Summer Fun

Is it really July already? Summer is zipping by.

We went down to Fairmont for the 4th of July. My cousins Amanda and Cory came to visit us for the weekend, so it was nice to see them. We went and visited great grandma & grandpa and hung out around the house and campground. Unfortunately Carson was a bit on the fussy side, he wasn't feeling well and had a runny nose and low grade fever. I blame everything on teething right now, but who knows! So on the night of the 4th of July we hung out at the campground, and watched an OK fireworks show. Keisha also got here on the 4th and Ethan was happy to see her! This whole week we have not had daycare, so I took the day off on Monday. Keisha came back with us and we all headed to the Waseca waterpark with Sara & Aubrey. We thought we might be in trouble because the babies both cried almost all the way over there. Carson was cranky most of the time, but Aubrey seemed to love the water! I wish I could have a day off every week to do fun stuff like that with the kids. Maybe someday. ( I think I have said that before?)

Waiting for the fireworks to start.

Looking super cute in her little swimsuit! (I love girl clothes!!)

Making sure they don't scrape their knees!

Carson was not happy about picture time.

Keisha has been a big help taking care of the kids! She even cleaned the house for me today. I need to have a 13 year old around more often. :)

Does anyone else think it's HOT outside?

Okay, so we can't win. I wanted it to get warm, and now it's unbearably hot outside. I don't even want to be out there. I liked it better when I had to wear a sweatshirt everyday!

Enough complaning about the weather...and back to some pictures of the kids.

Ethan and Carson get to take baths together once in awhile. They both seem to think it's the greatest thing. Ethan likes having Carson in there, and Carson just looks at Ethan and smiles and laughs at whatever he does. To bad it won't always be that way. :)

The above picture was on Father's Day. They both have my favorite outfits on, I love plaid shorts. For Father's Day Jarred and his dad went golfing and my parents came up and spent the afternoon with us.

For the last few days Carson has been really fussy from teething. He now has 2 teeth on the bottom 1 on the top that is all the way through, and another pushing through on the top. Nothing seems to make him feel better. So if anyone has any tips, please let me know. :)

Chicago-Day 3

Saturday, June 13th was another rainy day. But it didn't really matter, because Margo and I spent the day "relaxing" in our hotel room. :) The fun night before took a toll on the two mommies that don't get out much! haha. So the big concert started at 4 p.m. at Soldier Field. The bands set to perform were: Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Montgomery Gentry, Sugarland and Kenny Chesney. We were lucky enough to get to go backstage with Margo's sister Anne. While we were waiting for her, we saw Montgomery Gentry drive right past us on their golf carts. Anne gave us our VIP passes and took us down to the front (The Sandbar) where we would get to watch the concert. It was pretty cool to be so close and then turn around and look back and see how many people there were in that stadium, there were probably about 60,000 people at the concert. We didn't actually get to see Lady Antebellum, just heard them from the outside. So the first performance we watched was Miranda Lambert.

Below is just a picture of the stage from higher up.

Montgomery Gentry performed next, we were able to go wherever we wanted in the stadium so we decided to get something to eat and sit in the seats to listen to them. We went back down to the "Sandbar" for Sugarland. They put on a great show!!

Now it was time for Kenny!!!!!! He made his entrance on a swing, he was right above us before he landed on the stage.

He is right in front of us in the below picture.

Why doesn't anyone believe me when I say he is pointing at me?

Kenny and his band.

One last picture of us to end the night.

Luckily we left the concert a little early to catch a cab back to our hotel, because it was still hard to find a cab. Unfortunately we had to be up on Sunday morning at 4 a.m. to catch our 6:30 a.m. flight. It has taken me until about today to recover from being tired. But it was all worth it, it was a very fun trip. Thanks to Margo & Anne for inviting me!

Chicago-Day 2

Friday, June 12th turned out to be a very nice day. The sun was shining! So we decided to do the double decker bus tour of the city. We found out pretty quickly that sitting on the top while the bus was moving was very CHILLY, although I still managed to get a little bit sunburned.

The tour started out by going past Soldier Field, and a couple of the museums. We got a really good view of the Chicago Skyline.

This tour goes on all day, so we were able to get on and off the bus wherever we wanted to. The first place we got off was Navy Pier.

There was lots of "tourist" shopping places here, so our first goal was to find sweatshirts because we were freezing cold from being on top of the bus! And I also bought a few little things for the kids. We had lunch here and also rode on the big ferris wheel. The view was amazing.

We got back on the bus to go around the downtown area where we saw some really neat bulidings and landmarks like the Sears Tower. Our next stop was Millenium Park. The big attraction here is the silver "Bean". We took a picture of our reflection.

We finished up the bus tour and headed back to our hotel to get ready for our fun night out at the bars!

Margo is getting all pumped up for the evening in the above pic :)

We started out at the Hard Rock Cafe where there was a "pre-party" for Kenny so there were a couple country bands playing. We had dinner and drinks and listened to music. It was a fun start to the night. We then headed out to a bar called the Hunt Club and ended the night at an Irish Pub. Both were a fun time. It ended up being a late night...and I will leave it at that! :)

Chicago-Day 1

We arrived in Chicago at about 1 on Thursday, June 12th. After a long taxi ride in stop and go traffic, we arrived at our hotel, the Blackstone on Michigan Ave. It was a very nice hotel!

We dropped off our luggage, it was time to venture out and find something to eat. Of course, it was raining...so my first purchase was an umbrella!! We walked for awhile and found a bar to sit at. It felt good to just relax with a drink.

We then continued on to do some shopping for the rest of the day. It was fun walking around downtown and seeing all of the buildings and people. We passed by some of the fancy stores, but didn't go in. We stopped to take a picture by the Chicago River.

We found a fun Mexican restaurant to sit at for dinner and had some good mexican food and margarita's!! After getting back to the hotel we took a few more pictures:

**Note**The above pictures are taken after a few hours of drinking margaritas and beer. :)

We went to bed pretty early on this night. It ended up being the only night that we got a decent amount of sleep.

Stay tuned for pictures from the next few days!

Splash!

Carson has outgrown his infant tub, so I bought a mat for him to sit on in the tub. He has always been fine in the bath, but now that he can situp and splash around he seems to LOVE bath time!

(For anyone that doesn't know, that thing you see sticking out is his herniated belly button!!)

He is getting SO close to crawling, it will be any day now. He gets in the position but falls on the ground and can't quite get moving. Ethan is going to have to watch out because Carson already has his eyes on Ethan's toys!

Last weekend the boys went down to Fairmont for Saturday night. Ethan got to go fishing & golfing so he was very happy. I am heading down to Fairmont again with the boys for the weekend. I think Jarred needs some alone time before I leave the 3 of them home together while I am in Chicago next week!! :)

Have a good weekend.

Weekend Part II

I know you are all just dying from the suspense, so here are the pictures from Sibley Park. It was such a nice day and earlier in the week Sara & I decided we should do something Sunday. Sibley Park now has a brand new farm animal setup & playground, it's pretty nice. So we all went together...including the daddies! :)

Ethan was giggling because we told him to be careful or the llama or alpaca (whatever it was) would spit on him!!


Aubrey & Ethan liked watching the chickens the best, and it was interesting because some of them were in the process of laying eggs. We would have watched them longer, but a couple of guys I know were pacing in the background. :) So we ended the night by grilling out at the Will's. It was a good weekend!