Our house

Here's a photo of the front of our new house. We close on it this Thursday and then will start digging in on the work that needs to be done. We are excited. The grass/dandelions were a foot long at least but Ben and a friend spent the morning working on it and it is getting better already!

You got it.

So it wasn't that difficult...but our hair does look really similar from the back doesn't it??

Pop Quiz!

My brother Don and his kids are visiting this weekend for Bronte's soccer tournament. We went down to Canal Park today and got this picture of me and my nephew Aaron. Your job is to guess which head of hair is mine and which is Aaron's. He does have quite a nice head of hair for a 14 year-old boy!

One more thing...

I had to save this for a different post. A couple days before we left for California we made an offer on a house and it was accepted so we had the inspection the day before we left. During our whole trip Ben was on and off the phone with our realtor, the banker, plumbers, etc...negotiating and finding out info on the house. After dealing with a whole bunch of stuff we decided today we are for sure getting the house. They have accepted our counter-offers and we sign the papers tomorrow. The closing will be June 8th! We will stay in this apartment until the end of June so we have a few weeks to do some work on the house and get packed up and move.

We are really excited! The house needs work but it's going to be a great house for us. The funny thing is, it's only three blocks away. Since we have been married we have only lived within a 6 block radius. We used to live at 7th and 7th, now we are at 10th and 10th and we will soon be at 7th and 10th - right in the middle! It makes moving trucks very affordable since they charge by the mile!

California!

We got back from California on Tuesday night. We spent about 9 days there and we had a blast! The first four days were spent near Anaheim (home of Disneyland) at a National Vineyard pastors and leaders conference. The conference was really good and they planned some free time into it so we could hang out with people and see some sights. This was good since we had Sophia and Caleb with us. They had childcare and fun stuff planned for the kids during the conference so they really liked it too.

When the conference finished the rest of our staff went back to Duluth and we stayed for some much needed vacation. We went to Disneyland on Friday and then to San Diego from Saturday until Tuesday. We got to see some great beaches, SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo. We all had a great time!

When I downloaded my photos off the camera we had 541! Don't worry, I've only put a few highlights on here.


Notice Caleb's finger in this picture. Contrary to what the picture shows, he really loved Mickey Mouse. All day he would see him on stuff and scream, "Me Mouse, Me Mouse!!"

This was the "Shamu Rocks" show at SeaWorld! It was probably my favorite thing we saw on the whole trip. This guy surfed across the whole pool on the whale's back.

A day at the beach. Of course the water was never actually warm enough to swim in!

At the zoo!

Sophia has been working on this sucker all week long. I think it was the highlight of the trip for her!

A Career for Sophia

It was beautiful weather here yesterday and we went down to the lake for awhile last night to enjoy it. I pulled out my camera and Sophia really wanted to take a picture of us. It turned out great. I think we have discovered her calling in life! You might actually start seeing photos with both of us in them more often now.

This is a good thing because exactly seven days from now we will be on an airplane to sunny Southern California. Maybe she could actually get some good photos of us at the beach!

And it begins...

Caleb got his first (of I'm sure many) stitches last night. I had to stay home and get some work done while Ben took the kids to small group with him. The kids were upstairs with the babysitter, Sierra, when Ben heard Caleb start screaming right at the end of the night. Sierra came running downstairs and Caleb's eye was bleeding like crazy. As far as they could figure out, one of the kids tried to give him a hug and accidentally knocked him over into the TV stand in the bedroom they were in.

Some friends brought Sophia home to me while Ben took Caleb to the ER to get a couple stitches. He said he did a great job. He cried while they did the stitches but then sat up, waved and said, "bye bye" to the nurse and doctor as they left.

The poor little guy has no chance really. Ben has all sorts of scars from where he got a few stitches here and there. Every one has a funny story with it....like hitting himself in the forehead with a tennis racket! Caleb just decided it was time to start following in his daddy's footsteps, at 16 months old!