Oh, the joy of ice cream

Okay, maybe Mark is right. Perhaps it is a little bit ridiculous to have to get the camera to capture Anthony's first ice cream cone. Over-the-top mommy? Probably. However, we both come from families of ice cream lovers. I don't remember summers without ice cream; it was definitely a must have in our house. Tonight it was fun to see how much A loved his cone and the joy he got out of eating it. He was constantly smiling and giggling, which is all this mommy ever needs to jump up and grab the camera.

Bye-bye

This past weekend I was so delighted to see our hand-me-down living room furniture go bye-bye at our garage sale. Everyone there was a bit horrified with their method of moving the furniture, though. When they said they would take the love seat that day I expected to see a truck back into our driveway. What they had, though, was a very small Chevy Malibu with no truck bed. Yikes. As they strapped it to the top of their car with no worries we were concerned about it making the trek all the way to St. Cloud safely. Apparently there were no issues because they came back for a chair on Saturday and then the full size couch on Monday using the exact same method of moving. I haven't heard of any reports of a couch situation on Highway 10 so I'm assuming everything went well. Whew.

Mark and I decided that we would just go couch-less for awhile and find some furniture over the summer that we liked. It turns out that happened faster than we expected. On Sunday we went to St. Cloud to celebrate Father's Day at Famous Dave's (Mark's all-time fav) and then he suggested we go look. That suggestion turned into finding a great deal and then making a purchase. (What a great Father's Day gift for Mark, huh?!) Even though everything won't be in for another three to four weeks I am so excited to transform our living space. Granted it won't be on a HGTV level, but it will still be awesome to have comfortable furniture that matches our taste a whole lot better. (Thanks, Jenn, as always, for being our underpaid personal researcher and shopper. What would I do without you?)

The sectional is a perfect size for our space plus I like the look of leather a lot.

I love this chair's funky pattern and vibrant colors. I'm hoping it will go well with the existing paint color and inspire us to further decorate our living room/dining room/kitchen space. We also got the matching ottoman, which makes it super comfy too. I'm looking forward to reading lots of books there.

Lastly, I found this end table in the clearance section and I really liked how it matched the design on the chair.

Hopefully when everything gets here in late July it will all look good and give us the comfortable, grown up space we've been wanting. Now I just have to convince Mark we need to get the carpet cleaned while the living room is bare!

Molly and the Girls

Lucy Marie - nine months
She is the happiest baby EVER! Lucy spent most of her time smiling and clapping her hands.
She is such a little sweetheart.

Ella and Anthony playing in the pool with the squirt guns.
(Yes, she's in her underwear and A's in his diaper. No big deal, right?)

Mark hanging out with the three kids.

What a great photo of Baby Lucy and her mommy!

We were fortunate enough to have Molly, Ella and Lucy come down for a visit last Wednesday and stay until Saturday. It was great to see Molly and spend time with the girls as well. The last time we had gotten together was January at a water park in Duluth, which was definitely too long ago. Lucy has grown so much in the past five months! On Thursday while Molly was at a conference in St. Cloud I watched the three of them for the day, which was a lot of fun and really busy. I honestly don't know how so many women have had three children so close in age (3, 2, and 1) and can function throughout the day. It certainly was not a day for a shower and getting ready. Although we may end up having three kids some day I can safely say there will be a big age gap between them. (Partly for my own sanity and the fact that adoptions tend to be quite costly.) Thanks, Mol, for coming down and spending some time with us. We're hoping there will be more conferences to attend in St. Cloud so there are more visits to Becker.

Happy Dad's Day

The two spending some snuggling time together while watching baseball after a hard day of playing.

Like the matching outfits? Of course he had to be just like his daddy.
Anthony is a big boy now and loves being pushed really high on the big swing.

Squirt guns have become a fun new toy this year for A. He has a lot of fun watering the flowers, getting ants and chasing after Zoey too. Here they thought it was funny to get momma wet while I was trying to take a photo.
Silly boys.

Even though today was a bit of wash with the rain, yesterday was absolutely beautiful and we had a great time playing in the backyard after nap time. Clearly you can tell from the photos that Anthony is a mini-me version of Mark and absolutely loves his daddy.

Perhaps A's card to his dad today says it best. He picked out a card that had a "silly puppy" on it because he's wearing a red baseball hat. I explained to him that today was daddy's special day and we needed to let him know how much we love and appreciate him every single day. Here's what Anthony came up with:

Daddy,
Happy birthday, dad. (I guess this exudes special day. What's more special than someone's birthday? I tried to change his mind, but he was convinced this was the best thing to start with. Okay, Bubsa Bo.)
I love you more than pizza, cows, ducks, horsies, chickens, McDonalds, mommy (what's up with that?!) and daddy.
I love you,
Anthony

One man's junk is another man's treasure

The beginning stages of putting everything together...
I really like this photo because Mason fits right in with the guys and looks like he's the foreman/mastermind behind this project. I'm sure he will follow in his daddy's footsteps.

