Memorial Day weekend

The weather here this Memorial Day weekend has been absolutely perfect, and we tried to enjoy it as much as we could.  We originally thought we'd try to take the girls camping for the first time, but decided we'd postpone that to another time as we already had a couple other things planned.  On Saturday morning we got up early and were in the car at 6:53am heading to the lake.  A special breakfast was packed (Pop-Tarts), as well as a picnic lunch.  We got the boat on the lake by 7:30 (luckily there were still a few spots left to park the boat trailer) and started our day of fishing.  The girls quickly caught a few sunnies on the Barbie pole and were having a good time.  As long as snacks are involved, the activity is usually a success.

You can see they loved holding the fish (which is better than their mom can say!  I can bait my hook and sometimes take the fish off, but would prefer not to!)

Then Jer decided that it was time to make a run for something bigger.  We made a pass through an area where we'd had some luck in the past, and bam, he caught a northern.  Then we went back through the same area, and he hooked another one.  This time it was, "Steph, you better get the net, this might be the biggest fish I've ever caught."  So it wasn't the biggest fish he'd ever caught but it was definitely a nice one. 

We did this several more times and each time he caught another one.  He could've kept going all day, but alas, we were fishing with toddlers so we decided to head over to the beach area.  We pulled the boat into the sand near the beach, walked into shore, had our picnic lunch, and let the girls play at the playground and in the sand and water for awhile.  We hadn't planned on this so therefore didn't bring swimsuits, but they didn't care, they wanted to get wet.  They could've stayed there a lot longer but we then boated over to Jeremy's boss Bernie's cabin and hung out there awhile.  They let me drive their Jet-Ski which I had never done, so that was fun.  I had ridden on one before but never drove.  Note to self:  don't go slow through weedy areas;  that will not work real well.  While we were there, Bri hit the wall (figuratively speaking) so we boated back to the boat launch and headed in.  We were out for 6 hours which we considered a huge success with an "almost" 3 and 4 year-old. 

While Bri was napping, Jer went and picked up his new grill (early Father's Day gift), and we tried that out with some steaks that night.  He said it worked great and we're excited to use it a lot this summer. 

Today Jer and I played in a golf tournament this morning which was fun (bless our babysitter Tori who was at our place at 6:30am this morning.  If you didn't know, that's early for a teenager on her day off!)  Then this evening was a BBQ with some other church leaders for the new Blaine campus; it was a great time.  Give little kids a strip of grass to run on, a couple balls, a bean-bag toss game, and food, and they can entertain themselves for hours.  If they don't sleep good tonight, something's wrong! 

Now let's hear some of the fun things you guys did for Memorial Day weekend! 

Let's Go Fly a Kite. . .

I should be working on "logs" right now.  But I'm not.  I have spent a lot of time on log work today, but we've also been playing in the sprinkler, filling up the baby frog pool, playing in the water table, making smoothies, eating lunch outside, riding bikes, eating the first strawberry from our hanging strawberry basket, and flying a kite.  For some reason Emily remembered that awhile back I must've said that we can only fly kites on a windy day.  (Kids don't let you forget a thing.)  So today when she realized it was somewhat windy, she said, How about we fly a kite?  We had 2 unopened kites in our garage that must've been about 9 years old, and worse yet, they are Nascar kites.  One is Jimmie Johnson and one is Tony Stewart.  They chose the blue Jimmie Johnson one.  Here we are putting it together.   

It worked great! 

Until it dove into a tree.  Poor Jimmie.

But we got it out, poked a new hole, retied the string, and now we're flying again!

Catching up

Ok, I know I am way behind on my blog, and now this new formatting has me all thrown off.  Is it just me?  I have no idea how to attach a video either.  So in the interest of at least putting something on the blog (since it's been like 3 weeks), here are some pictures, in a very messed-up order! 

Tonight was AWANA Awards Night for Emily's Cubbies group.  Here she is with her Cubbies leader (who all the kids just adore) -- Miss Nikki. 

Here is Emily on stage (amidst the other 60 Cubbies) after getting her first year award. 

Here is a random picture of the Target parking lot.  The other day we pulled into a parking spot and Emily said, "Look, it's just like when Jesus died on the cross!"  She kept pointing to something and I kept saying, "Where?  What do you mean?"  I finally realized that the yellow parking space lines made a "cross" and that's what she was so excited about! 

On our way to take grandma Susanne to the airport a little over a week ago, we stopped at a cupcake shop in St. Paul that I had a "Groupon" coupon for.  We picked out 6 fancy cupcakes -- everything from "kettle corn" to your basic chocolate. 

Then, since Izzy's ice cream shop was only 2 stores down, we decided that cupcakes weren't enough sweets for one day, we had to get an ice cream cone as well.

Here is a picture from Mother's Day.  (I told you they were majorly out of order!)  We went out to breakfast to Keys Cafe and it was delicious.  Remind me next time I go that 1 pancake is more than enough, not the 2 that I ordered (they are giant -- as big as your plate).