#22 Road-trip or Vacation

(Copied from the family blog)

We went on an impromptu road trip with Christian last Thursday.

Christian mentioned having to go to Duluth for a dinner meeting for work, so I asked if it might be possible for us to ride along with him. He said we could as long as he could sneak away from work at the office early that morning. Christian texted me at 11 am saying he was on his way home! We ate lunch together and then got in the car with the two kids.

Christian still had to take some work calls in the car.

It took Jackson 2 hours to fall asleep. He kept asking to "get out." Sorry Jackson...

I got some nice fall pictures on the way up! I wish more of the leaves would have turned colors by then though.

 Duluth from the (almost) top of the hill.

We parked at the restaurant Christian was meeting at and walked around a bit first. Jackson was pretty adamant about walking and not being pushed in the stroller. I let Jackson walk next to me for about half a mile until I made him get in the stroller. The sidewalk was too close to the road and fast moving cars, and that was about as far as I could handle being panicky about him running into the street. While Christian was in his meeting the kids and I walked to a park. Jackson ate some fries but he was too excited about the park to eat much.

This very friendly seagull thought he might help Jackson out with the fries.

Jackson rode on things,

climbed on things,

and took a selfie with me. 

Jackson met a friend at the park, too. The boy was a kindergartner, and was really happy to have a little friend to show around the park. I talked to his dad for a while before we both had to leave.

Finally, Christian was done with his meeting and took us around to see the boats on the water.

Jackson really had a good time.

He kept referring to the water as a "bath." A bath for the boats maybe?

We left before it got dark and were home before 9 pm.

#20 Go Apple Picking

I've never been apple picking at an apple orchard. (If I have I would have been too young to remember.) Fall is my favorite season of the year, so I wanted to do something fun and specific to that season.

I wrote a really long post about our trip to Emma Krumbee's a couple weeks ago, so I'll just mention the apple picking part in this entry.

We picked a half a peck of Haralson apples.

Here are pictures!

I really like how this picture turned out. (My phone camera is awesome.)

Jackson got to be tall!

I made Christian take a picture of me. (I hardly get any pictures of me unless they are selfies.)

Emma slept the whole time.

#6 Make a Christmas Decoration

Cross stitch seems to be the project of choice this year, since this is my 3rd cross stitch. I DO need more things on my wall so it makes sense to me to do a cross stitch.

I made this from a pattern my mom bought me for Christmas (or was it my birthday? they are both right around the same time).

I love how it turned out!! It may be hard to tell in the picture but each of the pictures even has a little charm attached to it.

Since this cross stitch was a strange size I had trouble finding a frame for it. I checked Hobby Lobby, Joann Fabrics, and Michaels (online), but I wasn't interested in paying for custom framing. I found 5x12 frames being sold by a business through Amazon. (They had every size frame imaginable.) And there was a GOLD ONE! I had to buy it and it is perfect!

I can't wait to hang it up this Christmas!

#10 Make Cross Stitch for New Baby

This goal was made before Emma was born. I am making it a tradition to do a cross stitch for each child. Jackson has one that I made very shortly after he was born (actually, all but the date and measurements were finished while I was on bed rest, before he was born)...

And here is Emma's.

I will hang them up together. Currently Jackson's is in his room, but I may hang them up somewhere else around the house so I can see them more often.

I love my babies!

#26 Booklist

Last year I had 10 books on my booklist and that was difficult to complete with all the other things I had going on. This year I still wanted to make sure I kept reading, but I decided to reduce the number of books to read by half. So I picked 5 books, and 4 of them I chose from the ward book club list. The book club books even worked with some of the prompts I found online. (The prompts help me to have more variety in what I read).

I'll probably end up reading another book or two by the end of the year...but here's the 5 books I've read so far.

1.  A book written by someone under 30...More Than the Tattoed Mormon: Al Carraway by Al Carraway

2. A book published within the last year...Water From My Heart by Charles Martin

3. A mystery or thriller...The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

4. A memoir...Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

5. A book with magic...Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J K Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Throne

All, except #5, are books I never would have even considered reading if it hadn't been for book club, and I happened to enjoy those ones more than I did the Harry Potter book. Ha! So I'm thankful for book club (even if I don't make it every month).

#16 Throw a Party

(Copied from my family blog)

Back on August 20th, Amber and I threw a baby shower for our friend Carly. (Amber and Carly are both friends from church.) Neither of us had ever thrown a baby shower for anyone. So the planning and executing was new for both of us. It was quite a bit more difficult than I thought to get everything together, but it was super fun and I got to cross off another goal for this year!

That morning was a rush to get everything done. Fruit needed to be cut up (thank you mom for bring veggies, I don't actually think I had time for even one more task that morning), balloons picked up, games/activity stuff gathered, white chocolate popcorn to make, cupcakes to decorate, and my kids still needed to be taken care of. I ended up bringing Emma with me, and leaving Jackson at home with Christian. Having Emma with me was really stressful at first. She cried while we were trying to set up.

We had the baby shower at an old (but also current) friend's house. Lynn Farmer. I grew up, and am best friends, with her daughter, Karisa. Her home was literally the perfect place for the shower. Big and beautiful...and also only 5 minutes away from me. AND as luck would have it, she had really pretty glass plates and tea cups from the 50's (I think). Something you'd see back then at a luncheon. She had a set of 12, and I had the exact same set for 8 (that I got from Candelyn)! So we all had cute matching luncheon plates.

We got the food set up right in time for people to start coming. Amber made the amazing blue lemonade drink.

