Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Lost Tooth!

Earlier this month, Lucy lost her 1st tooth.  It was wiggling for weeks and finally came out at school!  The few days before it came out, we started calling it the drawbridge, because it would fold all the way out of her mouth like a drawbridge being lowered. 
 
Just look at that cute gap!

I was a little sad that the tooth came out while she was at school, since I didn't get to see her excited face when it happened.  I quickly got over my sadness when I heard how excited she was that she got to go to the nurse's office and get a treasure chest box to keep her tooth safe in until she got home.

 
One of Lucy's friends told her that you got to ask the tooth fairy for whatever you wanted and she would leave it under your pillow.  Uh- Oh!  I asked her what she wanted. . .
She wrote it out on her letter and put it under her pillow with the tooth in the treasure chest.
Dear Tooth Fairy,
I want $2 and a chocolate coin and some candy


 
Her second tooth is already wiggly now.  Maybe she will have lost her two bottom teeth by Christmas?

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Fall

It has been a while.  Here is an update on our fall.  The girls 'helped' rake the back yard this year.  Our big maple does not disappoint when it comes to leaf piles!
 


 

 
 
 With the new patio, our back yard has gotten a lot of use!  We fired up the heater and the chimnea and carved pumpkins and roasted marshmallows outside this year.

You can see the old cabinets in the background of the picture above.  We are just about finished with our kitchen remodel.  I'll post some before and after pictures soon.  I'm very excitedly waiting for our new cork floor to come in.


My little girlie girls had to have Halloween nails this year!
 
 I also had to send Lucy to school with a couple of Halloween lunches this year.

 
 Neither of the girls schools had costume days, but they both did something fun.  Lucy's school had a pajama day.  Here is Lucy and her BFF Evey at their lockers.
 
 I love this one of Lucy.  This is before she left the house in the morning.  See how dark it still is out the door?
 
 I got to go to school with Ellen.  It was black and orange day.  We both had pumpkin t-shirts that Ellen picked out.

Here she is at 'show and share' time with her Orange and Black Kitty.  Her teachers wore Mario and Luigi costumes.  They are so great. 
 
A little face paint!
 
 Then, the main event!
The Queen of Hearts and LaLaLoopsey Lucy made their appearances.



 
The girls are having tons of fun and still enjoying school.  Lucy reads to us each night in Spanish.  It is so amazing to see her progress from single words to full sentences.  Ellen is coming out of her shell and making lots of friends at school also.
We had Ellen's parent-teacher conference last week and are looking forward to Lucy's tonight. 
It is so fun to see how they are away from home and parents!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Firsts

First Day of Kindergarten, First Day of Preschool, First Haircut. . . sniff, sniff.
Lucy started it all off with her first day of Kindergarten at Windom Dual Immersion School. 
 
We were all still a little tired.  The bus comes at 6:45.  Ugh!

 
We went to see her off the bus and into the classroom for the first time.  I know, crazy parents. . . but we weren't the only ones!
Here she is at her locker.

 
Before she even got to class, she had 2 buddies with her.  The little girl in the blue headband, Evey, she knew already.  Reina, she met at the door.  They discovered that they were in the same class and Reina said 'Do you want to be friends?'  That was that.  Friends.  So cute!

 
Here she is finding her name and putting it in the attendance basket.  The adorable young lady that is also in the picture is her teacher, Senora de la Cruz.  I couldn't be happier with her as Lucy's teacher!  She is just great!


 Then, Ellen was off to her first day of Preschool.  She is at the same school that Lucy went to for the last two years.  She is excited to call it 'Ellen's School', not 'Lucy's School' any more.
She has been in a goofball picture mood lately, here is what we got:
 

 
She found her name right away.
 

One of her teachers, Miss Elizabeth.  She was one of Lucy's favorites from last year.  Notice her fingernails. . .

 
Then, Ellen finally decided that she wanted to have her haircut.  I know, this is usually a baby book picture, but here we are, over three and never had a haircut.  I think she had been a little afraid, but we had been talking it up for a while.  When she got there she found out that she could watch Max and Ruby while she got it cut and she was sold!

