January Recap

January has been an incredibly lazy and a little rough.

We can thank the frigid cold temps and a house full of sickies for a big lack of blog posts this month. We didn't do very much this month, and that took its toll on us mentally and physically. We feel like lazy blobs. With the roads being so questionable, and having had no fewer than FIVE blizzards this past month, we're hoping that things will clear up soon and we'll be able to get out and about a little more. I kid you not when I say that in an entire MONTH, we've had about 3 days where the temp has gotten over 30 degrees. And we were about ready to throw on our shorts and t-shirts haha :) Trying to make the best of it is kinda old at this point.

Mark and I DID go on a dinner and grocery shopping date, courtesy of Dad and Pam (thanks, guys!), on the 11th, but beyond that, we really mostly just worked on getting through each day and making sure to take time for each other as a family. Sometimes I wonder how we ever had time to do more than just the basics each day when the weather didn't mandate we stay inside. (See my "Day in our Lives" post from earlier this month to see what I'm talking about).

We were completely swamped at work for most of the month as well, so each day was a tad overwhelming, and other than Cashel, none of us really got any good sleep. Kendrick hit the famed "4 month sleep regression", and was up no fewer than 2 times a night, but most nights it was between 3 and 4 times a night, so I especially was exhausted.

In fact, about the ONLY thing we really did this month out of the house was our trip to Minneapolis to celebrate Cashel's birthday together, but we had enough fun with that for the whole month!

It was a big month, however, for Amy's Mom, as she moved from the arm into an independent living apartment in town in mid-January. It was just getting to be a bit much for her with all the kiddos running around at the farm house, and there was no way she could keep the place up without my sister and her family there to help out. They will continue to rent the farm house, so we still have the place in the family (wooo hooo!)

We're anxious to get down there hopefully in February to help her get settled in a bit more. We're really hoping that our schedules (and the weather) settle down to make that possible. It seems to have been a good adjustment so far, but it will take a little while before it feels more like home for her.

But for now, here's our single-event recap of our month :)

Birthday Weekend in Minneapolis (January 24-26)

We decided to forego a big party this year and have a fun birthday weekend for Cashel in Minneapolis this year. We ate out a few times, enjoyed the Como Zoo (especially the Tropical Encounter), had some fun pool time, visited with our cousins and their kids, and visited the Mall of America!

Click here for a full recap with pictures!

Cashel's Birthday (January 26)

Although we didn't have a big party with family and friends, we had a nice little party with just the four of us, complete with Elmo cake, gifts, and a nice banner :)

Click here for a full recap with pictures!

Looking Ahead...

February should be an exciting one! We initially had these great plans to host a Superbowl Party, but with the way I was feeling the week before, I was glad I hadn't sent out any emails to invite people. We also had to skip out on attending my niece and nephew's joint bday party on Superbowl Sunday.

Our friends Heather and Jamie are expecting their first little baby (a boy!) in just a few days! We're so excited for them!

We are having our first overnight without the kids together since having two kiddos!! Mark's Dad and Pam are watching the boys for us, and we're getting away on Valentine's Day :) Mark and I have an awesome suite booked in Sioux Falls, and we are giddy about it :) It has been a VERY long year since we did a similar getaway (the only other "just us" getaway without the kids) last February.

We also plan to make our way down to Iowa to visit my Mom and check out her new apartment as well as celebrate her birthday with her at the end of the month.

That's about it for now! Tune in next month :)

Switching to Prepaid

In 2005, I pushed Mark into getting a cellphone.

In 2014, I pushed him into getting a SMARTphone.

All is now right in the world :)

Mark and I recently switched our service to Verizon Prepaid as opposed to their contract service. We got a good runaround when we switched Mark's phone over, and between the both of us, probably spent a good 2 hours on the phone making sure we could maintain our current phone numbers, but it's done!

