in the background. It has become our routine to get ready for the day upstairs in her room and then I ask if she is ready to go watch the monkey before daycare and she says, "jeah". She does the "j" sound for "y" sometimes and we love it!

We love Playgrounds!

Sunday morning we took advantage of the nice weather and played at a park with our lil Vikings fan before the game.

So happy climbing up the steps. And we were so happy later that afternoon when the Vikes pulled off a win finally!

These pics below are just a few cute ones that Im not sure I used yet and was too lazy to go back and check. so you get to see them again if they are doubles!

This above picture was at the West 7th Library playground. We stopped to play here in between daycare visiting. Very fun park!

This is in Woodbury when we met Katie, Isa and their ECFE class to play. Another great park! Way down on Valley Creek Road!

And this last one is a park near our house that Chris, Linnea and I checked out together one evening. She is starting to like the structures that she can rock back and forth on. It is getting more and more fun taking her to parks since she is getting more independent! Thats one of the perks of daycare. Apparently they walked to a park today! Who wouldnt in 60 degree weather...I am however ready for the snow!

Garth and Kari's Wedding

This past Saturday we went to one of Chris' fraternity brothers weddings. It was very fun to see most of his "brothers" again since we rarely get to see them other than on facebook.

It was most of their first times meeting Linnea too so that was exciting!

Here are Garth and Kari!

Congratulations!

And these three darlings below are all siblings and children of our childbirth teacher/friend! They are so precious and Linnea even got to dance with the ring bearer!

Linnea was busier than usual Saturday evening so this is the only somewhat decent picture we got of us two and we got zero of the three of us and no decent ones of daddy and daughter! oops!

She really loved that the appetizers consisted of fruit and that there was also a candy bar. She quite possibly consumed an entire pack of m & m's! Somehow she got a hot tamale in her mouth and that did not go over well.

She of course loved dancing!

But was quite ready to go around 8:30 so home we went.

Before the wedding I took Linnea to the Red Balloon Bookshop to listen to one of our favorite baby/toddler storytellers. It was a blast and I can't wait to have this Friday off and take her to another storytime! We were hoping to get to jammy storytime at 6:30 tonight at a new to us library but had to go to Target first for coffee and diapers and a variety of other things and didnt get out of there until 7 so no time. It is hard to squeeze everything in as a working mama! We will get the hang of it soon enough though. Linnea seems to have the hang of the daycare! We had a Monday morning of no tears! Still not a wave goodbye in daycare, she does it when I take her out of the carseat. When I leave her inside she just walks to her spot at the table for breakfast. I love that so far we dont need to leave until 8:20ish so we have some time to play and snuggle and watch Curious George. I'm hoping she will continue to sleep til 7:30ish and I can get my butt out of bed some days and do a workout video around 6am after Chris leaves. Sounds terrible but working out is very important to me and I don't know when else I can get it in! Hopefully I can do it some afternoons too!

A Roseville Letterbox

We went letterboxing this past Saturday for a fun family event. We will be making our weekends even more special now since Linnea started daycare and I started work. It is so different and hard to not go to storytimes, or music, or the zoo, or random letterboxing, or meet with friends at playgrounds during the week so we are trying to do it on the weekends and evenings! We thought this part of the trail the letterbox brought us to was a good spot for some pictures...

so did Linnea...she is laughing below and saying cheese above!

She insisted on crawling up on this manhole...she has done a lot more crawling up on things, talking, eating and playing since daycare started. It is very fun to see! Even though I really miss her during the day.

I know she is fine. And today she proved that she truly is fine. She did not cry when I dropped her off! And she didn't do her on the verge of tears bye bye in the car before getting out and then explode the moment we walk in the door which is what she did the last two days. Today she was a brave, strong little girl who helped me take her jacket off and walked over to the table after I kissed her cheek and said bye. She climbed up on her chair and had breakfast with her friends without a tear. We will see how tomorrow goes. But on November 3, 2010 we had a breakthrough! Day 8 of daycare. No crying. Hooray!

Stamping the letterbox.

Halloween Weekend!

Happy Halloween!!!

On Halloween night, our Elmo made herself comfortable on my parents scarecrows lap!

We carved our pumpkin on Wednesdaynight. Miss Linnea wasnt quite sure what to think of the insides...

but she sure liked coloring on it! She also painted a pumpkin on Halloween day!

what a ham.

We visited great grandma (GG) Halloween afternoon with Dylan, Ian (Iron Man 1 and 2), Brian, Megan and my parents. My mom brought some goodies over and I brought Halloween cookie cutouts to decorate.

GG loved her time with the family!

The Vikings fans and Elmo before trick or treating in my parents neighborhood.

Our first stop...Linnea tried to crawl in the house! At least we knew the person!

knock. knock.

oooh so many to chose from.

Walking along! Linnea walked most of the way but we pushed her in the stroller to go see Becker's. Linnea never said trick or treat but she tried to say treat and she definitely said hi hi. She also definitely always wanted a piece of candy in one hand and bucket in the other. Then when the people at the door would hold the bowl of candy out she woudl drop her candy into her basket or hand it off to one of us and proceed to pick out another piece. I cant wait to see her next year!

Thanks grandma and grandpa for a fun afternoon/night!