Ideal

I've found that one of the biggest struggles I have with my boys is keeping Ollie safe from Ladd.  There is a lot of intentional and accidental violence such as: wrestling, shoving, pinching, pushing Ollie off furniture, poking, leashing Ollie with anything he can lay his hands on and dragging him around like a puppy, drenching with water, tipping Ollie's booster and chair over (yes Ollie has been in it both times) smashing fingers in doors, etc.
Ollie isn't completely innocent he spits, hits, bites (I think he's outgrown this) and throws toys at all of us, but can you really blame him.  Honestly, Ollie inflicts enough pain on himself to be worried about permanent damage.  Just yesterday he repeatedly climbed on the couch and did head dives onto the wood floor just for fun.
The other day I had asked Ladd a billion times to stop touching (hurting) his brother, but he couldn't help himself.  The final straw was an innocent enough shove, but I couldn't take it anymore so I put Ladd in his room with some toys and told him to play by himself for awhile.  Shortly after, Ladd started crying under the door and pleading "Ollie come get me, Ollie come let me out, OLLIE!"  Ollie responded by going over to Ladd's bedroom door and they passed books under the door for about 20 minutes...... it was a nice 20 minutes.

More details..

Just in case anyone was wondering what I was doing while Doug was off frolicking in "a little bit of heaven"  last weekend, I have a couple of pictures to illustrate:

It started like this:

Moved on to this:

(Ladd helped with this one while I was upstairs getting dressed)

And ended like this:

(Ladd sick with a double ear infection, Ollie teething, and one tired mama even more grateful for all her husband does when he's home)

A little bit of Heaven

When I told my Dad that I was moving to Minnesota the first two things he said were: "find me a great place to go white tail deer hunting" and "let's put together a trip up to the boundary waters".  I'm happy to say that I've now fulfilled one of the two requests, well sort of.  All the credit goes to some family friends, the Youngquists, who put the whole trip up to the boundary waters together.  My dad and I were just along for the ride. 


For those that don't know, the boundary waters are in the Lake Superior National Forest.  When you look at a map of MN it looks like most of the 15,000 lakes in the state are in this national park.  Needless to say, it was absolutely beautiful.  Our first night was spent in the International Wolf Center (the fact that my dad slept here is a story in and of itself...he's been looking for a wolf pelt).  Once on the lake we fished, canoed and listened to stories (when you get three grandfathers together that are full of great stories there's no stopping them).


Best part of the trip was the 10 hours I spent with my Dad driving to and from Ely, MN.  It was great to catch up with him and chat about our lives.  I'm really grateful for all that he's taught me in my life about the outdoors, his family, patience & understanding, supporting a family, the gospel and so much more.


Here are a few pics from the trip:

This was near our base camp...no cell phone coverage here!

This guy wondered into camp one evening...

  

This mosquitoes hauled him off at dark