Early August Happenings + Quick Trip to SoDak

We returned home from our Minnesota vacation to find a bounty of green beans and tomatoes! 

Leo was so excited to meet a turtle in Ms. Bev's room. 

We went to an outdoor children's fair in Eau Claire. Roman was pumped to get his hair colored. Leo was thrilled to sit in a firetruck. :)

These two had their last baseball game of the season. I need to give a big shout out to Coach Adam, the children had the best experience playing ball this summer. What a great season! 

Gotta love these lazy summer day vibes from Leo. 

We checked in on the progress at Grandpa Ken and Grandma Nola's hunting cabin. Look at that fun loft area! 

Leo worked on some cute summer art projects at school. Love these ice cream treats - the sprinkles and little spoons are perfect touches. 

Apparently the kiddos were doing a lot of texture art in Ms Bev's room in August. :) They were reading about Jesus calming the seas and made these pictures with real sand, shells and gummy fish. 

Roman worked on some of his own art at summer camp. Go Twins go!

The kids and I made a quick trip to South Dakota in August; I dropped off Lucy + Roman for a week of fun with their grandparents and cousins. We stopped at a gas station along the way and I saw these pickle freeze pops for sale. Gross!!

We headed over to Kevin and Katie's house as soon as we got to South Dakota. They were hard at work putting up a new deck on the house.

Here is the scene from the future deck. The kids loved playing on those haybales.

We had not been to Kevin and Katie's place since the big move so the children were very eager to explore and check out all of the cousins' new rooms. 

The girls were reunited and it felt so good! 

Here are our bookends! Paul loves babies! :)

Grandpa Glen took a break from the deck project to grill for Grandma's birthday supper. Yum!

You can't have an August birthday supper without sweetcorn, am I right? 

We have lots of August birthdays in our family so we got some special cookies to celebrate. Can you tell that Roman helped decorate? Baseball, Twins, Harry Potter, Monsters - all good things. :)

Here is the crew, getting ready to decorate. 

Roman had such a good time on the hay bales and he was so sweaty!!!

Here is Grandma Sharon with all the kiddos on her 67th Birthday! 

Here is the August Birthday bunch - Grandma, Roman (8) and Jules (7).

Just a sweaty, happy birthday boy with his grandpa!

These cookies are the best. Love our August celebrations with the Hoekman family!

Storm Family Vacation - 2021

We wrapped up our Minnesota Magic vacation with a long weekend with the Storm family at beautiful Mille Lacs.

There is nothing better than snuggling with Grandma Nola and the cousins.

Some of the crew headed out on a fishing charter on Friday morning. 

They worked to find all of the 'hot spots' on the lake. :)

 

Back at the ranch, the kids were head over heels for this amazing Scooby Doo bounce house on the property.

Here are my two happy and bouncy boys!

There were lots of beautiful State Parks in the area. We took the children on a hike at Kathio Park, just down the road from our resort.

Neal and Leo are such sweet little hikers.

Leo only lasts so long on his own two feet and then asks demands to go on Mama's shoulders. :)

We found a beach and did lots of rock throwing into the lake. 

We visited the Mille Lacs Museum and Trading Post - they had the most beautiful Four Seasons room. This space had life-sized dioramas and mannequins modeled after actual Mille Lacs Band tribal members. The gentleman who told us the oral history and walked us through the space was super knowledgeable and the kids were captivated.

The dioramas show traditional activities of Mille Lacs Band throughout the seasons, from spring maple syrup camps, to the fishing and berry gathering of the summer months, to fall wild ricing, and winter hunting and trapping.

All of my kids wanted pictures in front of their season. Lucy was born in November during hunting time.

Leo was born in the winter during trapping season.

Unfortunately, Roman's picture was super blurry and he was very upset because, once you were out of the Four Seasons space, you could not go back in without a guide which meant no retakes. Luckily we did find this image of the late summer/early fall scene in another part of the museum. Here is our late August wild rice guy. :) 

We practiced weaving skills and learned a lot! Highly recommend a visit to this musem if you are in the area.

Back at our cabin, the kids enjoyed their time doing sidewalk chalk.

We hit the beaches at the State Park. 

We went on boat rides with Grandpa and felt the summer wind in our hair. 

We did lots of fishing, 

We went on sunset cruises,

And we snuggled during story time.

On Saturday the big kids went fishing so we took the little guys to park. 

Leo loves sneaking through tunnels these days. He is like a little hamster! :)

How cute are these little bestie cousins?

Meanwhile the big kids were having a blast fishing.

They are quite the anglers. Gotta love the enthusiasm! 

 

We climbed this crazy tower! Spoiler alert - I did not make it all the way to the top with this squirmy guy! 

Some of us were able to sneak away to a winery on Saturday afternoon. Let's just say it wasn't the best wine but still fun to pop in and enjoy a glass on this sunny summer day. Haha!

We had a fun boat ride with Uncle Brad and Grandpa Ken. 

 

Leo was happy to cruise and he was working so hard on giving a little thumbs up sign. 

Guess what ... our resort was also home to a bunch of baby piggies!

The kids were thrilled to see these little piglets. :)

 Are you ready for a fishing montage?

We had some good  docks at our fingertips!

 

Look at all of those big smiles. :)

 

We checked out of our resort on Sunday morning and snapped a few pictures before zipping out of town.

What a fun weekend with the Storm family!

How cute are Ken and Nola with these grandbabies? :)

Of course we stopped for a bit to throw in a few more lines before heading home. ;)

 

We had the best time! Grateful for good weather and good times with the fam!