June Recap

This June has been a fairly quiet one around here. We did a lot of average, normal, boring types of things for the most part, with a few fun activities mixed in.

At the beginning of the month, I was gone a couple of days for a work conference in Bloomington.

The weekend after, we had a fun time with friends in Worthington at the Grabers' home. It's crazy to see how much we've all grown (not to mention our KIDS!) over the years, and it was fun to catch up with them. We missed the Breukers, Larsens and Walerius's.

Mark and I also took advantage of the first 90+ degree day of the year and took the jet ski out for its maiden voyage of 2015 on Cottonwood Lake for the afternoon. It was BEAUTIFUL!

The second Saturday of the month, I joined Mark's cousin Megan for a baby shower in Chanhassen for another one of Mark's cousins' baby boy while he wrangled the boys down to Worthington to spend time with Grandpa and Grandma.

The next week, I spent a few days with my Mom while my sister and her family took a vacation to the Wisconsin Dells together. It was so nice to spend some one on one time with her. We did a little shopping, met up with my brother and his family for supper one night, and a lot of visiting :)

That next weekend, Nancy joined me in Windom to hit up some of the city-wide garage sales in town to kick of Riverfest week. We also hit Schumaker's a couple times to stock up on some strawberries with the kiddos. Cashel LOVED it!

We celebrated Mark on Father's Day as well with lots of family snuggle time and a special request for smoked ribs :)

We had a strange last weekend of the month, as Cashel was at daycare campout for the first time (he was finally old enough to go), so we just had Kendrick.

While Cashel was having a blast at daycare campout (and I mean...he had a BLAST...didn't even want to come home lol)...

...we did crazy things we never normally do, like taking just one kid out to eat (which is SO MUCH EASIER than taking two), hitting up a bit of the Riverfest activities (before it started raining, anyway), I went strawberry picking by myself, and then Mark and I enjoyed some fun out on the Lake with the Grabers while Kendrick had fun at Grandpa and Grandma's house.

Not to mention we had some serious fun snuggles with our youngest little guy, and bedtime stories with both Mommy AND Daddy :) Kendrick certainly missed his big brother, but he LOVED having Mommy and Daddy all to himself too :)

We also made it to two of Mark's softball games, which was a fun treat!

Looking Ahead...

July and August are looking to be just as busy as June from the looks of it! We've already made it through the holiday weekend, which was jam packed! We've got mid-week softball games, swimming lessons, a trip or two to the splash park in Sioux Falls, hopefully a day of scrapbooking with my friend Angie, a girls' day with my friend Mandy, hopefully a trip or two down to visit the Ropte Farm, a week-long vacation with the family just hanging out around here, two birthdays (Mark and Kendrick), a trip to Omaha to visit Mark's sister and her family, and undoubtedly a ton of time outside. I'm tired just writing it all out! Bring it on, summer!!

Father's Day Weekend (June 20-21)

After a busy past three weeks, we have finally reached that sweet spot where it's just us for a while: Where we don't have any appointments, events to be at, parties, trips out of town, work or social obligations or other things knocking at our door. For now. And friends, after the way the past few weeks have been, it was almost blissful, but I'll get to that :)

The weekend started with a half day off on Friday to go hit the Windom City-Wide Garage Sales with my friend Nancy. It was a fun, but slightly harried few hours there, but Nancy found a lot of great deals, and I found a few (mostly to stock up my bubble bath reading collection along with some summer clothes for Kendrick).

Saturday morning, we started the day with snuggles together, which is just one of my favorite parts about having kiddos: The snuggles and tiny little bodies resting in the crook of our arms :)

I put the monkey bread in the oven and ran off to a few more garage sales, then joined the family for breakfast before heading off to Schumaker's for our 6th year of picking :) You can see my separate post on that here :)

After the strawberry patch, we swung by the park for a bit to let the boys get some of their crazies out of their system, then went back to the house for lunch and a whole unfortunate nap situation (you know, those days where they each take a 2 hour nap and overlap all of about 3 minutes). I prepped the strawberries and made some jam, ice cream topping and froze a gallon for smoothies at some point, and I recall we grilled hot dogs or something similar for supper.

