Celebrating with my Mama (February 22)

After an extremely busy January and February (so far), we were glad to finally get the opportunity to spend the day in Humboldt celebrating my Mama's 68th birthday with her.

Granted, "celebrating" seems to be the code word for "unsuccessfully spending all afternoon trying to get two cranky toddlers down for a nap", but we had a good time anyway :)

I think that in the course of the 6 hours we were in Humboldt, I managed to take something like 250 pictures, but I thought I'd share some of my favorites :)

I'm not entirely sure if I've mentioned before or not, but my sister Amanda makes THE BEST cupcakes.

We learned that while Cashel still only eats the frosting, Kendrick actually will eat the cake too.

All of the kids have a love/hate relationship with Uncle JJ. They adore him when they're babies, and hate him once he can start picking on them haha :) I suppose that's the curse of being the baby in a family of six kids: You never have a younger sibling to pick on, so you take it out on your nieces and nephews haha He definitely loves his little nieces and nephews, though :)


I absolutely am over the moon about my Mom's new apartment that they added on where half of the garage used to be. It's a perfect little haven for her, and I'm SO happy for her :) It's a tinge messy as she's still just getting moved in.


She has a perfect little cozy nook to read now :)

She has the most beautiful hands :)

These boys love to visit Grandma Ruth at the farm. It was nice being able to visit with her in her apartment, although the boys didn't get to stay in there long because no naps==too wild for Grandma's.


I love this woman more than words can express. It has been so difficult to watch her struggle over the past few years, but it was such a breath of fresh air to see her change in demeanor this last visit, and how peaceful she seemed in her new surroundings :)

These two just crack me right up :) We had to physically remove them from Grandma's after a while because they were just too rambunctious. Kendrick has such a telling smile lol When he's laughing and smiling this big, there's usually a tornado in his wake.


These five (and the other TEN Ropte cousins) are a force to be reckoned with. We sure missed the other cousins this trip :(

This picture perfectly captures miss Kaleigh Mae's personality haha :) My sister and her little girls :)

I'm not going to lie: We were weary by the time we got home. Somehow, Kendrick completely recharged after something like a 20 minute nap and was awake the entire 2 hour drive home. Cashel was out cold after not too long, but woke up a total crabby pants about an hour into the trip. They were both just DONE with the carseats and traveling. We made it home and gave them some snacks, and they still wanted to party for an hour. I'm sure it'll be an interesting week getting them back on track.

Even so, we had a nice visit, and the boys had a great time playing with their cousins (and eating cupcakes). We were glad that we were able to make it down, and we are looking forward to seeing everyone at the end of March together again! We missed our far-away family in 2014, and I think we've got some baby-crazy Aunts all lined up to meet Mr. Andrew. Mama Sarah may very well not see that little man very much, so I'm hoping she will be able to get some sweet snuggles in before they come :)

For now, a special Happy Birthday to my Mommy :) I hope you have had a wonderful day!

4th of July Weekend (July 4-6)

I'll be honest with you: I wasn't really looking forward to the 4th of July weekend this year. Aside from having an extra day at home with the boys, we didn't really have any plans, and without something to look forward to, we didn't really anticipate anything exciting going on. We needed to stay in town for the holiday weekend as we were helping get set up for our big church picnic on that Sunday, so even going down to Humboldt as we might have done in the past was off the table, since it was going to be a crazy weekend anyway.

We also are extremely fortunate and usually get a bit of a break at some point of the weekend, and our favorite childcare (Grandpa, Grandma and Aunt Jess) were out of town at Uncle Tyler's baseball tournament in Alexandria. To top it all off, earlier in the week, we had gotten some horrible news that one of Mark's best friends was about to lose his Mom in a sudden turn of events. To say the weekend looked bleak was an understatement.

And really, some parts of it truly were: Mark's buddy DID end up losing his Mom on Independence Day :(

But I tried to check my attitude on Thursday evening and set out to really actually try to make the best of the weekend in spite of the circumstances, and overall, it really wasn't too bad. I made my way to the grocery store on Thursday night to pick up some supplies to make the weekend great, starting with a cheapo $8 inflatable pool, some blow up beach balls and some squirt guns so we would actually hang out outside instead of mope around inside. I also got some great yummy meal options for the holiday (even if not stuff for the grill, since we still hadn't bought a new grill), and dessert. I ended up making a half batch of my co-worker Jim's salsa (SO YUMMY!), and then went to bed feeling a little better about things.

