bryant lake

We spent Sunday hanging out with friends at Bryant Lake Regional Park in Eden Prairie. This is a very nice park with a manicured beach, umbreallas, picnic tables, boat rentals, concessions, and a wonderful play structure (with the mother of all curvy slides) that caters to both toddlers and older kids. Best of all, it's FREE and was relatively uncrowded. I think we will definitely be going back.

We started the day by playing in the sand.





Then we played with Daddy for a bit.



Then we finished off the day with a ride on a boat!

heading out of town

I don't have too much to write about this weekend. I'm heading out to Phoenix tomorrow. Fortunately this will be a short trip and I'll be back on Thursday! I can't believe my three months with no travel has come and gone. I've got trips scheduled for September, November, and December and of course a leisure trip down to FL in December too. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll have two more in and out trips to add to that itinerary but we'll see.

Please keep the O'Keefe family in your thoughts and prayers. I wrote about them and their 3-year-old daughter Mary, who is battling cancer. Mary lost her battle with cancer on Thursday. It's heartbreaking.

just an update

I haven't been keeping up with my blog on a timely basis lately. My apologies but it has been a busy couple of weekends. I will start by saying the Meredith has become such a little girl lately! She says so many words and is stringing two and three words together finally. Some of the things she says are just so darn cute, I can't even put it into words. She loves to hug and kiss and it just warms my heart! This past year has been such a wonderful year for us - I am just loving this toddler stage. She popped another tooth this weekend so now she will have both of her lower canines. Still no sign of the top two canines though. And not a trace of the two year molars.



This past weekend I went to the horse races with Greg and Meredith. Meredith loved seeing the horses! Greg didn't win any money much to my dismay. I went to the garage sale to benefit Mary O'Keefe. You might have heard the story on WCCO last week. It's a story about a little girl who has neuroblastoma with is a type of cancer that spreads through your whole body. Her doctors estimated that she has about a month left. It's very sad and you can read more about it on their CaringBridge page.



Since they live about a mile away, I decided that I needed to go. It turns out that my friend Shannon works with this girl's mother. They are both nurses (L&D & post partum) at Fairview Southdale. Nothing was priced - you just made a donation. I got myself a nice bike trailer which looks like it has never been used.



The weekend before last was a busy one. It was full of cyber meetups. I think Greg was ready to tell me to just invite an axe murderer over. On Saturday we met with a photographer I hired off of Craigslist. She is doing free sessions to build her portfolio with hopes of having a photography business. She sent me her blog and website and looked very legit so I arranged a date and time to get our pictures done. We met at Minnehaha Park and I think it went pretty well! We get 50% off prints too and I'm supposed to get a CD with low resolution files with watermarks to share. Here are a few of the pictures she put on her blog.








On Sunday, I dragged Greg down to Rochester to meet a few of my 'mom' friends (and their husbands) from my moms forum. Two of them I have met before but one of them was up here all the way from Kansas visiting family and I was thrilled to meet her family for the very first time! I had a blast - I seriously don't know what I would do without my friends from my moms forum. Here are a few pictures from our get together.


Meredith says "Don't be jealous of my hair!"

These are Meredith's friends Bryson, Madeleine, and Reyna.

busy weekend part 2

Before I talk about part 2 of our busy weekend, I have to tell a funny story. Last night Meredith was eating freeze dried peas with her dinner. She started acting funny and was pointing to her nose and in a joking way I said "what's wrong? Did you get a pea stuck up your nose?" She continued to act funny so I went over ot examine her nose and sure enough, there was a pea WAY up there. I couldn't squeeze it out so I asked Greg for some assistance. He held her arm while I tried several different objects in an effort to get the pea out. I finally got it out with a metal fingernail file. I bet you're thinking I deserve the Parent of the Year award, right? We proceeded to take away all her peas but she must have had one hiding in her lap because I saw her in action this time shoving one up her other nostril this time. So we had to do the how pea removal procedure again. Never fear, all is well now and we did not have to make a trip to the ER to have it removed.

On to other things now...we spent last Sunday at the cabin (my mom and dad's). That is our only cabin now that Rich and Mary sold theirs. The weather wasn't great but Meredith did want to go swimming anyway. She loves swimming so much that we can't take her over to our community playground anymore because the pool is right next to it. A meltdown will ensue if she sees the pool and doesn't get to go in.

She loved the lake. She started off taking a stroll with uncle Chris.


Then she got really brave and floated out on a raft.

Then she splashed a little.

And went underneath the dock.

She even fell into the lake and then she was done. But she didn't cry because she is a big girl!

Did I mention that my child is not shy?

busy weekend part 1

We had a very busy weekend this past weekend. We hardly had more than two hours at home to ourselves besides when we were sleeping. On Saturday, we made the trek up to North Central Wisconsin for a memorial get together. Greg's uncle David lost his wife Elaine this past April and it was her wish to be cremated and have her ashes spread in this lake near Hayward, Wisconsin.
This lake is the home of Elaine's sister, Audrey. I am really glad we got to see Elaine one last time when we were down in Florida over Christmas. I will miss her a lot when we go back this coming December.

After making the three hour drive to Hayward, we stopped downtown for a bite to eat.

After getting my fill in the candy shop where they made delicious turtles, fudge, and peanut brittle right in front of you, we made our way back to the cabin that Mary and Rich were sharing with a few other people.

Meredith had lots of fun playing by the lakeshore. She was throwing sticks in the lake for some random dog (it was the neighbors in the cabin down the shore from Mary and Rich), she saw a snake, and she got up close and personal with a couple frogs!

She made best friends with Shirley (married to Greg's uncle Don)!

She also hung out on the lap of Grandpa Carlson.

She goofed off with Daddy (this is a horrible picture but cute nonetheless).

At the end of the day, she made friends with Elaine's grandaughter, Vicky.

more zoo!

Well folks, we went to the zoo again! Meredith loves it so much and it's so close. She just can't get enough of these goats.




Aren't these the cutest little piggy tails you've ever seen?

She was looking and giggling at the giraffes here.

Here we are about ready to go into the butterfly tent which she loved!
We had to keep telling her that she couldn't touch the butterflies.

Here are some of the butterflies.