April Update

How is it even possible that the month of April is over already? It has been a busy month for us, and apparently has just flown by!

I spent more time than usual catching up with friends of mine, including a fun pasta bar girls' night out with a co-worker friend as well as a lunch date with friends of mine from college. Mark always is such a great husband and father and watches the boys without complaining! while I'm gone.

We spent a lot of time at the park when the weather cooperated, had to go see the geese at Island Park, and just generally spent a lot of time at home. We also purchased a hammock, which has been a lot of fun to lounge in as a family :)

Here are a few highlights:

Bridal Shower for Kirsten (April 12)

Amy attended a bridal shower on the 12th for Mark's cousin Kirsten, who is getting married TOMORROW in Mankato. It was a fun day away catching up with some of the other girl cousins on that side of the family (Megan, Kirsten, Lori and Skyler).

Click here for a full recap with pictures!

Baby Shower for Nephew Johannes III (April 19)

Amy helped host a small baby shower for Mark's sister and her new baby boy Johannes III at his Dad's house in Worthington.

Click here for a full recap with pictures!

Easter (April 20)

We had a nice Easter Morning together as a family at the house, then attended the Easter service at church before coming home to host a houseful of 20 people (Mark's Mom's side of the family), which also included a smaller, less formal baby shower for Mark's sister with that side of the family.

Click here for a full recap with pictures from our Easter gathering!

Catching up with Friends (April 23)

We enjoyed catching up with our friends the Walerius's on a Wednesday evening over supper at The Grain Exchange in Slayton.

Click here for a full recap with pictures!

Mama and Me Day (April 24)

I spent a wonderful day visiting, lunching and shopping with my Mama :)

Click here for a full recap with pictures!

Looking Ahead...

Since this post is late, we spent the first Saturday of the month in Mankato celebrating Mark's cousin Kirsten's marriage to Luke (YAY!!). From here, May promises to get a little more up in the air for us.

May is always so busy for us, with Mark helping a lot at the farm, and Amy staying home to care for the house and kiddos. It's always a lot of hours for Mark AWAY FROM home, and always a lot of hours for Amy AT home. We always joke that if we can make it through planting and harvest intact, we're home free! It has certainly taken on a whole different dynamic since having babies. And to think I used to whine about just having to do the housework by myself before that point :)

We initially were tentatively planning to take a week long vacation in Alexandria, MN at a cabin, but the plans for that fell through, so we are instead looking at possibly making it out to visit my brother and his family in Indianapolis. We haven't been there since we took our big road trip back in the fall of 2009 (FIVE years ago), right after our nephew Eli was born. Hopefully as a part of that road trip, we'll be able to make it back down to Warsaw to visit my old stomping grounds again for a day or something. All of that is still tentative, though, so we shall see. That's a LOT of ground to cover with two little ones. (How you guys do that so often, I'll never know, Dan and Sarah). We had meltdowns with BOTH boys just traveling an hour to Mankato and back on Saturday, so a 12 hour car ride might be a total pipe dream with two little ones.

We're definitely looking forward to hitting the lakes on some half days at work together for little "date afternoons" on the jet ski while the boys nap at daycare, and hopefully being able to take a few family days together here and there to rest and explore. I also want to start doing "Mommy and Me" days and for Mark to do "Daddy and me" days with the boys.

Mark and I also hope to steal away for another overnight together while the boys party at Grandpa and Grandma Pam's in Worthington at some point. It'll probably have to wait until after harvest, but our weary bodies could use some rest, and I know I wouldn't mind spending a few hours in the hot tub again!

Social Committee

I don't know if I've mentioned on her before, but Mark and I started serving on our church social committee this year, so we've been having fun with three other church members planning fun events for our church body. I think I speak for probably everyone at our church when I say that fellowship events have been SERIOUSLY lacking in the past. It's not one of those things that everyone does well, and quite frankly, I think everyone is stretched thin.

