Downstate Rundown

Wednesday: Surprised Dad. Or tried to. Amanda, Kaitlin, and Gretchen were expected and Jen showed up to my dad's surprise. We were hiding out at Lassila's (we didn't actually get in until 10) but I heard that Jen's kids met my dad at the end of the driveway when he came home from work. Fun! Later, as everyone was sitting around visiting he asked if Jeff and Heidi were here too. This obviously wasn't rehearsed because everyone fell completely silent which was a dead giveaway. Ha! Oh well, it was so much fun to get most of the family in town for the weekend.

Thursday: Woke up to go garage saleing with my mom and sisters but got a stomachache a half hour before they were supposed to pick me up. So weird since I never get stomachaches. I thought I was sick but I felt completely fine after a few hours and they happened to be at a nearby garage sale so I met up with them then. We stopped at Panera Bread for lunch and then went on our merry way. Spent the rest of the evening with my family since Jeff's mom was working.

Friday: Basically a repeat of Thursday but no stomachache (yay!) and meeting at Leo's for lunch.

I spy my former boss.

My mom made spaghetti for supper and I bought some spaghetti squash for everyone to try. I think everyone who tried it liked it. Woohoo! I love when that happens!

Not sure if I should say this or not but Adrian is sitting next to me insisting that the above picture is Grandma and Papa. In case you're confused too, this is actually his Uncle Mark and Auntie Jen.

Saturday: We spent the morning with Lassila's where Jeff made smoothies yet again. He dug out the long lost forgotten blender while we were there and now everyone's hooked on smoothies.

That evening, we had a 60th birthday party for my dad. Totally looks like I'm about to lose my hold on Isaac here, sorry buddy. I'll blame it on the awkwardly close camera. I meant to get a better picture later but it never happened.

We were able to meet Isaac's newest cousins.

Aria and Isaac. Not pictured, a sweet little boy cousin who was born a month after my little dude.

Sunday: Mother's Day! We were up late every night and by the time we got home on Saturday night I was ridiculously exhausted. The congregation is building a new church this year and our previous church sold so for now they are renting a local (unused) school and having services at two separate times on Sunday morning. We had planned to go to the 8:30 service but we didn't even wake up until 9 so we ended up going for 11:30. Afterwards, we headed to Kensington where we had a delicious grilled lunch prepared by my father-in-law. We also made it to the farm. I've been wanting to take Adrian but it never worked out during other trips.

We made a quick stop at my mom and dad's to say "good-bye" before finished off the evening on the back deck back at the Lassila's.

Adrian walked around with these goggles for the longest time. They go with a workbench and tools that he loves to play with.

It was a really great Mother's Day!

If you're still reading at this point, have a fantastic weekend!

Happy Easter Weekend!

It was a good weekend.

My Mom called early last week to say they were planning a trip to see us this weekend. It ended up being super quick-Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon-but I'm so glad they could come! It's a busy spring for them as far as weekends go so it was either this quick trip now or wait until May.

On Saturday, my dad took Adrian for a walk and to the playground (thanks, Dad!!) and my mom cleaned the entire kitchen and vacuumed (thanks, Mom!!)

Jeanie was able to come but Dan had to stay home because he had a cold. My mom said he was so excited to stay with my brother Brad that he didn't seem to realize what he would be missing.

My mom joked a few times about Isaac being such a crabby baby. ;) He is honestly such a content baby. Adrian was too, hopefully this doesn't change! Isaac basically cries when he's hungry or needs to burp. And sometimes not even then. The other night he wouldn't burp for me and just as I was drifting back to sleep, he spit up all over himself and it somehow spewed onto the floor. He never cried once.

This was Jeff's weekend to work so he was only able to visit on Friday, they were gone by the time he got home on Saturday. Which means he also missed out on Easter morning and Adrian finding his basket. I almost forgot about the whole Easter Bunny thing with Isaac's arrival. We ended up picking up a little bit of candy and some stickers for his basket. These bunny finger puppets would have been fun but I didn't have everything on hand and I wasn't up for running to extra stores. Maybe next year! Adrian was thrilled regardless of how simple this Easter was.

 He ate all of his candy before breakfast and his gum was all chewed by noon. Ah, well, at least he still has a few stickers left.

And you can see just how long this basket lasted...It was upside down on the floor and he thought he could stand on it. It happened before I had a chance to stop him. At least we got a few years out of it.

He looks pretty remorseful, huh?

Day 6: A Childhood Memory

I could probably devote an entire year to childhood memories. Choosing one is way too hard. Since I don't have many pictures of my childhood, I'll choose one that I do have. (Not because there aren't any, but because they are all at Mom and Dad's. And honestly, so many of my memories don't have pictures at all because they happened way out in the woods with no camera in sight.)

This is a page from my senior scrapbook.

Dad always called me and my little brother, Brett, Lil and Will. I remember I just hated it because I was the older one. It never made sense that he called me Lil. Honestly, I don't know if Lil was short for little or for something entirely different, but in my mind it was always short for little and boy did that drive me nuts.

Nowadays, I really am the little one. He passed me up a long time ago. I remember around middle school or high school, as we were brushing our teeth in the morning, Brett would comment that the mirror was so low he couldn't even see his whole head. I, on the other hand, could see my entire head and plenty of room above it.

Yup, there are a whole lot of memories of Bubs/Brettie/Will stored up in my brain. I know there's a video out there somewhere of me tattling that he "pished" me although I can't say that I actually remember that one on my own.