Monday, August 11, 2008

Duluth Maritime Festival

Well about two weekends ago there was this (what we thought) small festival happening in Canal Park and we thought it'd be fun since three sailboats were coming, blah blah blah. Well, 25,000 people later, we quickly realized that this was NOT a small festival. We were SUPER fortunate to have three authentic sailboats from the early 1900's come to the Duluth Port. Our plan to tour the boats was pretty much gone when we heard on the radio there was no more available parking in DULUTH, and that if you were able to walk there, you'd be in line for hours. Well, we never got to tour them obviously, but we went on a harbor cruise and I got some cool pictures of the boats. The sails aren't up, but they are still beautiful!

This is the Niagra (also the largest of the 3 boats that came). This one has real cannons on it, and they actually shot cannon balls out into the harbor- which we didn't get to see, but you could hear it over in Superior (about 6 miles away) and people who were in Canal Park said it shook buildings!!:





I can't remember which one this is. This is the "middle" sized one. I couldn't get a good picture of the small one.




Here's Olivia and I. She was TERRIFIED when the boat started out (we've done this cruise a few times with her) because this is the first time it was a really choppy ride. When the boat went out onto the lake, it was rocking and rolling- you could barely stand up. Water was spashing up the front of the boat- I was getting sea sick! But once we toured the harbor, it was just fine. That's what a 5 mph wind does on our big lake.






Jack on the other hand, LOVED it, and was squealing during the whole thing. :)


Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Almost Vacation Time!

Well this Saturday is our yard sale and I am hoping for decent weather and big sales. I have so much stuff to get rid of, so I hope a lot of it moves.

We have our summer mini-vacation all planned out. We are for sure going to Como Zoo on 7/19, and then we decided on the Children's Museum for 7/20. We hit a few snags on the way- such as friends of ours who we were going to stay with are now going to be out of town. Luckily, I was able to find a really nice hotel for $79/night and they have a great breakfast, huge pool, and a playground. Doesn't get much better than that! The Children's Museum is even going to be free since it happens to be the 3rd Sunday- so they advise no strollers. Yikes. Olivia will do well, but that means Matt and I take turns carrying Jackson in the Snugli. I don't know that I like that so much. Plus, whoever isn't carrying Jackson is carrying the diaper bag backpack thing. Double yikes. So we'll see how that goes. Matt doesn't like crowds or large amounts of people, so if it's out of control- we'll do something else or come home early. I could maybe stop at the Mall of America to shop at Archiver's. Or IKEA!!! Oh.. maybe we'll do that. :) We'll see!

So I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Olivia likes our "trips" but this will be Jackson's longest car ride. We're a little nervous because of his reflux- he normally screams the entire car ride around town- so we're driving almost two hours on the way there, and then almost 3 hours on the way back (depending on traffic). I HOPE it goes well. Keep your fingers crossed.

Other than that, not much else is new. I got some picutres developed so we'll see if they turned out good. I've posted some cute ones on here already. I'll go through and see if there are any other fun ones and maybe post later.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

4 Years!


They say the first seven years of marriage are the hardest, so we now officially have 4 down. :) Our anniversary was June 12 and we did nothing. Ok, so Matt got me a card and 3 roses (he tried for four, but just didn't remember). But we had fajitas at home, played with the kids and were sleeping by 9. I guess that's how it's going to be for awhile. Every time we try to do something on our anniversary it ends up being a bust- this was the first year we gave up.
Our first year, I was about 6 months pregnant with Olivia and we tried to go out to eat. Well, by the time we got to the restaurant, we had 30 minutes to order, eat and pay because they were closing. AND, I got really sick off the food so that ended that. Our second year, Olivia was like 9 months old or so, and my parents came to babysit her so we could go out to dinner & a movie. Well, we got to the theatre parking lot and got into a HUGE fight over something so dumb I can't even remember. SO, that evening ended about 20 minutes after it began and we were home and didn't talk the rest of the night. Last year, we had all the intentions of doing something romantic and fun but were in the middle of a home addition. Not only did Matt not budget or plan like he should have- but we were BROKE and were trying to come up with extra money for things he didn't even think about. Not to mention it wasn't "on time", so I was stressed out about my family coming a few weeks later and not having anywhere for people to sleep or eat. I think all of last June was a never ending fight over his lack of organizational skills. :)
So much has happened in four years that it really does feel like a battle of wills some days, but then other days it's really great and fun. We work hard at our marriage, god knows we've had some serious struggles and things to work through, but we try and it's the best we can do. One day though, I'd REALLY like to go on a real date with my husband, preferrably before the kids move out. :)

My Scrap Space

So a lot of you wanted to see my scrap space and I just finally took pictures of it. Now keep in mind the walls will be painted (eventually) and I think I'm doing something cool like Apple Green or something. My desk is actually a closet in my dining room. Which works out great becuase I can either stand & scrap in there, or I can take stuff out and scrap at my dining room table. Here's a view of it when you open the doors:







Here's the "left" side more detailed:





The gray box with drawers on my desk are all my "doo-da's", and then I have my ink pad caddy. Olivia's artwork is on my walls, too. On the shelf on the far left side are 3 clear vertical storage boxes. One for complete sets of paper (mostly Basic Grey), the middle is just various pattern paper (I'm a paper whore) and the last one is just cardstock, organized by shade of course. :) The 3 clear boxes stacked on top of each other contain rub-ons, adhesive, and ribbon. Did I mention I have a ribbon fetish??





Here's the "right" side:




I have 3 video storage boxes, one is for cards I have done and on hand in case I need them. The pink one is a box of Olivia keepsakes (ultrasound pictures, hospital bracelets, coming home outfit, etc) and I have the green stripe one for Jackson. I have a ton of odds & ends on this side. I have my CTMH stuff on the shelf, too. All of my Stampin! up stamps are in two bathroom storage shelves I got from Target. They're white with 4 canvas boxes- the stamps sets fit perfectly- plus it looks nice on the wall. My drawers are filled with stuff too. The big drawer is all of my stickers separated into folders by theme. :) The other ones are my pens/markers, one for my sizzlet alphabet sets, one for my 3D embellishments, and one for altered projects I'll do one day. :) It's a full drawer so I need to actually do some!

So that's it, gang- it's where I relax and where I create. Thanks for looking!