Lately in Windom (July Edition)

We decided to try our hand at fresh-squeezed lemonade. Cashel is a pro at juicing lemons!

The boys have this big thing with walking with their camp chairs around their necks. It drives me batty!

I love it when my boys wear hats :) So cute!


This little guy ADORES his Grandpa :)

4th of July supper :)

My little firecrackers :)

Sparklers seemed like SO much bigger of a deal when I was little. I'm kinda thankful that Cashel didn't seem to be too enamored, because I don't know that we'll buy them again.

This little one could eat watermelon for DAYS. He had a chunk in his hand the entire day at our church picnic.

The boys are BIG time into water balloons right now.

Mark and I spent probably 4 hours picking out flooring at Mendards on the 4th of July while the boys stayed with Grandpa and Grandma. We settled on this only to find out when we went to pick it up that it is no longer being sold in the stores, and it has horrible reviews online. I guess it probably would have paid to do some research. We ended up deciding to return it, which made us both cringe as there's a 25% restock fee for special order items ::sigh:: So now back to the drawing board!

Of course, we had to refuel with some BWW, our go-to place when we're in Mankato.

We picked up a few more supplies as well, to build some shelves and also to fix up our window boxes.

Before it got so sticky hot around here, we tried to get out for walks a little more often. These days? No thank you!

Pedis and lunch with my good friend Mandy :)

This little guy has THE most contagious smile and giggles :)

My favorite Saturday Morning activity :)

My little sweetheart has been working on his molars. As a result, he has been pretty tuckered out lately.

This guy has been in LOVE with the water lately! We hope little brother follows suit soon!

Oh my goodness do I ever just love this little dude :) That smile!

Something apparently got really bad. I can't remember what we were upset about.

Swimming lessons! Be looking for a post soon!

The boys are beginning to love Tuesdays around here. We either go down to Daddy's softball games, or it's cherry dilly bar and park night with Mama. I've had to learn to only get the dilly bars and NOT anything for me, since they take about 4 bites and then are both promptly done with their dilly bars. That's a lot of ice cream for me to eat!

My little monkeys :)

This kid is a little daredevil! He had fun sliding head-first down the slide into the little kiddie pool in our back yard.

Kendrick much preferred to make mud puddles in the sandbox. Apparently we also have a plumber's crack going on :)

Bacon is one of our favorite breakfast meats around here. We only have it on the weekends.

Interesting fun fact about my kiddos: Kendrick LOVES scrambled eggs, but Cashel hates them. Like...we have to force-feed him pretty much.

I LOVE our local farmers' market!

LOVE it!

Kendrick has been BIG TIME into puzzles lately. I decided we needed to get him more of them for his birthday, since our 5 wooden puzzles have him feeling bored these days.

He also loves tweaking his little teets lol

These two love tormenting their Mama. They have to either be right up in my face, poking me, pinching me, jumping on me or just snuggling. But there are always two of them: Always.

Such a cool little dude :)

July Recap

Man did this month ever just fly by! I think I say that all the time, but I honestly have zero idea how it's the middle of August and I haven't even started this update yet. I'll do my best to recap the month, but it feels like a blur!

July was all about celebrating, food, fun, friends, softball, the pool, water, sunscreen, being outside, and a whole lot of normal for us.

We had fun down in Worthington on the 3rd for their first ever Beach Bash, which was a lot of fun! Once again, we felt like we did a lot more chasing kids around than actually visiting with friends, but it was still a fun night!

The boys ended up staying overnight with Grandpa and Grandma on a whim after the beach bash, so Mark and I had a nice date day in Mankato the next day, mostly at Menards...picking out flooring and back splash samples for our kitchen. We ended up picking up the flooring the next weekend as well as picked out a back splash, but the ended up returning the flooring at the beginning of August after finding out it had some horrible reviews.

The next day, we had our big church picnic, which we had a great time at!

