Grandpas and grandmas and grandpas, oh my!

It's been a busy but fun, family-filled week around the Brandt house!

Tuesday: Jer's mom Susanne and step-dad Mark arrived in their motorhome from Las Vegas.

Friday: Jer's dad Don arrived from New Jersey and surprised everyone (only I knew he was coming.)

Saturday: Jer's brother Darryl, wife Wendy, and son Michael arrived from Las Vegas. Fantasy football draft here that night.

Sunday: Another fantasy football draft at friend Jon's house. Michael's 2-year birthday party here that night.

The girls hadn't seen grandpa Don in almost 2 years (thank goodness for skype and webcams) and were thrilled. Here we are at the Texas Roadhouse Friday night -- delicious!
Although he doesn't get to see the girls that often, Grandpa Don loves the girls so much. What I love is that he is not afraid to be silly with them, play hide-and-seek, and sing songs with them. Not to mention all the love that Bella gets while he's here!

Dad and sons have all lost about 40 pounds this year. Way to go! I am so proud of them.
Darryl, Wendy, and Michael. As you can probably tell, Wendy did a John Deere theme for Michael's birthday.

Grandma Susanne and Michael sporting their John Deere Green:

Grandpa Mark and Emily:

Are these two cousins not the cutest things you've ever seen? We think they look so much alike. Bri is about 2 1/2 months older than Michael, but Michael is a little bigger. They act so similar, though, and have really enjoyed playing with each other this week. Here they are wearing football jerseys from their daddies' favorite teams -- Cowboys and Raiders.

Although grandpa Don left today, the girls are glad that cousin Michael will be here all week. Plus my mom and sister Jessie are getting in on Thursday to move Jessie into college. Lots of more fun stuff to come! Did anyone say Deep Fried Twinkie?(hint hint, State Fair) :)

Odds and Ends

When things get busy, something has to go. (Usually those things include exercise and blogging/facebook.) Up until a couple days ago, I felt like I had absolutely no free time for about a month, as all my evening time was taken up with "log" work. Now things have slowed down a bit, so Jer and I have even had time to play some games in the evening, a rare thing anymore! Some friends loaned us their "Kings Cribbage" game, which has been a lot of fun. We also got the chance to go to the PGA golf tournament last Thursday, which was a blast. (Even though Jer made me run all the way from the entrance gate to the 16th hole so we could get a spot on the top of the bleachers.) From here we were able to see hole 10 and hole 16. Well worth it, though -- we had a great spot and even got a nice breeze off Lake Hazeltine on a hot day! We got to see Tiger up close twice, plus tons of other great players.

Now we are busy with Jeremy's family in town for a couple weeks. His parents drove their motorhome all the way from Las Vegas and got in yesterday, and his brother Darryl and family are getting in on Saturday for a week. Should be a fun time!

Here are a couple pictures of the girls the other day. This was Bri's first time finger painting and she loved it.

Both the girls were definitely ready to get cleaned up after awhile, though; especially Emily who isn't a huge fan of being messy. Hmm, I wonder where she gets that?

I'll leave you with a funny video of Bri. Emily had this pink polka-dot bikini, so I decided to put it on Bri to play in the baby pool the other day. When she decided to come inside, she found the princess heels which made quite the outfit!

Breezy Point

Thanks to Jeremy's great production at work, we spent the past 2 days at a little resort two hours north of here -- Breezy Point. The girls had a great time and so did we!

My sister Jessie also came along, which was great.

Micah

Our good friends Beth and Kim are now proud parents of a baby boy Micah, brought home forever from Korea about a month ago. Laurie and I had a baby shower for her last Saturday and we had so much fun. Here is Beth and Micah:
After meeting the guests, Micah took an amazing 3 hour nap here. He finally decided to wake up, so Emily loved playing with him for a bit.

The girls have a very limited song repertoire (as far as songs they actually sing), so you will probably hear some familiar tunes here:

Splash Pad

Ok, I'm sure you're all tired of looking at that disgusting picture of Bella's teeth by now. So I will finally give you something a little more pleasant to look at. Today the girls and I met a couple other friends at a place called the Splash Pad in St. Louis Park, about 30 minutes south of us. The weather has been amazing here this summer (most days in the 70's, just perfect), and I keep telling the girls we'll go swimming when it gets really hot. Well, August is now here and we still haven't had any hot swimming weather! So when I saw that today was going to be the hottest day of the week, high of 83, I thought we better go.

As you can see, it's a really neat place and it's even free. Emily loved it, she ran through all the little water arches and had a lot of fun. Bri spent most of the time walking the perimeter and staring longingly at the playground outside the fence. Thank goodness there was a fence, otherwise she wouldn't have lasted one minute in there. She doesn't hate water, she just doesn't like to be cold and would much rather be climbing on playground equipment. We did eventually go over to the playground so Bri was happy, then had a picnic lunch. It was a fun morning!