me

ouch!

Yesterday, while at a friends' parents' pool, Mary Beth got stung ON THE EYELID by a wasp! I'm not sure that it got a chance to inject too much venom(or whatever it is they inject) before she managed to swipe it off because it seems like it should have been way worse. She cried for awhile and it started swelling a bit but but by the time we left the pool it looked pretty good! Then it slowly got swollen again and then when she woke up this morning it was practically swollen shut! And both her eyes looked pretty rough(dark under her eyes and tired). It got better throughout the day so no worries. It was her first sting so I guess we know now that she's not allergic, right? I told her today that Nonno said she should take some benadryl but she said "can we just let it get better slowly on it's own? I kinda like it droopy." ???

But seriously, is there any worse place to get stung?!?! Poor little Beffers...

space rockets

The kids and their friends Norah and Emma have been working hard on homemade space rockets for days. They drug out our old moving boxes and built and decorated for hours. The little girls shared one of course because they always have to be as close together as possible. :) We took a break to paint the girls' toenails sparkly purple but then got right back to planning and playing. They continued the next day but built a giant one with tunnels and passageways. I love their imagination!

alien abduction

Mickey got this for his birthday and is in love with it. It's his first set from the new Alien Conquest collection. It has a red light up brick and "abducts a farmer" (I'm supposed to tell everyone). He is saving every dime he gets however for the Harry Potter lego set he has been wanting forever: Hogwarts Castle. He got some Target gift cards for his friend birthday party a couple weeks ago and has been doing chores and forgoing yard sale purchases to save for it. So I guess if anyone is wondering what to get him for his birthday: a target gift card to go toward this BIG purchase would be PERFECT! -hint hint :) - I know family members are always looking for ideas...

It's safe to say that legos are in Mickey's top 3 favorite things in life. He NEVERS tires of them and builds/plays CONSTANTLY. I love them too- just not when I step on them. :)

beach day!

these 2 pictures are actually at the end of the day when we got back to Fargo: you probably can't tell but there was a double rainbow! so we had to get out to look at it and take a picture. it was a perfect ending to a fun filled day.

we spent the day at the flea market in Detroit Lakes and then at the beach- fun, fun, fun!

Mary Beth's flamingo

Mickey's turtle

Jeffrey's lobster

hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

tennis lessons

Jeffrey and Mary Beth are taking tennis lessons and it is so cute! Mary Beth is the youngest and tiniest by far. But she hits it HARD. EVERY time. I mean she KILLS it! It rarely goes over the net that way but someday when she figures that part out- I will feel bad for whoever is on the other side! I think this could be one of her sports. Jeffrey enjoys it also and is really good! They want to continue taking lessons at the indoor tennis place during the school year. And since tennis is one of the only sports I really love playing and don't STINK at, I'm loving this!

I love this song! Falling Slowly

bad washer!

This look pretty much sums up our last 7 days...

Our washer broke down and gave us the reason: F11. ??? We spent the next several days wearing all our remaining clean clothes and using google to try and crack the secret code. We narrowed it down to needing to replace 1 of 2 parts. If we did it ourselves to save a billion dollars we would just have to take a gamble and hope for the best. Each part cost $300 and you can't return them if you guessed wrong. Since neither John nor I are big into taking chances- especially when it comes to our money- we tried to explore all other options first. Long story short- the other options were going to double the price of the part and have us pay for a $320 warranty. No thank you. We ended up picking the part we thought it was and bought it ourselves for $300 in town. John took a deep breathe and stuck it in the machine. It worked!!!! I've never been so happy to do a load of wash in my life- and those of you that know me realize how ridiculous that sounds. (I loathe doing laundry) We still think that a 3 year old $1100 washer shouldn't break down in 3 years and need a part that costs $300 but what can we do? By the way it is the HE5t Steam washer by Kenmore so if anyone ever reads this that is wanting to buy that washer: don't. And if anyone has this washer and it's broken(and you are getting an F11 message) email me and I'll tell you what to do. :)

Anyway, I wanted to share with you our adventure at the laundromat... we HAD to go there- we were out of clothes and were still in the middle of the washer saga so... we lugged a billion baskets of dirty clothes to the closest place we could find. We filled 2 whole rows of washers ourselves and everyone was staring at us. Did you know it costs $2 to do a load of wash there?!?!?!? Yikes! Not a cheap experience but John thought it was kind of cool that all our wash was finished in 1 1/2 hours when it would have taken days at home. The kids just watched movies on the iphone the whole time and seemed oblivious to their surroundings.

We refused to spend the money on drying the clothes there since our dryer was working so we lugged a billion baskets of sopping wet clothes home. We thought it would be a neat idea to hang as much as we could outside to dry so John strung every inch of rope we had all over the backyard. It was nuts. It was also 100 degrees and HUMID. And I mean tropical rainforest humid. Sooo 3 days later our clothes were still damp out on the lines!!! I ended up having to take them in and drying them a bit more. So probably wasn't a great idea after all. :(

The pictures aren't the best quality because I used my phone.

lovin' the pool