Elena's first fish!

 

The new guy in town...

As many of you may know we have a new baby in our house...without all the effort of pregnancy and childbirth. Kevin and I are watching 7 month old, Anton, during the day. Elena says it evens up the scores around here a little bit, "there are 3 girls and 3 boys" - that is if you include our cat, Awesome, in the count. As you can see the kids rarely have any fun around here.
Once in a while both the babies nap at the same time...
Sometimes Elena enjoys being the big sister and sometimes she wants to be the baby. Today when both the little ones were napping she had her snack in the high chair, she still fits!
 

Lucy's Baptism

"Okay, now these are the rules in church..." One of Lucy's Godmother's, Deb, is the Education Director at North Como Church. She planned the children's message around baptism and used Lucy as her prop!
There were 2 babies baptised last Sunday. They both did a great job at entertaining the congregation, neither of them had a melt down during the service! The service was very sweet and Lucy made an appearance before the congregation at least 3 times.
Here are Lucy's Godparents: Chris and Jess Deegan and Paul and Deb Veit. I warned them before they signed up for the job that they are now stuck with us for the rest of their lives! Lucy is very lucky to have such great parental coverage(and a darn good looking group, too!)
 

I'm getting baptised on Sunday!

Call my mom for details... 

Clearwater Forest Family Camp

In addition to camping we also attended a family camp program through the Presbyterian church at Clearwater Forest Camp near Brainerd. Unfortunetly it rained all day on Saturday, which gave us the increased challenge of enjoying camp indoors. We were grateful that the rain waited until our days at Camp (where we were sleeping indoors) rather than when we were tent camping. Elena quickly made friends (she is in the green in the first 2 pics.)


 

More camping photos

Camping early in June during the week = your choice of parking spots on the beach! Elena loves the sand so much we finally got a little turtle sandbox from Auntie Em for our backyard. Yes, Lucy is a thumb sucker. Lately she has even been preferring the thumb over her food source (Possibly a new diet plan?).
Here's the nature center at the state park. Elena didn't quite measure up to this big Sturgeon.
See, we even went canoeing!
 

William O'Brien State Park

Kevin finally convinced me to go camping with the two kids. It turned out to be a great trip...however, we are now on the hunt for a bigger tent. When we registered for the 3 person tent for our wedding we weren't quite thinking our 3 person family would grow to a 4 person family before our first usage! This will make a great tent for the kids when they are old enough to separate from us(16 years or so from now!) Here are a few things we learned from our first family camping trip #1 PACK LIGHT Our entire van was filled to the brim for our 2 night adventure. The only thing we didn't have was enough ice...in our search for more ice after hours we almost ended up locked out of the park for the night...the very nice ranger came and let us through the gate a few minutes after 10pm. I still don't know what we could have lived without... #2 BIGGER TENT See above. #3 DO NOT EXPECT TO SLEEP With the new S.I.D.S. precautions we were breaking all the rules, so mom woke up every 5 mins to make sure baby was still breathing. Dad slept soundly except when kicked by 3 year old. Mom worried about being eaten by coyotes. Dad slept soundly and denied any coyote exposure.
Our first morning at the park we decided to take a walk through the beautiful trails. After 2 hours of preparation it took us approximately 20 minutes to finish our 0.9 mile hike. #4 DO NOT EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO TAKE A LONG HIKE OR UTILIZE MUCH OF THE AVAILABLE TRAILWAYS. The heat and extra cargo tired Elena out very quickly(See pic below for her method of transportation!)
And the number one activity while camping.........BIKE RIDING! #5 BRING THE KID'S BIKE.