I found two baby shower themed cupcakes on pinterest that I liked, so I meshed them together to create a nice cupcake for our party. I'm really proud of how they turned out. I had never piped melted chocolate before. I think I wrote out boy almost a hundred times with the chocolate for practice and to get some to turn out nice enough for the cupcakes. I tried doing some fun pictures, like dinosaurs, but those turned out pretty awful. I couldn't even tell what they were.

Amber put together a really nice table with stations. One to write notes on some diapers for Carly to take home with her. A "name the baby" station and we got to read off all the names as a group. My personal favorite was "Straw" picked by a boy in our ward, Connor, who came with his mom. Amber and I happened to come up with the same name, Stetson. Pretty crazy considering that it is a super uncommon name. Later, Christian informed me that it is a brand of cowboy hat, so I'm not sure how I've ever heard of it in the first place. I'm not really in to the cowboy thing... And the last station was for us to address our own envelopes for the thank you cards, so Carly didn't have to track down our addresses later.

Here is the lovely Carly! She made that dress, too! She's a better seamstress than me. I'll have to sew with her sometime.

Party guests!

We let Carly have the comfy chair.

We played a "get to know you" game.

 Tommy and their little girl, Emma, joined us for the party.

We played baby themed charades. I should have made them harder...since most of them were guessed correctly in under 15 seconds. The record was like 6 seconds, I think.

Carly opened gifts. So many boy clothes!

My mom was the designated baby Emma holder.

 Amber found a cute idea for prizes, which we ended up just using as a parting gift for the guests. Carly is having a boy, so the "he" is highlighted in blue. And then there is the popcorn I made. (I don't even like popcorn, so I'm not sure why I felt like I needed to make those...)

 Carly's daughter, Emma, liked playing in the starburst bowl.

Seriously adorable!

Me, Carly, and Amber. They are both cute and pregnant! (And, if I knew I was going to be in a picture with both of them I would have found time to wash my hair at least...lol.)

Lindsay, Carly, and Lynn. They had matching colors.

(Lynn, thank you for letting us borrow your house!)

Carly and Christy.

(Christy, thank you for taking lots of pictures! I didn't take nearly enough during the party.)

They are a great family! I can't wait to meet their little boy!

#2 Take Jackson Swimming

I hadn't updated my 26 Things blog for a while since I didn't think I did anything on my list this summer, until now. But that isn't true! I HAD taken Jackson swimming, which was #2 on my list! I didn't realize I had accomplished my #2 goal, because the swimming was unexpected that day, and I had it in my mind that I was going to take him to the Shakopee pool for swimming. 

This was the day we went to the splash pad at Round Lake Park (blogpost). I remember Jackson did NOT want to get out of the water.

So yay! I checked off another thing that I didn't realize I had done.

Next summer I'm thinking I would like to get him into swimming lessons. Then I won't have to be so worried about him in the water. I'm sad we didn't make it to the lake or a swimming pool more this summer. It's hard with a newborn...

#5 Make a Halloween Decoration

For my Halloween decoration I picked a neat haunted house cross-stitch. I actually bought the pattern about a year ago, but I've finally just finished it. And just in time for the holiday.

Here is it finished, but not framed. I love the colors!

And this is what it looks likes framed. Next step...hang it up.

#24 See the Biggest Ball of Twine in MN

Seeing this twine ball has been on my bucket list for quite some time now, but I've never actually made the time to go. I added it to my "26 Things" for this year so that I would make it a priority. Well, summer came and (almost) went and I had still not seen it. I pulled up the website and found that they were closing for the season (the museum tours anyway, the twine ball is actually seen from the road) on October 1st. So I only had a month to go before it was too late! I messaged my mother and my mother-in-law, both had expressed real interest in seeing it in the past (my mother has been a big fan of the Weird Al song for a long time), and we picked a date to go.

We went on Friday the 9th (the same day Emma turned 2 months old). We listened to the "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" song a few times and talked the rest of the way. Emma slept the whole car ride and Jackson took a short nap, too. 

We finally arrived at the world famous twine ball of Darwin! (Well, ok, maybe not world famous.)

And here is proof that I did actually make it there.

This is the perfect "WE MADE IT" shot with my mom, Jackson, and Candelyn.

This is what it looks like close up.

It's just a gross mess of twine. Pretty darn impressive though. I would not have had the patience. Apparently it look somewhere like 21 months of 4 hours a day of work to get it to what it looks like today.

And the Twine Ball museum and gift shop.

A man and his biggest accomplishment. I kind of hope he did other real and valuable things with the rest of his time.

Oh look! Heads in the twine ball. My mom and Jackson.

Candelyn and Jackson.

Jackson really liked this model house. He kept calling it the "better house." I'm not sure why. He did not want to leave it at the end.

I sure hope they like Weird Al...he put their little town on the map!

Jackson also enjoyed the dog house.

And the old school children's desks.

Emma had a massive blowout and of course I would forget to pack a back up outfit for her. I took her onesie off and told her that now she had to go naked. Sigh. My mom saw a pink twine ball onesie in the shop and bought it for her! So she had something to wear after all! Candelyn bought Jackson a twine ball shirt, too, but he didn't want to put it on. (He happily wore it the next day instead.)

We signed the guest book. We will be back here again. Maybe we'll drag Christian to it next year.

We made a quick stop at the park across the street but the mosquitoes were out so we left after only 5 minutes.

Mom and Candelyn, thanks for joining us and making it a fun trip!