Mark led the way switching from his circa 2007 flip phone for a Samsung Galaxy Legend. He's still all on nerves about going over his data plan, so it mostly just sits in his pocket, and he will occasionally use it to look at texts that I occasionally send him. I think he's still scared of it a little bit :)

I decided to go with a Motorola Moto G. LOVE it! It was a fairly seamless transition from my Motorola Razr, and I like that it's a tiny bit heavier and a tiny bit smaller. We'll see if I love it as much in a few months, but so far, so good!

They had a big sale on custom covers over at cellphoneshop.net, so I whipped up some fun custom designs in Photoshop for both our phones and our Samsung Galaxy 7 tablet. I'm giddy for them to arrive! Here are my designs (L to R: Mark's, for our tablet, Mine):

I think it's awesome to finally be free from a contract, and still getting just as good a deal on service while paying LESS overall! My phone was only $99, and Mark's was something like $80, so when you figure it out over the course of two years, we're paying WAY less than we had been. (Shoot - my bill used to be $87 per month!!)

We'll see how it goes this month!

Cashel's 2nd Birthday (January 26)

After a FUN weekend in Minneapolis, we settled in for a nice little party at home, just the four of us. We decided earlier in the year that we were going to forego a big party for family and friends this year, and it was a good thing, because no one would have been able to make it! There was a HUGE blizzard on Cashel's birthday this year, and we made it back just a couple hours before things got really nasty! (I guess there are SOME perks to having an almost 5-month-old waking you up at 4:30am!)

While Cashel napped, I baked and decorated his elmo cake, then designed, printed, cut out, and put up his birthday banner. In fact, that was while everyone else napped :)

It didn't take long before Cashel was up, and definitely ready to dig into that cake and open all his presents. We had to act quick to keep him entertained long enough to finish getting things together :)

The big hit of the party was the Barney doll we got Cashel. He wanted it "out, Mama!" right away, and he loved that it sang to him. He had to give Barney hugs and kisses at the part of the song that goes, "with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you".

Cashel also got a cute hippo puppet, some building blocks, Chasing Cheeky (which is a HOOT to watch him interact with him...he runs around the house saying, "Ahhh! Cheeky!!" and runs away from him lol

Then came the cake. Oh, the cake! In my opinion, it tasted just awful, but Mark said it wasn't too terrible. In order to get the bright red color, I had to use an obscene amount of red food coloring, and I didn't have the tasteless kind, so it tasted horribly bitter. But it looked adorable! Cashel was just in TEARS and horribly upset that we had to put a candle on it and that he had to blow it out before he could dig in.

He finally came around when we told him that after he blew the candle out, he could have some haha :)

He quickly gave us the obligatory "cheese", then was done with any smiling and SOOOOOOOO ready to dig in!

Before we knew it, this happened lol

Elmo was apparently very tasty!

Oh our little man - such a big boy! Happy Happy Birthday, sweet boy! We are looking forward to a fun year together!

Cashel's Birthday Weekend in Minneapolis (January 24-26)

For Cashel's birthday this year, we decided to forego a big party (especially with as junky as the weather has been lately - I doubt anyone would be able to even make it!) and have a fun weekend as a family in Minneapolis.

We headed out after work on Friday, made a short stop at Applebee's for supper in Mankato, then made our way up to our hotel and got settled in for the night.

The weather was less than desirable, but aside from seeing 8 cars in the ditch, we made it unscathed! We stayed at the Hilton on American Boulevard, which was a nice place! We settled in easily, but Cashel was WIRED! He was SOOOOOOO excited about the hotel! lol

Saturday: Como Zoo, Swimming, Mall of America and Johnny Rocket's

The next morning, we were up early (as usual) and enjoyed some breakfast at the Original Pancake House (oh my WORD was it delicious!) before making our way over to the Zoo for the morning.

This was the third Zoo we had taken Cashel to in his short 2 year life. His first zoo was the Panewa'a Zoo in Hilo, Hawaii at the end of March, then we also took him to the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls back in April on a nice day, but we think he was a tad too young for it both times back then. This time, he LOVED it!

