Galveston Vacation 2010

Starting Memorial Day, our family with Derek's parents & sister, spent a week at Point West Condos in Galveston. We had wonderful, wonderful weather & a great relaxing time. Sorry for the onslaught of photos...but, these are some of my favorites from the trip.

The kiddos striking a crazy pose before we went to the beach the first day. (Andi's sunglasses are upside down!)

There was ALOT of wave jumping.

Lots of crazy face making!

The Porters came to hang out with us one day.

Lots of running down the beach.

Lots of swimming. Both kiddos decided to ditch the floaties this year!

A little bit of sibling sweetness.

Lots of snuggling with Dad watching movies.

Lots of 'fun with Hettie' time.

Lots of peanut butter.

Lots of pics of my 5 year old birthday boy!

Lots of floating the lazy river.

Lots of sand castle building.

Lots of naps...Dawson piled the pillows & floaties on top of them & they didn't even wake up!

And...lots of cuteness!

So, so, so, so behind.

Yes, I know...I am HORRIBLY behind on my blogging. I have a list of about 12 things to blog about, but I am just lacking the motivation. We will blame it on my 'leaving Minnesota depression.' But, I will get my butt in gear asap because I have some great things to post! I'll be back soon.

American Idol in our future????

Our little girl sings ALL THE TIME...and I really do mean all the time. She LOVES to sing! And, coupled with singing, she is super duper DRAMATIC! I definitely think we have an entertainer on our hands. She loves to make up songs all day long about whatever task she is doing, or if she hears a someone speak a word from the lyrics of one of her favorite songs...it will trigger her to begin singing that song immediately. On the flight back home to Texas, she even serenaded the 'lucky' passengers around her with The My Little Pony song for the entire 5 hour flight.

I have been collecting these videos of her singing for the last several months & I am finally ready to compile them into one blog post. These videos are of her singing all her absolute favorite songs...the ones that we have heard over & over & over again. Did I mention that she sings these songs repeatedly???? :-)

Derek & I watch American Idol, and last season Adam Lambert was on the show. And he is quite the entertainer. At one point, his mom gave an interview about him as a child. She said something along the lines of how unbelievably loud he was a child...that he would just scream for the sake of screaming when he was a toddler...then the screaming turned into loud singing...and, the loud singing never stopped! At this point in the interview, Derek & I looked at each other with wide eyes and started cracking up laughing. Adam Lambert's Mom had just described our baby girl exactly! So, who knows what is in store for our little entertainer in the future.

Singing Jingle Bells at Christmas time:

Singing a song from Little Mermaid: (Sorry you have to listen to me sing on this one too! She is reenacting the movie on the stairs though...the scene where Ariel is perched on the rocks singing to Prince Eric...too cute!)

Singing Bear Necessities from The Jungle Book:

Singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star & I'm wishing from Snow White:

And, lastly...here is the song she sings the most...a song from her My little Pony movie. I almost didn't post this video because the quality is HORRIBLE. The video is so dark that you can hardly see her, but you can definitely still HEAR her! So, I posted it anyway since it is her favorite song.

I hope you all have enjoyed The Andi-Palooza!

Kemah Fun

The VERY first thing Dawson wanted to do when we moved back to Texas, was spend the day at Kemah. So, we flew into town from MN & the very next day we took the boy to ride rides at the carnival. He is such a little dare-devil & will ride everything he is tall enough for! I'm sure we will be back many times this summer.

The boys waiting in line

Riding the wagon wheel...they are CRAZY!

Some more funny shots riding the wagon wheel...

And, this is why I LOVE my husband...oh yeah, he is riding in the tiny airplanes!

We ate dinner on the patio of Landrys & this was our gorgeous sunset view

Dawson & his Hettie

And, here he is with all his Kemah loot: a light up sword & his new Scooby that he named 'Scooby Dooby Blue.'

What my eyes have seen...

Well, this is my final blog post about Bemidji, Minnesota. I whole heartedly fell in love with this town, it's people & it's beautiful countryside. Our time spent there was such an amazing adventure & I miss it terribly. It was really neat to watch the seasons changing before my eyes. This is what I saw while living there...through the lens of my camera of course.

This shed was located across the street from our house.

This is the main road that our street was off of.

Living Room window

Our Cabin

Buena Vista Ski Resort

Kitchen window

Our street

Sunroom

Birch trees

Every day when Andi was napping, Dawson & I would walk down to the lake. In the image on the right, it was -25 degrees outside with a -50 degree wind chill. He's a trooper!

Turtle Lake
And although our time there is over, I know that someday I will have to go back...because I am pretty sure I left a part of myself there.

Minnesota Farewell Bar-B-Q

Our sweet friends, The Riches family, threw us a farewell bar-b-q our last week in town. Brian & Jenny have twin boys Aiden & Avery who are three years old. They are such a sweet family & I hate that we were just really starting to get to know them really well...right when it was time for us to move away!

Here is Brian giving a tractor ride to all the munchkins!

Here was our beautiful grill master!

Everyone at the table. Another family from church, The Hamlin family, was there too.

The big boys playing baseball.

Jenny, Evangeline & me

And here are the little cuties: Aiden & Avery

We hope to make it back to MN next summer so we can hang out with these awesome friends again!

School Easter Program

Right before we left Minnesota, the kids preschool put on an adorable Easter Program. Each class performed individually & Andi's class went first:

singing 'Little ones to HIM belong...'

singing 'The Bible tells me so.'

Here is her entire class on stage.

And, this was the most adorable part. Each child got to say a 'line' into the microphone. Each 'line' was the Easter story summarized by that particular child. So, some of them said things like 'Jesus got owies'...but my sweet girl Andi chose to say 'I love my Mommy.' We were all really surprised that she even spoke into the microphone at all! Here she is with her favorite teacher Mrs Charboneau.

Here they are praying for their snack at the end of the program. Andi absolutely refuses to hold hands with boys! I love it!

Then Dawson's class was next:

How cute is he??? He was SO nervous!

His whole class performing

Dawson with his teacher Miss Kim. Dawson's line was 'After 3 days, the angel came & moved the boulder.' He did so good! I was a very proud Mama.

Whole class again, about to pray together.

And here is Dawson with 'his girls!'

What a blessing this last school year was for my children! Thank you Calvary Lutheran preschool for loving my kiddos.