Weekend in pictures

Happy Birthday Jenna!

The princess even had her very own castle (the boys are storming the gates here).

The kids got to dress up in their Halloween costumes. Can you guess what Mason is?

The birthday girl opening gifts, with help from dad.

Church on Sunday and dodging enormous rain drops completed the weekend!

21 months

"I see you!"

Little guy on a big playground

"You have a flower on your nose, honey."

 "See it!"

Oh how Mason is growing.

21 months today? Really? As in, 3 months away for being a TWO year old???

It can't be.

Mason's first: ER visit

I picked Mason up from Tage's on Saturday around 4:30PM and found him sitting on the couch watching TV-- something this toddler isn't likely to be found doing for more than 30 seconds. He had slept 12 hours straight on Friday night and shortly after waking up, took a 3 hour nap. I got him home and took his temperature and found it to be 105 degrees... so the next call was to the advice nurse, who had the on-call doctor call me back and tell me I needed to take Mase to the emergency room.

Off we went at 6PM.

Tage met us there with a spoon, since I had brought some chicken and rice but nothing to feed him with, and he ran out to get diapers because Mason peed through the one I had just put on him an hour earlier. Despite the hour and a half wait, Mason was in pretty good spirits and even ran back and forth down the hallways of the ER for a while.

The ER doctor gave Mase some Motrin, took his temperature once more (104 that time), decided that no blood work needed to be done, and sent us on our way at 8PM. We spent Sunday at home resting and continuing the ibuprofen every 6 hours and Mason seems to be feeling better.

So much for our big plan to take Mason to Apple Hill on Sunday... hopefully we'll get another chance to do that soon! And hopefully that first ER visit will also be the last for a very long time...

Saturday Smile

If you want to impress dinner guests

Make THIS soup,

serve it with THIS fish,

(I made it with tilapia and omitted the shallots/onions)

and add THIS quinoa salad.

The whole meal took half an hour, start to finish, and everyone raved about it. Seriously. And they all went back for seconds.

The girls of Edina

Labor Day weekend I got to take a mini-vacation to visit with friends in Edina, Minnesota. Two full days in a suburb of Minneapolis and one of those was spent at the Minnesota State Fair. Here we are taking the bus to the fair, because the fair is enormous and if you drive there and park you have to walk all day to get there. At least that's what I'm told.

The Minnesota State Fair is also so enormous that you can't walk the entire thing (especially not with pregnant ladies in your group). The sky-ride thing was awesome.

We all know the only reason you go to the fair is the food though. Check out Heidi's thorough recap of all things fried HERE. (And all the shopping!)

Best part of the trip, these moments...

The whole reason for the Edina getaway-- L. Shanna's baby shower. Kim and L.'s sister-in-law put together a gorgeous and elegant celebration of Chewy. You can read their recaps HERE and HERE and L.'s HERE.

Obviously, I am the last to post pictures and thoughts of the weekend, but it was such a good time with some of the most important women in my life. I am the luckiest woman in the entire world.

The newest "C"

I finally got my hands on this baby!

Cole was excited to meet me too...

Mason, however, was a little confused by this small, wiggly person who was taking his place in my lap

Camden and Mase, the "big" kids

Heather looked beautiful, of course. She makes everything look easy, even parenting four children.

I love you guys and am so excited to watch Cole grow!