Evening Outside

Tonight the kids and I had our first official evening outside - now that spring has finally arrived 

Wagon walk

First time using her baseball and mitt

Busy boy

Time flew tonight - I didn't even check the clock until ten minutes to Joe's bedtime!  What a great start to the week!

Surprise Visit

This weekend Lisa and I went down by Madison to surprise our friend Marie with a visit!  We had been planning to do this awhile now and this was the third weekend we tried to make it happen and it finally worked out!

We stayed up late talking Friday night and spent yesterday shopping, went out to dinner and watched a movie.  We also got some playtime in with Marie's little cutie:

It's true that time files with good friends - this weekend went by far too fast! 

Our Sunday

We spent the entire weekend at home - it was nice!  

This afternoon my parents came over and I didn't realize it but Papa had a plan to fix our cracked futon!  While he was doing that the mattress was laid over the coffee table and Amelia had a little ton of fun with it.  The mattress, currently covered with a flannel, snowflake pattern bed sheet, became a sledding hill to her.  A pillow - her sled.  

She had a blast.

Amelia was insistent she get a picture with Nana, Papa and Ludo

We ordered pizza for dinner and wrestled/tickled/laughed on the bed for quite a long time this evening:

Tonight was a good way to end the weekend! 

The Last Two Weeks

I haven't been on here much lately because despite keeping busy we aren't doing much worthy of sharing!  I was off last week and worked on purging the house, cleaning out the kids drawers in preparation for spring (if it ever comes!) and getting things done that I have been avoiding for several weeks.  It was a nice week off!

Here are some moments from the last couple weeks around here:

Visiting Lucky at Nana's house

Laundry basket rides

Fort building

Headed to school

Amelia loves the self-timer on the camera and asks to "beep-beep-beep-cheese!"

Vacuuming

Joe's favorite reading corner

MN Children's Museum with our friend, D

Tractor driving

Snow and more snow - in April. 

We are anxiously awaiting spring weather so we can go on walks, play at the park and just be outside more in general!  I think we are all feeling the effects of this long and seemingly never-ending winter around here - attitudes reflect that (in all of us!) 

Big Day Out

Friday I got off of work by eight o'clock so we headed out with Auntie Kim and Papa.  Our first stop was the Mall of America for Build-a-Bear!  A co-worker told me she received an e-mail about My Little Pony being there for the week.  Well, I think she misread it because it is there indefinitely we were told, ha!  Oh well, she had a blast!

Right away she chose Rainbow Dash!

Giving her a bath

Brushing her hair

She also made Joe a dinosaur which he is slowly taking to - nothing can compare to his "wormy!"

After leaving the mall we grabbed lunch at Chris & Rob's and Amelia went to town on her hot dog - bun and all!  

 

Usually she skips the bun!

Even though most of the animals are still inside (too cold still!) we stopped by Como Zoo on our way home.  

I forgot hats so the kids had to borrow Colts gear from WeHaw...

By far the best sighting of the day was this:

An orangutan in a purple polo shirt?!

Everyone was pretty wiped out by the time we headed home! 

Amelia was excited for bedtime with all her Rainbow Dash friends!

New Van

Over the weekend we got a new (to us!) minivan.  Jason has been doing a lot of research the past few months and we had it narrowed down to a Nissan, Toyota or Honda.  In the end we went with a 2010 Honda Odyssey.  

We ended up spending a little more than we had planned but we weighed our options and decided that, for us, this was the best way to go in the long run.  We have low miles and a full bumper to bumper warranty for an additional 8 years/120k miles because we went with a Honda certified vehicle - worth it!

Amelia loves the van.  She named it "Tasha" and she refers to it by that name constantly.  Who can blame her for her excitement...she went from her knees touching the back of the driver's seat to this:

Talk about leg room!

 

We are selling Jason's car this week and will use my little Saturn to commute to/from work.  Whoever has the kids gets the van.  So far that means he has it all the time since he takes Amelia to speech and school M-Th mornings, ha!  The only time I leave the house with the kids is usually Thursday evenings for speech!

It's going to take some time for me to get used to driving a larger vehicle than my little quad-coupe but I'm sure I will get the hang of it quickly!