River Camping—Take 2

We had such a wonderful time camping on the St. Croix river with the Nelson’s that we decided to take our little family back the very next weekend.  The weather was wonderful and both kids had a blast.  We stayed two nights.  We swam, built castles, ate sand (Tommy), boated to Stillwater for lunch, grilled, made s’mores, and Maggie colored a lot!  We picked Grandma and Grandpa up in the boat on Saturday and they came and hung out at our site and swam with us.  This was a real treat for Maggie.  She was super excited to show Grandma and Grandpa her camping spot.  Tommy had a minor/major meltdown on Sunday morning as we were packing up so that made things a little tricky with just the two of us (taking down the tent, loading the boat, etc. is not fun with one person) but we survived—I think it is the only thing that made us not want to go for a 3^rd weekend in a row… :)

Big boat, little boat

Maggie waving to the big boat

Our campsite

 

She is very proud of her duck-lips trick.  I think it was the first thing she showed to Grandma and Grandpa

Roasting marshmallows

Eating her S'more

Tommy's bite

Her art desk for the weekend--lots of coloring happened here

Cutie Pies!

Love Tommy's bedhead

Both kids napped and slept exceptionally well

In fact, Tommy and I slept until 8:00 one day and 9:15 the other day!  That doesn't even happen at home.

The boat puts both kids to sleep instantly

Grandma and Tommy

These two did a lot of bonding on the trip

S'mores round #2

Remember that thing I said about Tommy hating his life jacket?  We pray for him to fall asleep on the boat otherwise it is wonderful tantrum the whole ride.   He obviously opted for tantrum here.

 

Double-Digit Tom!

Tommy turned 10 months on July 27^th.  I can’t believe how big our little boy is getting!  He has mastered crawling and is pulling himself up on everything.  Tommy loves crawling around looking for trouble, and by trouble I mean, anything that Sister is doing.  He loves to pick on her already.  He can’t seem to ever leave her alone when she is doing puzzles, coloring, or especially eating—he is always up in her business creating havoc (eating puzzle pieces and crayons, trying to steal her chocolate milk or pizza).  It always ends one of two ways:  1.  Maggie pushing Tommy down (literally prying his hands off her desk until he falls) or 2.  Maggie screaming to mommies and telling on Tommy.  I see a lot of this in the future.  In addition to harassing his sister, he enjoys bath time, playing with the dog dish, eating, and cuddling with mommies.  As for things he doesn’t like:  he hates his life jacket, being left alone, staying up too late, and teething.  At 10 months there are no well-child checks but he was in a few days ago when he was running a fever and he weighed 23 pounds and was 29 inches.  Just this week Tommy also graduated from the Bunnies to the Bumblebee classroom at school.  He is very excited about this because he gets to be reunited with his absolute favorite teacher, Ms. Shannon.  Oh and how could I forget, Tommy has also managed to master “mom”, "mama”, “mama-mama-mama-mama”—it is simply priceless.  His other big milestone this month has been learning to wave goodbye.  It is so cute when he flaps his big , chunky arm up and down.  He has 8 teeth so far with another one coming in as I type this.   As much as he may annoy his sister at times, he absolutely adores her and laughs at anything she does and wants to be near her constantly.  Tommy is Maggie’s biggest fan. 

A mouth full of teeth

Beautiful brown eyes

He is developing his own little personality and it looks wild :)

We love you! 

Fireworks

I finally got around to uploading pictures from the big camera so a few of these posts will be out of order.  Maggie got to experience her first “hands-on” fireworks this year.  We started with the basics:   black snakes, smoke bombs, pop-snaps, and sparklers—all the safe ones for the first year.  :)   She loved everything—she thought the smoke bombs were especially cool and we blew through a couple 10-pack bags in about 2 minutes.   The giant sparklers were also a hit but she would get scared as it burned down even remotely close to her hand—which I guess was a good thing.  Can't wait until next year when we can get a little more daring!

 

Lighting off some smoke bombs together

 

She was nervous for me to light the first sparkler

But she quickly got the hang of it

By the end she was twirling them

Dancing with them

And smiling with them

We had a big pack of sparklers and lucky for her she is the only child that is old enough to do them this year

 

St. Croix River

This past weekend we went on our now annual river camping trip with the Nelson’s.  We load up the boats and camp on one of the islands north of Stillwater.  The girls have a blast and so do the parents.  This was Tommy’s first trip river camping and he did great!  Slept like a champ in the tent and even warmed up to the sand by the end of it.  Overall it was another successful camping trip. 

Our view from our camping spot

Tommy enjoying a snack

Maggie and Aftin going for a ride on the turtle with Lance as the motor

Lance teaching Tommy how to drive the fishing boat

Tommy splashing in the water

The girls enjoying their dinner the first night

Tommy napping in the corner of the tent

Tommy liked the water until some big boats started making waves and he started getting splashed--also looks like someone is naked in the corner of the photo-- I assure you that they are not.

We docked our boat next the huge boats in downtown Stillwater--if you look closely our little red boat is on the very end slip on the left

Walking back from lunch, we ate at Smalley's and it was amazing like usual.

After lunch 3 of the 4 kids fell asleep on the boat ride back to our campsite.

Tommy and Bailee napping in the tent

Best friends.

Maggie and Bailee again

Tommy hanging out in front of the tent

Maggie said "yummm, it's good"!  I think it is the first s'more where she actually ate the whole thing

Tommy trying to play with the big kids

The girls getting ready to go tubing

Lance went with them and they went for a really long time.  I kept asking if they were done and they would say no.  It finally ended when they all wiped out.  The girls didn't cry but none of them wanted to go again.  Hopefully they forget all about it real soon.

This is exactly how the camping trip ended last year too.  Maggie falling asleep the second we start off on the boat trip back to the marina to get off the water.  She slept almost the whole time we loaded up the boat.  

 

Dreams Do Come True

Maggie might have had the best night of her young life yesterday day evening.  In her words “It was SO MUCH FUN”!  After nearly a year of talking about it gymnastics finally started.  Anyone who has talked to Maggie recently knows she calls them  “nastics”.  Her world has been filled with thoughts of “nastics”.  It is all she talks about, she pretends to do ‘nastics” on furniture, playgrounds and trampolines, her favorite movie in the van is the “Dora Gymnastics” one.  Last weekend we went and got her a leotard for it and the excitement started to build.  I was really worried she would be disappointed with the class by the time Wednesday arrived because she had such high expectations.  I can’t even explain what an obsession “nastics” has become in our house and I am not sure she even fully understood what real gymnastics are.  Susie and I both went to watch.  We got there about 10 minutes early and she was the cutest, happiest, little girl just sitting there patiently waiting for her teacher.  I thought she literally might burst.  I don’t think she could even believe she was finally there.

 

As a parent I will say it was the best thing we have ever spent money on thus far for her (excluding her college fund).  There were only 4 kids in the class and for 40 minutes those kids jumped, tumbled, balanced, swung, stretched, ran, climbed etc.  They all had huge smiles.  At times they literally looked like “kids in a candy store” running from trampolines, to monkey bars, to the vault, to the foam pit, etc.  I caught Susie and I smiling quite a few times too—I mean to watch Maggie enjoy something so much was pure joy for us too. 

I don’t have many photos, parents aren’t allowed in the gym with the kids so all photos that were taken through the windows and didn’t turn out very good.  I will try harder next week! 

Trying out the new leotard at home

Waiting for class to start

Tommy came with to watch too (it was PJ Day at school)

Our happy girl!