Beef Salad, for real this time...

It does exist!

Seth's mom recently found a recipe in one of her cooking magazines for a beef salad. Having heard of Seth's beef salad incident 2 years back, which our family still occasionally gets a laugh out of, she had to make it for him. So she had us over for supper (the dish was kept a secret from Seth until he got there) for a delicious Thai Beef Salad. It was scrumptious!

That's never going to happen

Some parents like to tell their kids that they can be anything they want to be. I have never fallen into this category, always keeping in mind the story of my good friends, Mandy and Alissa, who were once asked by their grandma what they wanted to be when they grew up. Grandma, of course, sweetly added that "you can be anything you want to be."
Mandy said she wanted to be a veterinarian. Alissa said she wanted to be a tree.

On that note, we ran into Father Jeremy last night, and as we were leaving he rattled something off to Elena in Italian. Elena asked me what he said, to which I replied, "I don't know...something about a princess."
So she hollered after him, "Hey, Father! What you said?"
"I said, 'See you later, princess!'" he yelled back.

So on the way home, we had this little conversation:
"Why did Father Jeremy call me a princess?"

"Because he thinks you're like a little princess."

"I don't want to be a princess."

"Well, good...because that's probably never going to happen."

"I want to be a king."

Oh boy.

Family: one of God's masterpieces

It's true that we do not have access to a wide variety of restaurants and stores out here in rural MN. And some would say there's "nothing to do" around here; although I'd say that's debatable. There is very little that Seth and I did living in the cities that we can't do here...plus, with 2 kids we wouldn't have time to do anything else anyway. Not to mention, the savings we make on the cost of living make it easily possible to take a weekend and go to the Cities whenever we do decide we want to do something different. Add up all the driving time we used to waste in traffic on a daily basis and we've stored up several 3-hour trips to and from the metro area.

When it comes down to it, there are pluses and minuses wherever one choses to live. But we've got one major advantage here that makes any minuses more than worth the minuscule sacrifice of living in a small town: we are surrounded by family who loves us. At the end of my life, I'm not going to care about where I ate or what I wore (I guess I hardly care about that now) but who I was with.

Boy, talking about family trees, I sound like I'm turning into the sap. Enough of that - here are some pictures.

Elena and cousin, Austin, at the lake home

Sam and Great-Grandma Corky listening to music at the Summer Sizzler.

Seth with his dad and brothers during the alumni baseball game - Seth hit a home run that night!

Sam swimming with cousin, Alex, at Grandma and Papi's house.

Sam and cousin, Ian. They had a blast throwing rocks on this bush.

Elena, acting goofy with her 2nd cousins at the DeCock annual camping trip.

Tunnel Vision

Summer Fun!

Since I haven't been updating much, here are a few pictures from our summer.

Here is Sam watching the fireworks with Papi - he loved them! Elena didn't care for the noise this year, but she still had fun playing with all of her friends in the park for the 4th of July.

Of course the past few months have been full of water and ice cream - especially with the heat and humidity we've had!

We brought the kids to the Lyon County Fair to watch the rodeo and go on a few rides - Elena was a big fan of the rides.

Sam especially liked the tractors - Elena was happy to just sit on one, but Sam went right to work trying to drive it.

There's nothing like a good swim to exhaust the kids. I was washing the dishes after we got back from the pool and saw Elena on the floor like this. I think she couldn't decide whether she was too tired to eat or too hungry to sleep.

Let's hope common sense improves with age and experience

Last night, Elena went to the bathroom and came out a few minutes later, looking very calm and normal. Normal, except for the fact that her chin was covered in blood. "Mom, something happened."

Seth and I immediately made "Oh-my-gosh-what-on-earth-happened??!!" faces, and I'm sure something similar came out of my mouth. Seeing our faces, Elena started to look scared, so we had to quickly switch back to our "everything's-fine" faces. She obviously wasn't in pain at all so we weren't too worried.

So I asked as calmly and cheerily as I could, "Why are you covered in blood, sweetie?'

We went into the bathroom to investigate, while Elena explained that she had noticed some chocolate on her face when she looked in the mirror. When she was trying to clean it off, she started to bleed and came out to find us.

Looking down at the counter, I asked, "Did you use this to clean off your face?"

"Yes."

Then Seth informed her, "You know, using my razor to clean your face probably wasn't the best idea, honey."

Fortunately, it was a small cut on her lip - it just bled a lot! We're lucky that Elena is not squeamish at the sight of blood.

Top on our "to do" list: find a less accessible place to store Seth's razor.

I have 2 toddlers.

That's my excuse for not writing on here more often lately.

Two toddlers with loads and loads of energy. And minds that seem permanently set on "destruct." On the upside, my children are never, ever boring:)

Also, it's summer so we are outside as much as possible, limiting computer time. Life continues to be beautiful here, but a small piece of me is perpetually mourning the passage of summer. I have no idea how we are going to survive the winter.

The long, Minnesota winter.

Inside.

With 2 toddlers.

I think I will just need to get used to bundling my kids up on a daily basis (that should only take an hour or two) so I can go out in the frigid weather watching them burn off some energy.

Enough talk of that! It was in the upper 90s here today so here are some pictures of the kids trying to stay cool!

Too Much

Elena was lucky enough to get a Sprite at the baseball game we attended the other night. Not wanting her to drink the entire can, I drank some and told her she had to share with Sam, who was desperately trying to get at the pop. Her response?

"Don't give Sam too much; just give him a little....The too much is for me."

Fighting over girls already

We spent a weekend at the lake house with Seth's family. The three little boys (Sam, Ian and RJ) all had fun playing together. At one point, Sam and RJ were fighting over a Barbie doll. I caught a picture just as Sam won the battle. In RJ's defense, Sam does have a 7-month advantage....

...but it wasn't long before RJ found his own doll to play with.

Here's a video of "the three amigos" - as we like to call them - doing a slightly more masculine activity.

Oh Dear

The other day we were driving over to see Elena's friend, Ana, who was not feeling well due to allergies. We had something that I thought might help so we brought it over for them to try. I had hard time explaining allergies so Elena would understand so I just told her we were bringing Ana something to make her feel better.

Quickly forgetting what I had just told Elena, I stopped at the discount liquor store, which is on the way to Ana's house, since we were almost out of beer. When Elena found out what we were stopping for, she said:

"Oh! We're going to bring Ana beer to help her feel better?"

"Ummm...she might be a little young for that particular treatment."