Mark and I have said for years that we wish we had opportunities to get together with our church body more often, but there just aren't many events. And typically the ones that do exist end up not working for us with so much going on with our families (i.e. they surround holidays or just happen to be on weekends that don't work for us).

I think something that is rampant in a lot of smaller churches throughout the country is the tendency to say, "There isn't enough here for us, so let's find another church where they have more going on", and then people leave the church and go somewhere that the "grass is greener". And I'm going to admit: It's a conversation Mark and I have had in the past. But after praying and thinking about it, I am SO glad this opportunity came up, because it's crazy how exactly on track the opportunity was with what I felt the Lord was saying to us.

I felt the Lord say time and time again, "Amy, everyone is busy: Everyone is stretched thin. Everyone is feeling like their schedules are full. But you are GOOD at event planning; you ENJOY it. So what if YOU helped plan events for the church? What if YOU helped breathe life back into a church that so desperately NEEDS to rekindle the fellowship? Because if you're not willing to take on some responsibility, then you have no right being critical that there is nothing going on."

Talk about conviction!

So we're putting some events on the calendar this year. I know we need to get better at the advertising part of it, but that will come. But hopefully this will be the challenge that we need to become a growing church that fellowships together better. We will see how the Lord leads us!

Weekend

It was about time for a restful weekend in our house. For the first time since I can remember, I spent an entire weekend in Windom. It was wonderful, and while the house might not look drastically cleaner than it did before the weekend started, I got a LOT done between laundry caught up and catching up on my digi-scrapping. I made it all the way through mid-MARCH, people! Of THIS year!

Friday

Friday night was fun! After supper, I got Kendrick ready for bed, then we loaded the boys into the car and made our way over to Kastle Kingdom for an hour. Cashel LOVED this "new park", and was asking about it all day on Saturday and Sunday. It's a really fun park for the little ones, but MAN is there a ton to do there. I cannot believe how advanced Cashel is these days. He was running circles around some of the older kids there, even. If I've said it before, I'll say it again: We are in trouble with these two little active boys!

Saturday

Mark was in the field Saturday from about 8:30am until 5pm, so it was just the boys and I. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty cool and windy, so we didn't spend much time outside - just about half an hour for Cashel and I while Kendrick napped.

We had been doing pretty good, really. The boys had been playing nicely for the most part. Cashel was dramatic from time to time, but no one was fighting, and we had successfully made it through most of the day happy and rested and well-fed. Then, right around 4pm, I heard a soft thud on the stairs. Kendrick had been in the middle of the floor in the toy room, so I thought Cashel was throwing something down there (he does this ALL the time), but turned around to see Cashel standing across the room in the living room.

I ran to the stairs to see Kendrick rolling down the stairs - he was about halfway down when I got there and he was at the bottom before I could reach him. The Lord was certainly watching over him, as he has nothing to show but a couple small bruises on his forehead. He had no swelling, no broken bones, and after a short little snuggle session, the crying subsided and he was back to his usual self - babbling ("Mamamamamamamamamama"), smiling, laughing, crawling and pulling up on things.

It was so traumatic, though, and had me shaken up for the rest of the evening. It could have been SO much worse!

I've had to remind myself to take a few deep breaths and relax since then, but we're doing alright now.

After we got settled down, there was so.much.snuggling.

Mark got home around 5, and we went to church for movie night, where we both were helping with kiddos while the adults enjoyed the movie. It turned out to be a really small group, but it was also Prom night, so I'm assuming a lot of the parents and high school kids were there and unable to make it.

Sunday

Sunday was gloomy and rainy and stormy and we didn't do a whole lot of anything, truly. After church, the boys went down for a nap, and I made my way over to my photographer friend Heather's house for a WildTree tasting party (these were two of the ones I picked up).

It was a pretty "vanilla" night after that. It was raining hard, so we just ate, cleaned up, gave the boys baths and settled in for the night.

But like I said...I got SO.MUCH.SCRAPPING done!! (Here is a small sampling!)

Another weekend in the books. Now let the crazy begin!