Friday, July 4th

Cashel and I decided to go pick some strawberries (this was the 3rd time this year!) at Schumaker's early Friday morning, and somehow we ended up with something like 8lbs, even though Cashel wasn't really very helpful this time around. It all ended up turning into ice cream topping this time around.

We spent a fair amount of time outside on the deck playing in the little pool, which was nice, since it got fairly hot out, both before and after naps.

Lunch was nothing special, except for the YUMMY salsa I made the night before. It was very evident at this point just how badly we needed to buy a new grill, because hello - Independence Day weekend an NO grilled food?

Kendrick went down for a long nap, leaving Cashel and I to hang out for a while :)

When Kendrick woke up, we decided it was time for watermelon!

The evening was fairly uneventful. We had Mark's Mom over for supper, where we "grilled" pork chops and hot dogs on the griddle (again, I SOOOO miss our grill!) They were surprisingly not that bad.

Overall, it was a good day :) It's becoming increasingly more difficult to get a picture of the two of these little patriots :)

We had initially talked about putting the boys in the car at bedtime and heading down to Worthington to watch the fireworks, but the forecast called for storms, and we didn't feel it was worth chancing driving all the way there for them to be cancelled, so we stayed home. Kendrick went down early anyway. We thought about going over to Fish Lake just outside of Windom to watch that display, but it started after both of the boys were already sleeping, and we just didn't want to see them bad enough to drag them out of a sweet slumber.

Saturday, July 5th

Saturday was unexpectedly a productive day for us. I had been planning to stain our decks for a number of years, and this year I just decided to buy the stain and weather seal and have at it. I also picked up a few boards to have Mark tackle a closet project that has been bugging us for years along with a pot for my lilies that had been sorely neglected. (Granted, I don't dare show you the finished product just yet, since it has since become a terrible dumping ground haha)

I was thrilled to finally see my beautiful lilies blooming :)

Here is a sneak peek at what our closet was like before (no shelves). We used to have the broom and swiffer hanging in the closet, which was why there were no shelves. Talk about a waste of space! What you don't see is the mountain of junk that was hanging out in there before we cleared it out and put the broom and Swiffer on the back of the door. It was a huge mess, and we could never find anything.

Mark added two shelves, which are now full of all the junk that was previously a huge mess on our bookshelf there. I desperately need to sort and organize and purge, but we'll get there. For now, at least we have a place for the junk that isn't the bookshelf haha :)

The rest of the day was pretty bland. The boys napped when we went for a walk, and then while they napped, Mark and I filled water balloons in preparation for the church picnic on Sunday.

To be honest, I don't really even recall what we did the rest of the evening, but I think we just hung out around the house and caught up on housework after the boys went to bed.

Sunday, July 6th

We slept in, which is completely unheard of in our house, and after a bit, Cashel and I took off for the store to pick up just a couple other items I had forgotten for our taco salad for the picnic, and he had to get a fun doughnut. He doesn't get treats like that often, so he was pretty stoked. Of course, he only ate the chocolate and sprinkles haha

We left early for church to help get things set up for the picnic. It was a lot of work, and a long, hot day in the upper 80s, but we had a great turnout, and everyone seemed to be having a great time!

Cashel was kinda obsessed with the water balloons. I think we're going to have to pick up a bag and make him some in the near future :)

Mark took Kendrick home around 2pm to put him down for a nap, since he only had a really short one during lunch, and he was starting to get really cranky. Cashel and I stuck around long enough for him to enjoy the slip 'n slide. He was pretty leary at first, but he slowly got more into the swing of things. I told Mark I think we need one in our back yard, to take advantage of the slope :)

We really had a great time at the picnic, but definitely came home exhausted and ready to put our feet up. Cashel went down for his nap within minutes of being home, and I rested for a bit before sprucing up the house a bit.

Mark's Dad, Pam and Jess stopped by on their way home from Alexandria to see the boys a bit too :)

We had a nice time visiting with them, and then it was the usual routine before the next day: supper, baths, pjs, bedtime stories and off to bed :)

While the weekend didn't end up being anything like we thought it would be going in, we did have a nice time together anyway. Hopefully next year we'll be able to have a little more of a typical 4th of July, complete with actually GRILLING our food, watching fireworks, and maybe hitting up a fun parade. Maybe.