Sunday morning was a bit of a rush, since the boys actually slept in until almost 8am, but we had to stop for a few minutes before heading to Sunday School to take the annual Father's Day picture :)

We made it through the church service by the hairs of our neck with a 3 year old and no children's church (TOTALLY different experience), then came home and grilled some yummy pork chops for lunch before heading down to the deck for some pool and slip 'n slide time for the boys.

They went down for LATE naps this day (something like 3pm, as I recall), and as they were going down, I was starting to work on smoking the ribs for supper. Ribs were Mark's only real request for the day.

Well...ribs and spending time with his family :)

The ribs were almost perfection, but they probably needed to keep smoking for something like 2 more hours, which we just didn't have. Either way, they were still finger-lickin' good!

And yeah, the picture above answers my question as to why I struggle so much to lose any weight. haha

And would you believe that my two toddlers refused to eat pretty much any ribs OR beans? I know. Shocking, right? But no worries - they didn't starve, because, Exhibit A:

And don't you ever in your wildest dreams think about taking those crackers away, because, Exhibit B:

After supper, Cashel wanted to try on his new helmet and pads so he could go riding his bike, and who were we to stand in the way? :)

And somehow, the process of him standing in the driveway to actually getting on this bike and pedaling made him age something like 5 years right before my eyes. ::sigh:: Such a big boy.

Of course, in my mind I'm envisioning him going off to college already. This mama is not ready!

But it's sort of alright, since we made a vow with Kendrick that he wasn't allowed to grow up that fast.

It was truly a very wonderful weekend. We love this guy so very much, and we simply wouldn't be the same family without him! He holds us all together and certainly makes up for my shortcomings. We're certainly glad that the Lord placed him as the head of our household, and our boys sure are glad that the Lord made him their Daddy :)

Strawberry Pickin' (June 20)

We finally made it out to do some strawberry picking this year at Schumaker's, and in spite of my nervousness at taking a 3 year old and 22 month old...at the same time...without killing all the strawberries or dragging them away covered in red mud, we actually had a really great time! We were also worried that it might storm, or that we'd be entering an enormous mud pit, and while it WAS muddy on the path, it wasn't bad at all in the patch. And it was a BEAUTIFUL day!

Cashel was actually way more helpful this year, and he didn't run off all over the place. We still struggled to keep both boys from walking through the row and stepping on berries, but Kendrick was the bigger culprit, and he did run off a couple times.

Fortunately, we did get him to finally just sit and eat some berries for a while until we were able to finish up :)

I get the impression that Kendrick was definitely a fan, though :)

We were definitely tuckered out after we were done, and Mark and I took a couple days before our backs were feeling good again after all that hunching over haha

We picked 14.75lbs this year (on the first go-round. I picked an additional 10.5lbs the next weekend). Our picking crew:

We're fairly certain this guy had a MUCH better experience this time around, since the patch was, you know, OPEN and all :)

Party at Graber's (June 6)

We had a fun evening in Worthington at Jamie and Heather's home to celebrate both friendship and birthdays (some a little early, some over a month late!) and just generally to hang out.

Unfortunately, we were bummed that the Breukers, Larsens and Walerius' were unable to make it, and the Stude kiddos were getting over a stomach bug, so they stayed with Grandpa and Grandma Koskamp while Mommy and Daddy had a few hours off from the parenting gig. It was a smallish group, but we still had fun catching up.

Our boys had a blast playing in the pool and running around like the crazy hoodlums they can be, and little Lincoln had a fun time too, although he took a bit to warm up.

We kept it pretty low-key, just ordering some pizza and hanging out and visiting, and celebrated a little bit with some cupcakes (YUM!)

It's hard to believe how far back these friendships go. We've all been through so much in the past TEN years of knowing each other (For Nance and I, more like 14 years: For Mark and Curt, more like their entire lives!)

Jamie, Mark, Curt

Heather, Amy, Nancy

I think we all had a fun time together (even in spite of dealing with cranky, tired toddlers hopped up on cheese puffs and cupcakes) and we're hoping to have another get together in the near future!