A great Labor Day weekend

We spent a great long weekend at Huddle's Resort on lovely Leech Lake (northern MN) with a great group of folks. Paul, Jaime, Carson, Ashton and Mike, Michelle, and Gabby - plus 2 dogs, was the group. We ate way too much food but probably burned off some of those calories by chasing our kids around all weekend.

Speaking of, they kicked off the weekend with a party in Gabby's pack and play.

Then into the kitchen to explore the cupboard space.

Carson, Gab, Gus, and Ashton, lakeside.

Gus loved the pool and could have stayed in there all weekend.




Poor Gabby after getting a mouth-full of sand.

Meanwhile, the boys were voluntarily eating sand and drinking lake water while doing their boy stuff on the beach.


Huddle's holds some intense turtle races every Saturday evening. Here's the Johnson family awaiting the first heat.

Gabby was pumped.

After each race, the kids got to bring the turtles back to the starting line.


Ping pong, of course.

Paul with all the boys, reading before dinner.


The trip home included a couple movies and some snacks but no nap.

We loved the trip.

You should see the other guy

Gus had his first major wipe out last week. He tripped on his way up onto the patio and fell eye-first into a patio chair. OUCH! Moments after the collision, we presented him with a fudge ice cream treat and he felt better almost immediately.


The cut looks worse than it was. We kept trying to wipe it clean but it was right on the crease of his eyelid so it was tough to get to.

Here's the swollen version, the morning after. Poor kid!




I hate injuries!

Some light reading

Here's Hava, our angelic niece, who is now into reading in bed, at the ripe old age of 4 months.

Ping pong wizard

We had a great evening at Josh and Christy's last weekend. It included great food, fun lawn games, good company, and a first for Gus: ping pong.

Within 5 short minutes, he became obsessed with the sport. He loves it. As a matter of fact, we stopped by their house again on Monday evening and he absolutely had to play pong.

Anyone have an old ping pong table for sale?

An old favorite

Gus recently took a stroll down memory lane when he remembered the words to his favorite rhyme, Pattycake. What makes it so cool now, is that he can actually recite the rhyme. There are times when it sounds like he says "bake me a puck", but I assure you, he means "cake".

Also, I would like to add a disclaimer here: I was operating a camera so I let him do whatever he wanted with his cup o milk. I couldn't stop him (due to the camera) or the footage would have been shaky.

Back in time

For 3 days, it felt like Ross and I had traveled back in time, to Ross and Allison, BG (before Gus). We took a mini vacation to LA to see Chad, Ross' brother, and to relax. Gus stayed home with Grandma and Grandpa Vickie and Dave. We are so happy they came to watch Gus and appreciate it more than ever. More than we can say!

Looking back, I'm not saying a vacation like this, where the baby stays home, was easy to dive into. There were plenty of conversations going on inside my head the whole time between my vacation-care-free-brain and my mom-brain. For instance, vaca-care-free-brain would say:
awesome, head to the beach, ahhh, this is the life so live it up. And just as quickly as I was feeling that thought, my mom-brain would interrupt with I bet Gus just got up from his nap, he's probably asking for cheese for his snack right now. I think Ross had the same dialogue going on in his head, too, but after a couple days of it, I decided it just meant we missed Gus.

Before we knew it, it was time to come home and we really did enjoy every moment of our mini vacation, despite missing the little guy while we were there.

OK enough chatter from me. Onto the pics. Since this vacation did not directly involve Gus, I didn't take more than a couple photos. One of which is totally worth sharing and the other one is only partially worth sharing but I added it because this post needed at least one more pic to even out the words to photo ratio.

On Monday morning, our view from the pool included a John Deere combing the beach. I loved it. It's like ND in CA.

Here's us enjoying the beach. For the record, Gus would have loved running and playing in the sand.

Thank you to Chad who was an awesome host.

Swim it up and love it up

We were thrilled to hear that Mike, Michelle, and Gabby made plans to come up to Fargo, yet again, this month. Mike's son, Ryan, started school at NDSU this week so they came up for his farewell party.

Meanwhile, we had a party of our own at the hotel, motel, Holiday Inn.

Skunny scared the children, as usual. Swamp-thing or Loch Ness, not sure.


In this series of photos, you can see how much love Gabby has to give. And how much Gus hesitates receiving this gift of love. I should also say that Michelle and I always start it. It is our fault. We are kinda lunatic moms who set our kids down by each other, and constantly try to get our dear tots to hug or 'Gus, give Gabs a kiss...for the camera..'...come on, sit by Gabs', and so-on and so-forth.

Gabby ALWAYS goes for it but Gus is too old for our crazy suggestions. And FOR SURE he's not going to give into our requests when there is a camera involved. But we try, and will keep trying until they are teens I'm sure.

Gus thought about giving a brief hug.

When he got close enough, Gabby pounced. Really pounced.

OK, take 2. On the way out the door, we tried again (as I explained earlier, apparently it is Michelle and I's motherly mission to get them to hug).

And so we failed. But the photo below is priceless. It is a perfect illustration of how the night ended up after all our efforts to get that huggin pic. Gabby - still full of love, Gus - calling for a ride outta there.


I'm already contemplating our next photo shoot with the kids. It's only 2 weeks away, we are pumped!