Shar

This past weekend I went with Roosevelt HS Marching Band for our first competition in the cities at Rosemount HS.  We did ok for our first show, but we are excited to keep on working towards a better show.

Seth and Dan drove up with Tayden and met up with my High School friend Jayme to get Tayden settled in for the night.  Then Jayme left them after making them an amazing pizza to come get me at Rosemount HS.  The next morning we headed to the Festival after a great breakfast of coconut pancakes (amazing), bacon (Even better) and bear sausage (you’ll have to ask Seth how it tasted!).  Yes, you read that right, she made a GREAT breakfast which included BEAR sausage!  Her boyfriend Joel and his dad are avid hunters and I believe this bear was Joel’s dad’s catch up by their cabin in Northern Minnesota.

Anyway, the Festival!  It was a lot of fun and there were SO many people there!  I think Seth is getting excited to bring Tayden back when he’s a bit older so he can show him actual swords and all things Renaissance-like!  Even though I did not eat a turkey leg, I managed to eat a bunch of unhealthy foods such as caramel apples, a corn dog (because Tayden would eat it), a raspberry chocolate truffle, some of Seth’s Salted Caramel Cupcake and I had no regrets!  We were running out of time and Seth and Dan requested that we at least make it to the other side of the Festival Area.  I wish we had gone there sooner because the crowd was much more spread out and the animals were there (hence Tayden’s favorite part!).  I didn’t take many pics but here is what I got!  You’ll have to use your imagination when it comes to the kinds of sights (and people) we saw there, these are just of Tayden!

If we haven’t mentioned how lucky we are to have such wonderful parents, then we will do it now!  Grandma and Grandpa Smook, Grandma and Grandpa Keller and Grandpa Larson are so amazingly wonderful to Tayden and they spoil him with their love every day.  He’s so excited to see each and every one of them and he loves them to pieces!  I’m pretty sure he is always more excited to hang out with them than he is his boring old mom!

So this blog is a tribute to the wonderfulness of Seth and my parents!

Below is from My Parent’s House in Spirit Lake.

Below is from time spent on Grandma and Grandpa Keller’s Farm in Twin Brooks!  I don’t have many good pictures of Grandpa Todd so I’ll have to add some at a later time.  But there is a picture of Great Grandma Marilyn in there!

To the left is from time spent with Grandpa Marc.  We don’t get to see him as often since he lives in Janesville, WI.  The top picture was taken at Big Stone Lake while Marc and Sandy were staying in Seth’s Uncle (Marc’s Brother) Mike’s cabin.  This was a day before a tornado swept through the area and basically took out the cabin.  I’ve never been so close to a tornado’s destruction in my life and I can say that I never care to again!

And just to prove how special Grandpas are, below is my dad teaching Tayden how to wash cars!  Pretty soon he’ll open up a mini car wash of his own and that’ll be how he makes his first dollar!  But the cars will probably only be clean from the window level and down….

As promised, here are the remainder of the photos from our Dells trip!  Grandpa Marc came to play with us a bit and enjoyed a nice dinner with us before heading  back home!  We had such a good time in the Dells and are already talking about our trip next year!

I love this picture of Tayden!  If you look closely, you’ll see his mouth is open as he’s super excited to be up this close to the gorilla!

These two photos ^^ were taken the last night we were there in front of the Elephant.  i had the 3 conference attendees jump in for their photo op. too!  (We were headed to the water park – hence the swim trunks!)

And below are the remainder of the pictures from our water park trip!  Grandpa Marc playing with Tayden and me watching!  (Note to self: if you don’t try to keep a smile on your face, you sometimes look upset!  Re: A picture taken of me at our wedding listening to the amazing Jasmine sing our unity candle song and I look so upset when in fact, I was just listening intently and loving every minute of her solo!)

Photo for reference:

This was a last minute decision for us, but it ended up that Tayden and I were able to join Seth and his two coworkers Tyler and Jackson on their trip to the Wisconsin Dells for a Conference.  I’m so glad we did!  We got to stay at the Kalahari Resort which is one that you drive by and wonder how much fun it would be to actually stay there!  Well it’s just that fun!  There are so many things to do and we weren’t even able to begin to do them all as Tayden was still a bit too young.

We were able to do the indoor and outdoor water park though.  Only one of the days seemed to be warm enough to go outside as the water out there is REALLY cold and Tayden wasn’t too fond of that!  The thing we noticed, however, was that there was a lot of spraying water on most of the kid’s slides and Tayden still isn’t over his fear of water splashing in his face so it did prove to be a bit of a challenge to get him up the steps and down a slide.  We did find one part of the park entitled “Tiko’s Watering Hole” that Tayden liked.  Seth and I had a chance to take Tayden down a few family slides and he LOVED that but time was limited so we only got to do those a few times!  Maybe we can try tonight as Grandpa Marc will be joining us at the park!

