Lately in Windom (February 2017)

Tower building on a day off :)

Just a week or two before this little guy started walking for real!

There are times when I look at my babies and see glimpses of their Grandpa Lance, and it just takes my breath away. This was one such time. He would've been such an awesome Grandpa, and it really does make me so sad to know he only met one of his SIXTEEN grandchildren.

It's so fun to see these boys with their Grandpa Kent, and we're so glad that he is with us and doing well overall, considering we almost lost him when Cashel was a mere 9 months old.

It was a surprise to no one that Cashel chose pink paper for his handprints at preschool. It's his favorite color :)

We had some seriously unseasonably warm weather towards the middle of February, and we were so excited to be able to get outside! The van needed some SERIOUS attention, so we decided to empty it out and get it back in order!

Ryan helped from afar :) LOVING this jacket (or no jacket) weather in the midst of winter!

Cashel picked a whole slew of lemons from the lemon tree at the place we were staying in San Diego and packed them in one of our bags to take home. I didn't realize they were there until I was digging for some headphones. What do you do when life hands you a heavy sack of lemons? Make lemonade!

Mark and I had a MUCH-needed night off the Saturday night after we got back from San Diego. We did some shopping, went for a brisk walk a short ways around Lake Okabena, then had some yummy Chinese food at Panda House, did a little grocery shopping, and then home again. It was so nice to have that time off! The sunset was gorgeous over the lake!

I love this man so much! I wish we weren't always so tired and sluggish all the time. We both keep trying to remind each other that this exhausting season of life will pass, and then we'll just have to worry about our kids in all the other ways ;)

Sweet snuggles with this little one. The finger sucking has gotten progressively more intense in this last round of teething :( Poor buddy!

A little sidewalk chalk...in mid-February...with no jackets even!

Three little heads out on a walk :)

Oh, my heart :)

Gathered around Grandma Ruth to see what her birthday present was :)

Apparently my kids think winter is just going to last forever, so might as well just mow the snow, right?

Daddy is the best for long naps :)

My beautiful Mama turned 70! It's hard to realize that my kiddos will probably only know her in her frail state these days, as I have such fabulous memories of her being such a hardworking, loving, Christ-like, selfless, STRONG woman of God. Parkinson's sucks, guys :(

The garbage can is NOT safe these days. At home, we've learned to just turn it around, which seems to deter this little guy for the time being, anyways.

Birthday Celebrations with my Mama (February 25)

We spent a beautiful day down at the farm in Iowa with my Mama and a couple of my siblings and their families to celebrate my Mom's 70th birthday with her.

They had gotten about a foot of snow the day before, so the kids were STOKED that they got to go outside to play in it. They went sledding with Uncle Michael down the snow piles, made an attempt (or rather, Caitlin and Mama made an attempt) at building a snow wall, and just enjoyed clomping around out there in the snow.

After the fun in the snow, we had some cake and ice cream.

The boys had a fun time playing a game, which never happens anymore. (The kiddos are obviously getting a little older!)

We sure do love these special people in our lives! We're not sure what is coming next as far as our next get-together, but we're hoping for soon! Maybe Easter time for a day.

Lately in San Diego

Ready for our big trip! The secret to managing 3 kids ages 5 and under in a busy airport is to strap at least two of them into carseats and occupy the third ;)

Ryan's first flight!



I have "known" these two sweet ladies for four years now, but only just during this trip met them in person! They are such sweet friends, and it was so great to be able to bring our families together.

Beautiful Coronado! We really would love to return here sans-kiddos some day and stay for a few nights at the hotel here and just unwind. It's gorgeous!

I don't know why this guy has to look SO grown up! I feel like he looks 15 here.

This man has my heart :)

Daddy and Ryan love doing piggies :) On the beach was no exception.

Ahhh :) The ocean!

We're fairly certain that it was the seaweed way up by the sand hill that Cashel touched that caused his hand to get burnt and blister really badly :(

The only thing making this morning more perfect would have been if there HADN'T been contamination warning signs. Thankfully, the water was so freezing that our toes were about as much as we dipped in the ocean.

This kid was so unphased by it all lol

These nice seagulls were aptly named "poppy birds" by the boys, and we're kinda hoping they forget about it sometime soon haha

This sweet boy, I swear, has grown about 2 inches since we got back from vacation. He looks so much smaller here! He was terrified of going anywhere near the water, but LOVED playing in the sand at the beach.

We have an issue with Cashel always picking Mama flowers. All the time! The problem is that most of the flowers he likes to pick aren't ours to be picking! Ooops!

The view from our deck - so beautiful!

The planes were landing SO CLOSE to us. The boys counted them for hours.

This is pretty much how the entire meal at Corvette Diner went. These kids exasperate us some days.

Most downtime at the condo was spent just like this :)

A Zoo favorite for the big boys!

This was such a shocker for me! The boys are notoriously terrified of dogs, and 20 minutes before this picture was taken, Cashel was cowering in the van unwilling to even get out because of this tiny little dog. At this point, he was going back for more and more and more kisses.

a HUGELY disappointing turn of events in our vacation left Cashel with 2nd degree burns in patches on his hand and a badly skinned knee.

Welcome to the gun show hehe

I'm gonna say it: Phil's was good this time, but I remember it being much better back in 2010. Maybe it's because my taste buds have changed? Or because half of my food was cold by the time I got to eat it? I don't know. It was good, but not "the best BBQ I've ever had in the history of the world" good.

I love SO MUCH about this picture! These boys just adore their cousin Sofie!

This was back when we thought Cashel's hand was bad. Oh my goodness did it ever get 1000 times worse than this :( So glad it is healing now!!

It has been a LONG time since I've played volleyball. I'd like to pretend I was drastically better than the boys haha

Kendrick is getting to be so much more helpful :)

Bros :)

The best way to get all the kids looking at the camera is to tell them they can't be in the picture. Naturally.

Minor meltdown over Mama's vanilla chai latte.

This was the pond at SeaWorld where there were these tiny fish that eat dead skin. If you put your hand to the bottom of the pool and stay very still, they'll come and nibble off your dead skin. It wasn't for me, but the boys were fascinated!

I am not at all disappointed that I decided to lug around my big old honkin' DSLR. I mean...come on! Look at the clarity of this picture, and zoomed way in to 110mm!

Cashel went on his very first big kid roller coaster and LOVED it!

I keep saying it over and over, but we really need a Sofie at our house :) These boys just LOVE her!

SeaWorld has this REALLY awesome kids' section, and the boys LOVED the kiddie rides and the rope net course.

We couldn't leave Ryan alone, so Cashel got to ride by himself, since he was tall enough.

Bros :)

Mornings were about like this on vacation :)

We went to this little hole in the wall Italian restaurant our last night in San Diego, and oh.my.goodness. I usually really don't like restaurant spaghetti, but that was what the boys ordered. Naturally, we had leftovers, and no time to really eat them, as we had to check out before lunch, so I had this for breakfast, and it was SO GOOD!

A little morning nap while we packed things back up and loaded up to head back to Los Angeles for our flight that evening.

I'm not sure really why, but I love these back of the head pictures of my boys. I say it all the time to Mark, but I have a hard time fathoming there being 4 little heads in these pictures some day in the very near future. Ryan is already ready to be part of the action, and this new little one will be a year old before I know it.

Beautiful La Jolla!

Even at 11:30pm, these boys wanted to keep on going. In fairness, it only felt like 9:30pm, as we were still on California time.

That's it for our big trip! I hope you enjoyed the pics! I'm hoping at some point to put together an actual recap post or two, but considering I have pretty minimal time these days, that might be a long time coming!