Much of the rest of the month, we just did family stuff, like trips to the farmers' market, grocery store, walks to the park or into the "country". I enjoyed a girls' afternoon with my good friend Mandy, and we spent a fun at the Fairmont Aquatic Center, which I recapped the whole weekend here.

The boys had swimming lessons for 8 days, which I recapped here

At the end of the month, Mark's brother and his family from California came to visit and stayed with us for nine days. I did a full recap from their visit here

And that pretty much ends July!

Looking Ahead...

August promises to be another fairly busy month, but we're ready to tackle it! We start out finishing up with our company in town and celebrating Mark's 36th birthday, which then leads into a week of vacation. We plan to lay pretty low, but will take a trip down to visit my family in Iowa as well as Mark's sister and family (and a trip to the Omaha Zoo) in Omaha. The rest of the month is pretty low-key until the end of the month when we take the boys for a weekend away to celebrate Kendrick's 2nd birthday (which I STILL need to start thinking about).

Life is busy and full and crazy, but I so appreciate these days :) I know they won't last forever, and that my babies will soon be too busy for their old folks and won't need us as much anymore.

Swimming Lessons

The boys have had swimming lessons for the past week and a half down at the local pool, and they have mostly been loving it!

I mean, they both love going, and they get super excited when we go there, and Kendrick only screams bloody murder for about 60% of the class, so progress?

The classes lasted about 25 minutes each day for 8 days. We always started by getting the kids in the water, then doing a song together (either "Motor Boat" or "Wheels on the Bus" usually), then we'd work on blowing bubbles, then our floats (which Cashel did great, but Kendrick HATED), both front and back. Then we'd have another song, then play with toys, work on our kicking, and then finish with another song. Sometimes we'd have a "car wash" at the end, where the boys would sit on the edge, and we'd rinse them off with a little toy watering can, and then pretend to wash them with imaginary bubbles, and then rinse them off again.

Cashel really took to it, did a fantastic job, and was actually bored about halfway through. He was all ready to jump off the diving board at the end (or rather be dropped in the water to the instructor by Mama or Daddy with a life jacket on).

Kendrick was a little less impressed. Part of it was that the water was pretty cold (even for me!), but he was NOT a fan at ALL of being on his back, especially. I actually felt bad that we kept on taking him, as it sounded like he was being tortured most of the time. But just a few weeks after lessons ended, we took him to the pool at our hotel in Omaha, and he was doing ALL of the stuff from the classes while laughing and giggling and not screaming at all. It was a warmer pool too, so maybe it was just the cold temps?

Weekend Recap (July 17-19)

The weekend started a tinge early for me this past weekend. I started a whole day and a half early with lunch and pedicures with my dear friend Mandy :) She is due with baby #2 next month, so it was nice to get a chance to relax and catch up.

I don't recall anything crazy going on that evening, but I had the next day off work to be home with the boys, as our daycare provider was on vacation that day. The boys and I had a great time walking down to the park, then

We had lunch with Daddy, then naps, grilled out for supper, and that was about it.

Saturday morning was so sweet :) We all snuggled in our bed when the boys woke up, watching some cartoons, and Kendrick has SO MANY kisses for his Mama :)

We decided to hit the aquatic center in Fairmont that day on a whim, so we loaded the family up and made our way there. We got there shortly after noon, after stopping for a short lunch at Taco John's. Cashel ate it right up.

Kendrick, on the other hand, had been working on his molars, so the poor little guy slept most of the time, so I got to do a lot of sitting on the sidelines. We were SO THANKFUL for the umbrellas they had there to stay out of the sun. We did make it in the water a little bit, but Kendrick was NOT a fan of the kiddie area one bit. I can't blame him, as there was a ton of gushing water, it was loud, there were a lot of people, and he doesn't like water in his face much.




Sunday was church, then lunch, then dogpile on Mama day :) It was starting to get hot and humid and mucky outside, so we spent most of the day inside. We were also a little tuckered still from all the time outside the day before, so we kept it pretty low key :)