We started out by visiting the Tropical Encounters area, and boy did it ever feel good to be stripped out of our winter coats, sweatshirts, hats and gloves, and actually on the verge of SWEATING! Kendrick LOVED it, and Cashel was thrilled too :)

It took a little while (and multiple times cleaning my lens) for the camera to adjust from the raw, bitter cold to the warm, humid tropical atmosphere, and I had a few pictures that looked a bit like this :) I just love how Kendrick is always watching me - it's so adorable :)

Cashel was so fascinated by the ants, of all things. I'm pretty sure we can deliver some pretty fascinating ants in our backyard this spring, so he should be entertained lol

What I know is that I was SO thrilled to see GREEN with how awful and bitter cold it has been this winter! And I think we all felt the same way :)

After Tropical Encounters, we made our way over to the Gorilla Forest, where they had all kinds of Gorillas and monkeys and the like - a really cool enclosure for them too!

Our next stop was the African Hoofed Stock area with the Zebras and Giraffes. Boy was it ever stinky! It was sad to see them all penned up, but with it being below zero outside, I suppose there isn't much else to do for them. It looked like their outdoor setup was NICE, and we will definitely be returning this spring or summer to visit again when we don't have to be bundled up so tightly to race across the park.

We made a quick run across to the Large Cats area, where we saw the (sleeping) Lions, Tigers and a Leopard.

This was pretty much where I stopped taking pictures as much, but really - the Como Zoo was pretty neat! We really enjoyed our visit, even if it was in sub zero temps. I never would have thought about going to the Zoo in the winter, really, but I would go back in a heartbeat! It was nice to break up the monotonous winter around here!

We planned to stop somewhere for lunch on our way back, but the boys were out just a few minutes after putting them in their carseats, so we just made our way through the drive thru at Chick-Fil-A (our first experience there), then headed back to the hotel to let them get a good, long nap in. It worked! They stirred a bit getting inside (who wouldn't it was COLD!!), but then fell back asleep. Mark and I dug into our yummy chicken sandwiches and watched a little rugby (COOL looking sport!), and then I ran a few errands while they napped.

After the boys woke up from their naps, we got the boys some lunch, then got ready and headed down to the pool!

It was Kendrick's first time in a pool, and I think it's safe to say he LOVED it! Both boys stayed in for about an hour without fussing. We invited Mark's cousin, who is also a Mark, and his family to join us for the pool time and supper out. We hadn't seen them since Christmas TWO years ago!

We had initially planned on going to Rainforest Cafe for supper, but I stupidly didn't make reservations earlier, and the earliest they could get us in was 9pm, so we had to scramble (while en-route to the Mall of America) to decide on somewhere else. I called a few places and they were all at least an hour wait, and with the boys' bedtime fast approaching, we decided to head to the food court and settled on Johnny Rockets!

Mark corralled the boys while I put in the order. I have a feeling we will definitely be back to the Mall of America in the future with Cashel being so enamored by Nickelodeon Universe!

I have a feeling these guys will be buddies down the road at family functions on this side of the family! It was hard to really see them interact much given the rushed circumstances, but by Easter

This, sadly, was the best picture we got of our group altogether - sorry for it being so super fuzzy! I guess not everyone is as skilled at taking no-flash photos on a smartphone as I am :)

On our way back to the car, we stopped for about 5 minutes to check out the cool light show they had in Nickelodeon Universe: Cashel was completely mesmerized.

All in all, it was a great day! It was nice to have a change from the boring monotony of hanging around the house for days on end :)

Sunday: Birthday!!!

We were on edge the night before thinking about the impending blizzard coming and were only partially grateful for Kendrick waking us all up at 4:20am, so we got our things packed while the boys continued their sleeping and got on the road by 6:30am so we could beat the storm. The boys slept the WHOLE time until we reached St. James. We stopped there for some birthday doughnuts and coffee:)

Then, we hit the road again, and were SO THANKFUL that this was about as bad as it got!

We made it home around 9:20 after a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up supplies for the big party! (I'll post about the party soon!)

We had such a fun weekend together as a family :) And we're so glad we decided to forego the big party this year, because quite frankly, no one would have been able to make it anyway!