The Great MN Get Together or

...otherwise known as the state fair in other states, was graced by our presence last night along with 10's of thousands of other people. We've been hearing good things about this fair since we moved here and we weren't disappointed. I'm not sure if you can tell in this picture but there are hundreds and hundreds of people behind me- I can't imagine what it is like on the weekends, but there have been upwards of 90,000 people there daily.

Our first stop of the night was a the "Birthing Barn." Yes, you read that right we went to a barn full of pigs, cows, ponies, chickens, turkeys and more, ready to give birth. We were lucky enough to see a cow an hour or so postpartum withering in pain. Her calf was 135 lbs and the usual birth weight is 75-90 lbs. Ouch! This pig I was forcing Ladd to touch in the pic below was only an hour old.

The rest of our time was spent trying to decide what fried food to eat. First were these amazing little doughnuts.

Then we has some roasted corn. This was probably our favorite.

Then Doug and Ladd shared the traditional Pronto Pup (corn dog).

Followed by some homemade root beer, tacos, and finished off the night with some great ice cream from the Dairy. What a great family night!

Minne what?

This weekend we decided to explore beautiful Minneapolis. Our destination was Minnehaha Park. It is a huge, very popular park that is centered around this awesome natural waterfall. We had fun chasing Ladd around and afterwards we went to The Grand Old Creamery and it lived up to its yummy reputation. Honestly the ice cream was awesome- I'd probably consider it some of the best I've eaten and if you know me you know I've eaten my fair share of ice cream. What a great weekend!

A sign of things to come...

Ladd is constantly on the go. If he's not climbing, in this case to grab a handful of pie crust, he is falling and making himself look like an abused child. Below is a picture of the black eye and skinned nose/lip he got this past weekend. His eye is looking a lot better. I have to hand it to the little guy because he is really tough. He hardly ever cries unless he gets hurt really bad.

Who wouldn't want another one of these?

We are expecting Timothy baby #2! Yeah!

TV time

I often turn on a movie to entertain Ladd while I'm making dinner. After several minutes of not paying attention to him I look over and saw this. I quickly snapped this picture and took him down to watch him in action. I loved watching how much work it took him to get up on this. He's such a monkey.

MG Parade

The town next to us celebrated....... ur... something this past week and they had a fun parade on Thursday that we went to with some friends from our ward. Ladd just wanted to join the parade the entire time so we had to keep dragging him off the road. This was a bad picture, but this is what we did for a good part of the parade so I thought it was appropriate to include. The "paraders" threw tons of candy, but Ladd's favorite was this awesome chapstick. What a funny kid. We were pretty "paraded out" by the end- it lasted three hours!!

Sweet Pickin'

Last week we went strawberry picking about 30 minutes from our home with some friends from the ward. I've been looking forward to doing this for the past couple of weeks because like most kids he LOVES strawberries. I had some fantasized idea that this would be a great family activity and Ladd would love picking them and putting them in the basket. Boy was I wrong. The moment he saw that there were strawberries all over the place he feverishly started chowing down- stem and all. We could not let him anywhere near a strawberry without him screaming to get his dirty little hands on them. So one of us spent most of the time in the parking area with Ladd, while the other picked.

My second bright idea was that I would make a bunch of homemade strawberry pies for a couple of friends. The recipe seemed simple enough and I'd seen my mom whip out several pies in a short amount of time so I was sure that I could do it. My first attempt at making the crust was an utter disaster and I called my mom at least 10 times. The next day went much better except I messed up the filling, but at the end of the day I had successfully made 6 pies. Yeah!!!

Mealtime

Ladd's personality is really starting to come through. One of my favorite, and most dreaded times of the day is mealtime. Here is glimpse into our very dramatic mealtimes. As you can tell he is very passionate about food- he get's that from me.

Our Fourth Celebration!

We had a great Fourth of July celebration. We began by going to Elm Creek Park Reserve swimming pond. We were there for only there for 2 minutes when Ladd's eye started swelling. Within minutes he had a rash stretching out from his eye to his hairline and to the tip of his nose. Poor kid. We cut our swimming short to go and get him some Benadryl, but as luck would have it the rash disappeared on the way to Target.
Later we went over to the Wilson's for a BBQ. The West's were there too, so of course the food was great. Yummy steak kabobs, salad, grilled corn-on-the-cob, and Doug's favorite- Root Beer (he's had a strange obsession with RB for the last couple of days). Ladd got to play with these two cute girls, Abby & Lorelei. What a lucky little man!
The Wilson's then put on a great display of firecrackers. Ladd was pooped so he sat mesmerized by the fireworks most of the time. Can't wait to celebrate again next year!

Painting Fun

We finally finished painting and repainting our living room and kitchen two weeks ago and I'm just getting around to blogging this. We love the color, but we were hoping to do a tuscany finish. It didn't work the first time how Doug wanted it to, so he repainted it the base color and we took down the tape. I'm pretty sure Doug doesn't want to spend 4 hours taping again so we might leave it this way. Ladd and I weren't too helpful, but we tried to entertain Doug while he painted. We made a little fort by putting the couches together and Ladd was having a blast until he fell off the couch into a pan of paint. Wish I had pictures of that!

BFF

My best friend from Arizona came and visited for a couple of days last week. We have been best friends since I moved 3 houses down from her in 2nd grade. When I moved to Utah in 11th grade she was in an awful accident and I almost lost her. Her recovery has been incredible. She has taught herself to walk and talk again and everytime I see her I'm so amazed at how far she's come. We had so much fun reminiscing, shopping, and swimming. Kristin thanks for coming to visit!!

(Yes, I'm aware that I look like a cow next to her)

One quick pic

So we got a new camera a couple of weeks ago and have been taking pictures like crazy. This was our favorite one from today. Hope the grandmas enjoy! Check back for lots more posts tomorrow.

Wayzata

On Saturday we met with a friend for lunch in a trendy upscale town called Wayzata (pronounced Why-zeta) on the shore of Lake Minnetonka. We ate at the cutest cafe and watched the boats come in. It was very picturesque. Afterwards we walked down to Ben & Jerrys. It was such a beatiful day so we got a little camera happy so please bear with us as we flaunt our second day of beautiful weather this year:)

Girls Camp

This past week I had the chance to go to Girls Camp with the girls from our stake (large church group). And when I say camp I use the term loosely - we stayed in cabins with showers, bathrooms and they made all our food. The girls were awesome and I think I forgot I was a leader a little too often. It didn't help that everyone, girls and leaders alike, thought I was one of the young women, but it felt great to be a teenager again. It brought back great memories from all the times I went to camp growing up.

We had so much fun canoeing, hiking, swimming, and bogging. This was my first experience going to a bog and it was awesome. For those of you wondering what a bog is this is the definition I found: wet spongy ground of decomposing vegetation; has poorer drainage than a swamp. I wish I had a picture of us waist high in muck. You can see the boots we had to wear and they told us to dress in clothes we would never want to wear again. No one mentioned that once we waded through the bog to a huge bog cest pool we would engage in a bog fight. Just imagine mud wrestling at it's best!! It was a blast and it only took three showers and a swim in the lake to finally feel clean.

These are the fun women I work with in Young Women's. Hope I get to go next year again!

Date night

Last night Doug and I went out to dinner for my birthday. And get this, we actually got a babysitter. It is literally the first date we've had since Ladd was born and I loved it. It felt almost as weird as my first date with Doug after I got home from my mission, but it was oh so wonderful. Thanks Doug!! We are just starting a babysitting swap with some other families so hopefully this is the start of bunch of alone time with my favorite man in the whole world.