Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Maybe this is the one...

Bennett finished swimming "lessons" today, although I'm not sure how much educational value they contained. Oh well. He did go down the water slide with one of the teachers, and said, "it wasn't scary, it was fun!" but when asked if he'd like to go again, declined, stating he, "only planned on going down once."

Colin might have gotten some solid food in his mouth today- stewed prunes, green peas, apple puffs, and some pear yo-baby (at two different sittings) were all offered to him. The floor got the bulk of the food though. Colin still is completely toothless. When are those darn teeth coming, anyway? His crawling is really cute- I will try to get a video clip of it for posting. He has been standing at the crib railing twice today when I entered his room, after attempting to lie him down for nap. Tonight when I was putting the older kids in bed, he was wailing away, and I went in and found him standing at the edge of his mattress with one leg sticking out the slats at a weird angle (nothing broken- whew!)

I did something daring today- downloaded the last season of Mad Men from the video on demand. I've been considering watching the series for some time now. We'll see how it goes. Like Mike and I need another show to Tivo- we still have 13 Desperate Housewives to enjoy!

We have NOTHING planned for the rest of the week- no lessons, camp, errands- what to do?
[Pictures: Annalise and Bennett, both around 8 months, Title: refers to my hope before each house showing]

Saturday, July 25, 2009

This and That





We had a great time over at Danielle and Mark's last Friday night, when Stokes, Ben, and Andy were in town. It's always interesting with a gator + inexperienced 5 year old drivers. Saturday night was so different from our usual scene! Congratulations to Mark- Mr. One Man Minneapolis! Much thanks to Becky and Christopher for watching our crew while Mike and I went to Pantages Theatre for the One Man pageant, followed by clubbing at Seven. Similar to Cinderella though, we had to catch our carriage (taxi) home by midnight.

We had a flurry of showings last weekend, and then a quiet week on the realty front until finally a showing this morning. We turned down a lowball offer late last week, and have decided to keep on with our current pricing strategy. We're just patiently (?) waiting for the right buyer to find our house.

Annalise had a week of science camp at Southwest high school, while Bennett is taking swimming lessons at an outdoor pool. Our little scientist had a lot of fun at school, learning about anatomy, planets, making goop, and flying paper airplanes, but I think her favorite trick was swinging a cup of water around without any coming out (centrifugal force). If you want your kid to learn how to swim, you go to Foss. If you want something to do while Annalise is at science camp, you spend $40 and not expect much from "lessons". I keep reminding myself that, since I am less than impressed with the four pierced, tattooed 20-somethings standing calf-deep in the water demonstrating arm strokes in the air to their 11 three year old students.

Many thanks to Danielle for a lovely evening of watching the kids bike in the street (Oh, to live in Edina) and eat frozen pizza while Mark was working, and Mike was at Eric's bachelor bash. It is so much better to be doing it together than being alone at home!

I'm going to be back in the habit of frequent posts, so stay tuned! And someday, when I'm ready, I'll fill you in on the meaning of the last post (if I haven't told you in person yet).

Friday, July 17, 2009

What a week

Not ready to talk yet...

Friday, July 10, 2009

Displaced

Squinting into the sun at Como Zoo
7 months old! 8 months old tomorrow!

Thank you Danielle and family for harboring the homeless while we had a showing yesterday afternoon. Not only that, but Danielle was running a day care for all our kids while Colin and I went back to the house to spiff up (and bake another sheet of c.c. cookies)! The kids played really well together, and had a wonderful time. We don't get to ride bikes in the street, in the big city! We were out of the house by 10 yesterday morning, and didn't return until almost 5 pm, when we packed a picnic supper and headed to Lake Nokomis to meet Kim and family. Little A was not feeling well so our visit was cut short, but we stayed and the kids took a dip in the lake. What fun!

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Yoga, Skating, and More

Cleaning the house to prepare for a showing is my new form of aerobic exercise! We had a showing last night, so I finished making the house beautiful while Mike took the crew to ice skating lessons. I then headed to yoga for a wonderful evening of sweating (I normally HATE to sweat, but somehow I didn't mind it yesterday). We have another showing tomorrow afternoon, so we tried to stay out of the house today- a day filled with errands. The kids did such a good job- Babies R Us, Best Buy, Einsteins for lunch, and a trip to Cub!

Monday, July 06, 2009

Nice Fourth

We had a really nice long weekend. Mike was off on Thursday and Friday. I had a nice morning of shopping with Colin on Friday, while Mike took A and B for a bike ride. We met at Punch for lunch, then home to play in the backyard. On Saturday we went to the Richfield parade with Bridget and Steve's family. Then we went to Blake and Candace's house for a fun get together with lots of other young families. The kids were troopers! They played really hard, and even made it to fireworks on the boat on Lake Minnetonka. Sunday morning, I went to yoga, and we went to the Kingfield farmers market.