The platform is up!

Wow. It's all coming together and looking like an actual swing set. I was a bit worried after seeing all of the wood piled up beside the garage, but clearly these guys know exactly what to do!

The sun is beginning to set and the finishing touches are being completed. As you can see all four boys started to play on it as soon as they got the green light from the working dads.

Yay! Time to play!
Anthony, Cam and Ry were all smiles as they enjoyed some time on the swing.

One man's junk really did become our treasure. Mark's friend from high school had recently moved into a house in Rogers, which came with a swing set in the backyard. Being they have no children and no real need for this they passed it onto us. Now this was absolutely wonderful because everyday Anthony wants to go to the park multiple times. This isn't bad because we live right by a park; however, he would prefer - okay, sometimes demand - to either go to the fish or gator park because he likes them better. So getting an actual "park" in the backyard has been wonderful! Thank you so much, Kevin and Kristin, for passing your "junk" onto us! We greatly appreciate it. That being said, all of this wouldn't have happened on Thursday night if we didn't have awesome friends who knew what they were doing and were willing to take the time to help us out. Thank you Charlie, Chris, Luke and Michael for coming over and lending your expertise.

School's Out!

April, Laura with Gracie, Luke and Jenn enjoying some conversation and good food as always.

Anthony loves playing with Mason's cars. He's got an awesome collection and it's always fun when they all get dumped out on the floor.

Anthony was in quite the mood that night. He was giving lots of kisses to everyone and didn't want to leave. He was telling me he was just going to stay there and was showing me where he was going to sleep.

Last Friday April and Charlie hosted an impromptu get together to celebrate another end of a school year. We were suppose to have a bonfire and give the kids a chance to play outside; however, the fall-like weather didn't allow for that. Unfortunately, once again, I didn't have my camera out most of the night to capture all of the fun... Maybe next time. Hopefully there will be lots of opportunities to get together and enjoy each other's company this summer.

Whatcha doin'?

Anthony has officially started the questioning that I find so enduring and love about my five-year-old pal, CJ. Today he was full of questions as we spent the majority of our time outside playing. It was so cute to watch A walk up to Mark and hear him say, "Whatcha doin', Daddy?" Of course this was repeated often or followed up with a why? and another why? and so on. This line of questioning went on throughout the day and continued to make me smile (even as I was getting interrogated while cleaning up after supper). I know it will probably get old in the coming weeks, months and years ahead; however, I can't help but love his level of curiosity.

Oh, the life

A few weekends ago we decided to pack a lunch and trek across town to the coveted and much-loved-by-Anthony Gator park. Even though we don't live by this park we hear a great deal about it because he always goes there with "Nae" and his daycare friends. The Saturday spent there turned out to be a great outing. Anthony had fun as always and we were able to have our first picnic together. (Of course, as the picture shows, he was more interested in chips than his sandwich. This kid would live off of chips if we would let him.) Hopefully the sun will continue to shine like today and we'll take time out of our days to do fun, family things like this throughout the summer.

Knock knock...

Time to end the neglect-o-blog!
Ouch.
Clearly if I'm getting called out on facebook about not blogging it might have become an issue for those who check in often and see the same old thing posted. Sorry.
I know I promised to blog more often once summer got here because life would have miraculously slowed down. Yeah, right.
In the week that school has been out I've been in class and working in my classroom. It was during the last few weeks of teaching I realized that I haven't taken any classes since graduating with my master's degree five years earlier. Before I knew it I was signed up for six classes, twenty-one credits and had a completely booked June full of babysitter time for Anthony and very little summer-like fun for the two of us. But it will be worth it in the long run, right?
That being said, Mark and I decided to finally concede to the grandmas' request to have Anthony up north for a little visit. Both the Johnsons and Hansons will have Anthony for a week, which sounded great until it actually happened. I met my parents in Aitkin on Sunday morning and Anthony stayed with them until today when we met again so he could come home. He had a great time up north and had to tell us all about seeing cows and birds and ducks as well as going to the park and playing with Chester the dog. I am so thankful he has loving grandparents who he can spend time with and continue to build a relationship with them. That being said, though, it was really sad to have him away from us even for a few days. We certainly missed his giggles and constant talking and cars spread out everywhere in the living room as well as everything else that makes Anthony the wonderful little boy he is. At least I'll have a little time to recover until the next visit up north happens in mid-July.
Until then we will definitely be busy. Hopefully all will go well with my classes and there will be plenty of time to enjoy all the things we love about summer as well as update the blog on occasion.
Happy Mara?