 
This is the after picture.  Still long hair, past her shoulders, but we had about 4 inches cut off.

 
So, I have two big girls now.  Crazy!
 

Monday, August 27, 2012

BWCA. . . um, and Lutsen

Here is the long version of how our trip to the Boundary Waters went.
 
We were super excited to have our monstrous canoe on the car!
 
 
The girls were thrilled to get their own paddles

 
I was just happy to be there.  Goodbye car!  Goodbye phones!

 
Lucy really did try to leave without us.

 
But, we managed to keep her on the beach until we got in. 
The way out was fabulous!  Everyone was in great spirits.  This picture pretty much sums it up.  I love this one.

 
The only thing that worried us, was the wall of dark clouds behind us.  Thankfully, the site that we wanted was open and wasn't too long of a paddle from the entry point.  We had the only campsite on a small island and it was fun to have it all to ourselves.  We picked what we thought was a nice flat spot to pitch the tent and got it up quickly.  Just about as soon as we were in, it started to rain.  Not so bad,though.  The girls thought it was fun, we had some games to play.
 
Then we realized, that our tent was not exactly waterproof.  Our seems and zippers started to fail and leak.  We watched water drip into the tent.  At some point, I moved one of the sleeping pads so the girls had more room.  That is when I noticed that the floor of the tent was moving. . . like a water bed.  Our nice flat spot was a few inches of semi-dry mud over rock. We were basically in a big shallow bowl and that bowl was now full of water.  When we went near the center of the tent, water gushed in a hole in the floor.  The hole, somehow was the exact size of my pinky finger, so for the duration of this rain, I sat in the middle of the tent with my finger plugging a hole.
Then something hit the tent, then something else.  Golf ball sized hail!  After a minute or two, it got smaller and came down about dime sized for a few more minutes.
 
 
 
When it stopped, we were all still pretty happy, just a little wet,but still having fun.  Jer and I let the girls go play and quickly took all of the heavy stuff out of the tent, moved it to a better spot and towel dried the floor with our camp towels.  The bottom of our sleeping pads were wet, but not too bad. 
This is how the girls occupied themselves:
 
 
So, by then it was pretty late.  We got the girls washed off in the lake, into warm clothes and into the sleeping bags we went.  At about midnight a flash of light woke me up.  I spent the next 4 and a half hours more scared than I have ever been outside.  I have never seen closer, brighter lightning or heard louder thunder.  Every time it would lightning, Jer and I could see each other staring across the tent.  We didn't want to talk about it and scare the girls.  Lucy woke up several times saying that she wanted to go home and Ellen was curled up with me in my sleeping bag with her hands over her ears shaking.
It was completely overwhelming.  Our tent was once again leaking steady drops.  My feet were soaked and there was constant, bright lightning.  At about 4:30 am, it finally died down to just a steady rain.  We woke a few hours later, pretty soaked.
The weather report showed that there was a chance of storms again the next night, so we decided to pack up and head in. 
On the paddle back to the entry point, there was a break in the clouds.  We stopped at a different camp site for a little break and even got to do some swimming.  It was a good ending to the short trip.  The girls had fun.  There are however, no pictures since we let the girls skinny dip!
 
Since we had a few days left, we headed to one of our favorite family spots that was pretty close.  Lutsen!
We hit the chair lift and headed for the Alpine Slide.



 
We spent some time in Grand Marais at the lakefront and found a new favorite restaurant.  Dockside Fish Market.  Fresh, waterfront seating and Delish!!



We did a little hiking too.


 
So, not quite what we expected, but still a super fun family vacay.
 
 
 


Thursday, August 16, 2012

Lucy's Baptism

Our little Lucy has decided that she wants to follow Jesus and give her life to him! 
She came to us a few months ago and told us that she wanted to be baptized.  We asked her if she knew what it meant and why she wanted to do it. This is what she said:
I love God and I trust Him.  I want to be baptized because I want to follow Jesus.

Each year our church does baptisms at Lake Nokomis.  When we told Lucy that she could be baptized in the lake, she said "That is neat because Jesus was baptized in a lake too!"

We are so proud of her.  Here are some pictures of the special day.