Hydrangeas

The best flower purchase this year was undoubtably the hydrangeas I bought at Gertens. I got the smallest size for around $17 and they have flourished in our sandy soil out front. I may just have to get a few more of these next year...

Pics at Home

I thought Kevin would enjoy a few pictures of our house (you know, the one we have lived in for 15 mos, but he has only vacationed here for about 10 weeks). This first one is some of the flowers we have on our back deck. I love the morning glories, and Lucy knows it, she keeps picking the blooms.... Ignore the dead Hibiscus plant, but notice the pretty flowers surounding it, I figured it would make a good trellis for the morning glories.

In the background here you can see our vegtable garden.

Kinda hard to pick out green against green, but the veggies I have successfully grown so far includes: 25+ tomato plants, 1 pepper plant, several zucchini, several acorn squash, peas, beans, pumpkins, carrots, lettuce, and cucumbers.

This is part of the front garden. I don't remember what the coral blooms are, but they sure are pretty (I put those in last year). The yellow bloom is our first gladiolus of the year.

30 weeks pregnant

Kevin has been begging for recent pictures of us. Here is a picture from a birthday party we went to today. Black just doesn't seem to be slimming on me anymore...

Camping in Hayward, WI

We spent the night at the Hayward KOA for the cousins birthday. Here is Lucy, Abby, Elena, and Maya.

This is the playground with the pool just beyond, and a jumping surface beyond that.

The campsites were mighty "cozy".

An email from a friend

Kevin sent this in response to an email about how hot it has been in MN. His mom was thinking that we have it pretty good compared to his weather forcast of highs in the 120's and lows in the 90's. This was what he had to say:

Funny. I just got back from a run. 0500 is prime time to run, as it's cool, but the sun is up so we can see fine. It is also funny that I have actually gone outside in the middle of the night (I'm currently on night shift for another week) and it feels cool, almost chilly at 85! Not looking forward to being a day walker again... And yes, Plant life is one of the things I miss. You can't see much more than the occasional weed and all of about 3 trees anywehere!

I got a good repsonse to one of my previous emails a few days ago. This is from one of my groomsmen, Enjoy:

This past weekend I biked the MS 150, a ride from Duluth to the Twin Cities. As I was biking, some ATVs passed on a sandy trail next to me. Initially, I thought about how sore I was from biking 90 miles in two days, how I was out in the 80 degree heat while I was biking, and how the dust the ATVs kicked up was annoying. I was ready to give up and take the 90 miles as a good accomplishment so I could go home and see my wife and my dog.

Then I remembered you, Dave, Ben, and the rest over there in Iraq. I thought about how 80 degrees is a cold day, how dust kicked up by a vehicle is the norm, not the exception, and how in addition to your normal tech type jobs, you have physical work to do too. I thought about how you're not doing this for two days out of the year, but day in and day out. As I kept biking there were people on the side of the road cheering and telling us what a good job we were doing. When I crossed the finish line, there were hundreds of people cheering about how I had done a great thing. All I had done was bike 75 miles a day for two days. I have people telling me at work how impressed they are that I finished it, and I think of my friends in Iraq.

I know I haven't been replying to all of your emails, but I read every one of them, and I think about you over there, separated from your family, friends, and ten week old house. I appreciate all that you are doing for us, and I'm glad to hear that you are doing well. You are the ones that we should be cheering, not some computer tech that decides to get off his ass for two days and pedal a bike. Please feel free to share this with anyone else that you see from our unit.

Nick

Spring Hanger Dance

2009 Boys (2006 girls)

This is our girls along with 3 friends family's. We all have (or will have) 2009 Boys and all but one of the 2006 babies were girls. Now that's what I call a party...

So Proud!

Daddy's Girl

Elena's Soccer

It was fun to watch the Kindergarten and first grade teams develop over their 5 weeks of practice/games. Elena spent a lot of time in goalie which she seemed to enjoy. It's easy to get distracted when you are running around the field...giving hugs, talking with the opposite team....

Elena's Kindergarten Graduation

Receiving her diploma!

Elena and Mrs. Kittilson

Lucy's T-Ball

She's all about the game, deep in thought, check out that stance...

Hmmm...should I make a run for the ball or the playground next to the field...

Her coach convinced her to put the mitt on the correct hand.

It's all about...the sand...
We only made it to about 10% of the T-Ball practice for Lucy, bad weather, bad timing, not much interest in the game. She loves to talk about it now, even if it only lasted about 20 minutes total!

Giraffes at the MN Zoo

The girls and I took a quick trip to the MN Zoo recently and they were able to feed the giraffes. They have been hearing about them via the advertisements on the radio, so they were pretty excited about the purple tongues!