Mama and Me Day in Humboldt (April 24)

For those of you who don't know, I grew up in a big family: This little lady birthed SIX children, of which I am the 3rd.

As a result of those six children, she's responsible for all this chaos haha :) FOURTEEN grandchildren ages 8 and under.

While I don't have any intention of having THAT many children, I only hope one day to be as wonderful a mother to my children as she has been to me.

Being a busy Mom with 2 (yes, just TWO at this point) kids, it's really really hard to find time at all to spend with my own Mama, much less quality time with her. And being a busy Mom with 2 kids, that makes me really sad to realize that those days will come for me as well - when my kids will be "too busy" to spend time with me. So I decided one day to change that. I don't want to wake up and realize one day that my Mom is gone and I didn't get to spend quality time with her while she is here.

I've decided that I'm going to start trying to regularly take solo day trips to Humboldt a few times a year to just spend the day with my Mama - lunching and shopping and visiting and all that good stuff. The first such day was a couple weeks ago on a Thursday, and we had a great time together :)

I left and took the boys to daycare at their regular time, then made the way down the road (it's about 2 hours) and arrived in Humboldt around 9:30am. Of course, I had to make a short stop at Looft's on 9, my favorite stop for coffee on the way.

We visited and rested for a bit when I first arrived, then headed out for lunch around 11am.

We lunched at Sadie's Tea Thyme in Fort Dodge and both ordered the pot roast, and oh my goodness was it delicious! It was perfect for a chilly, rainy afternoon, and just enough to fill us without feeling too over full.

After lunch, we shopped for a little while at Kohl's until we grew weary. We ended up getting 3 of the same shirts haha Here we are in one of them.

I also enjoyed seeing these two smiley guys before heading home, although little sis was down for her afternoon nap, so I missed out on seeing her :(

It was truly a wonderful day, and I can only hope my Mom enjoyed being with me as much as I enjoyed being with her :) I'm looking forward to planning another day like this sometime in the near future :)

Lately in Windom

I'm trying to get better at these posts, but man is it hard to carve out time these days! Here's what we've been up to lately :)

Mineva's Pasta Bar. Are.You.Kidding.Me. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO Delicious! Girls' Night out in Spirit Lake with my good co-worker friend Angie.

Love this smiley little guy

Poor Dada has his hands full

This kiddo ADORES his Daddy

How a year has gone by since seeing my dear Rach, I have no idea

These two kiddos LOVE Grandpa Kent and Grandma Pam.

Beginnings of our wall of kid stuff in the toy room

Hammock Life

My little man and I

That face!!

Cashel kinda loves going to Island Park

Celebrating Mark's cousin Kirsten with some of the other Johnson cousins

You would think I just told him we had to go home or something...

I hosted a couple baby showers for our new nephew/cousin Johannes

He's a little sweetheart, doncha think?

Mark with his new nephew and boys

Easter baskets

These two are going to be a handful

Okay, maybe they already are a handful...

My boys all ready for church

Our family Easter morning

Cashel and Alex (Mark's cousin's son) ready to devour the bunny cake

All these people fit in our house for Easter. I'm still not quite sure how!

The boys with their boys

The guest/staging room constantly looks like this about 20 minutes after it is completely cleaned up. Thus is the life with crazy little monkey boys.

I'm hoping for more days like this.

I'm really big into cereal/nut/fruit/chocolate mixes these days.

Tried this tea when I got my hair cut earlier in the month, and LOVED it.

Cashel was being WAY too quiet, so I went in to see what he had gotten into and found him like this. Melt.My.Heart. In other news, he has grown even more attached to his blankies, and always wants to have it covering his feet.

He is also BIG into making towers out of legos

It's no wonder Mark has a sore back some days

Backyard swinging

Holla!

We're not only crawling, but pulling up on things to stand as well. Oy vey!

And now for a photo sequence of Kendrick in my absolute favorite outfit of all times.



THE largest blackberry I've ever seen!

Got myself a haircut