I was starting to get a bit sad at the fact that I was just able to watch people go down the slides while chasing Tayden and never really able to go down them myself until Jackson volunteered to watch Tayden so Seth and I could go play!  The park stayed open until 1:30 AM one night so the conference attendees and their families could go enjoy it.  And enjoy it, we did!  There is this slide affectionately known as the toilet bowl where you go through a covered tube and then into this huge bowl and you “swirl” down and fall through a big hole at the bottom.  The pool under the hole is 9+ feet deep!  I tried it and it was pretty fun but I only had the guts to do it once because it kind of hurt my back and man was I really disoriented after I fell into the water!!!  Seth did it a couple of times and then he was gutsy enough to do the plunge!  You go up to the tippy top of this slide and stand in this capsule and then the bottom falls from under your feet and you fall vertically!  Crazy Crazy slide!!!

The food here is also really good but tends to be super spendy so we (Tayden and I) are eating in our room as much as we can and trying not to get too jealous of daddy eating all of that nummy food at the conference!

Hopefully we can grab a few more pics tonight of how much fun we have been having!

This weekend my sisters, Seth and I met some of Traci’s friends up in Minneapolis to do the Color Run! We had such a blast!  Seth and Andrea decided that they would walk with Tayden so Traci and I could run as we kind of wanted to use this run as a mini workout to get us ready for our half marathon next weekend!

Tayden ended up spending lots of time on Seth’s shoulders as 3.2 miles does get tiring!  Andrea and Seth were such good sports to take him with and walk with him since we didn’t initially plan on taking him on the run and I didn’t bring a stroller to push him in!

After the color run we went to get some lunch and then headed back to the hotel to play in the water park!  We stayed at the Radisson in Bloomington so we got to enjoy the “Water Park of America” and it was soooo much fun!  Tayden is starting to become so much more brave in the water.  He went down a few slides and we even did the family tube slide which is a big huge tube that we all sat in and went down!  I think that one actually scared him though!  His favorite was sitting on our laps (which I don’t think was really allowed) and going down the body slides!  And he of course loved the little kid’s slide and become so comfortable with it that he was going down feet first on his tummy!!! 

We didn’t get many pics at the water park since we used up most of our camera batteries at the color run!!

Today we decided to jump on our bikes and head on over to the Milky Way.  :-)  Tayden successfully got his strawberry ice cream all down the front of him to make the trip feel 100% validated!  I was also reminded why my parents never let us get the dipped cones in the middle of the summer as I too made a big mess!

All in all, the trip was a blast and we look forward to many more to come!  I love summer!

I imagine that before I know it he will actually be getting into his actual first car, so I figure I should probably document as much of this as I can now because I’m sure I’ll be pressed to remember it in 15 years when we are wishing we could just go ahead and get him a car like this again!

He was quite confused as to why we were laughing at him!  He thought it was good and ready to drive the way it was!!

So, my friend Sara had a baby girl a while back so Tayden and I decided we needed to get on up to the cities to visit them!  Grace is so beautiful and just a great baby!  Sara is also taking to the whole Mommy job like a champ!  We had a nice relaxing weekend but were also able to go out to the mall and do some shopping.  I had already forgot how much you have to plan your day around a newborn!  Grace’s eating schedule is still every 3ish hours so we had to take a break to feed her!  They also live right by a park and the weather was nice enough to allow us to walk down to it!  She’s going to LOVE having that park so close as their kids grow up!  It was a blast to be able to spend some time with Sara, Jay and Grace!

We were lucky because we got to celebrate Easter with both sides of the family.  The weekend before Easter we headed to the farm to be with the Kellers and it was so much fun!  Tayden did his first little Easter egg hunt and did a pretty good job!  Seth’s cousins helped out a little too.  The food and company were amazing!  I always love when the whole family gets together because the cousins always have so much fun playing!  Now that Tayden’s a bit older, he’s able to join in on some of the fun.

Then on Easter weekend, we headed over to Spirit Lake to be with my family and that was fun too!  Tayden had a chance to master the art of opening eggs so he was very excited to find the eggs to see what was inside them.  His favorites were definitely the chocolate filled eggs.  He didn’t much care for the pretzels or goldfish!

This weekend we celebrated My Dad’s 60th, Seth’s 29th, and My Dad’s Aunt’s Birthday!  It was great to have family over to the house and celebrate!  We did pulled pork sandwiches, salads, and delicious (if I do say so myself) chocolate cake!  The weather was beautiful as well so all in all, it was a great day!