Family trips

 

Back in May, we headed to Duluth with just Olivia and Frank for the Knights of Columbus state convention. The kids thoroughly enjoyed seeing the sites - I think they also enjoyed having the extra space in the vehicle without the older 3 siblings on the car ride. Here are a few pictures:

This one takes a little explaining. Seth's coworker, Steve, was also at the convention. He's basically the male version of Mary Poppins, and our kids love hanging out with him. Frank and Olivia both spent most of the evening banquet playing and talking with him. As I walked out with them later that evening, a man stopped me to compliment me on what a wonderful husband and father our family had. I'm 99% sure he was referring to Steve so I just passed the compliment onto his wife later. (Seth was there, but he was tasked with getting drinks for everyone at the table and the line to the bar was long so I could see where the confusion came in).

Once summer got going, we headed up to Storybook Land in Aberdeen again. It had been a few years, and we were able to go at the same time as some friends. Here are the kids with a baby bird they found. 

And this is Frank, planking on our picnic table. The kids accidentally discovered the old planking trend (from about 2010) a few months back and that Seth finds it incredibly annoying because of the sheer stupidity and pointlessness of it. So on occasion, the kids will suddenly just plank around him to get him riled up. Ironically, Seth is the one who inadvertently introduced them to it. He came downstairs one day to find Frank planking (which he was just doing randomly for no reason) and - thinking he had somehow found out about the planking trend - immediately said, "What are you doing? That is so stupid!" Frank didn't know what he was talking about so we explained and the rest is history. 

For the record, I did not write this

 Found on our fridge: