Easy. Breezy. Beautiful???

It's been quite awhile since I've used my sewing machine:( I've been wanting to make something, and it needed to be super simple. Then we got a heat wave and I desperately needed some breezy shirts to wear for playing with the kids. I found this idea on Pinterest.

Old t-shirt. Cut off the sleeves. Sew a row of stitches at the neck and thread some fabric/ribbon through it to make a tank top. Can easily be started and finished in 10 minutes (less if the scissors aren't MIA and the sewing machine is already threaded).

I've turned old race shirts into tank tops as well as our "State Fair" t-shirts (each year Joe gets t's from Boston Scientific for the whole family and if you wear them on a certain day and get spotted you can win prizes).

These are so unbelievably comfortable. Quick to make - I've knocked out a half dozen. And put old t-shirts to a new use. A new hot weather staple!

Happy 10 Months Wren

Your 10-month Birthday has been such a mix of emotions for me. You're in the double digits. I've started planning your 1st Birthday. As I snapped your "43 week" chair picture I had a little melt down realizing one year since you were born is less than 10 weeks away. Another little melt down came as I was getting caught up writing in your baby book. A bigger melt down while weeding through all of your baby clothes, getting them ready to send off to have your special memory quilt made.

Wren, you are such a little snuggler! You continue to hug and wrestle any stuffed animal you can find. One of your favorite toys at daycare is Pete, the giant stuffed turtle. Every other day I hear about how much fun you and Pete had together:) Now you've started to make more precise motions and movements with your stuffed animals. You'll hold your bunny and look at it's face and go to kiss it. You work hard at removing your rag doll Wren's knee-high socks. And of course you love snuggling with all of us too. Rolling around the floor with your brothers. Climbing and cuddling in their beds and ours.

You are so incredibly cute when you need to get my attention. If I'm holding you, but paying attention to and looking at Max & Otto, you've taken to craning your neck, leaning right in front of my face, reaching for my cheek and turning my face towards yours. Kinda sad that sometimes that is what is needed. I do appreciate your direct-ness, as well as your huge smile once I've redirected my attention to You! Once in awhile you'll tug my ponytail, which I do not love.

In terms of milestones, the past month brought a couple biggies. You said your first word, IPA. Same as Otto's 1st word (Max's was "DaDa"). I thought I heard you say it two different times over the course of a day when we were letting IPA out. The next day Jamie babysat you and while I was out running errands I got a text that said "Your daughter says the word "IPA."

In addition to saying IPA, you do a great amount of babbling. Lots of dada, mama, blabla sounds. In fact, for one week you would literally babble shout yourself to sleep. Joe and I still rock you to sleep after feeding you your bottle. And for a week while rocking you, you would very loudly (kind of like shouting, but in a happy way) babble. For a solid 5 minutes or so I'd rock you and you'd be belting out your babbling. And then, instantaneously, you'd go silent and be sleeping. There was no wind up or taper off - an immediate, all-out loud babbling and then silence as abruptly as it started.

You also cut your 1st tooth (Aug 9th) and then your 2nd tooth exactly one week later (Aug 16th). Your lower left and right ones. Aside from a couple nights of needing to work a little harder to get you to sleep, you remained ever cheerful.

On top of the teeth, you got Hand Foot & Mouth disease. I thought you had gotten warts all over your feet and was kicking myself for letting you run around bare-foot at daycare (I think it's a no-no, but really, they let the rules slide sometimes). It cleared up quickly after first spreading across your feet, legs, butt, hands and mouth.

You and Otto are starting to duke it out over toys. You want the spatulas, spoons and ice cream scoops he's got - and since he usually has them ALL for his various restaurants set up around our house - you guys will go at it. I know I need to think through how to handle this differently, other than just giving you something else to play with, because that trick's not always going to work.

This month we continued spending a ton of time outside enjoying the Minnesota summer. We camped for a weekend at Whitewater State Park, played at Tamarack Nature Center and the Splash Pad and visited the Science and Children's Museums.

As a special treat, I ended up having a whole day just me and you the day before your 10-month birthday. Both the boys were in school so we spent the day doing a couple errands, hanging out and walking around the lake. During your nap I was able to make a cake to celebrate this month's birthday. It was an idea I saw on Pinterest and needed to try. A super easy way to make a cake fancy!

All the boys were amazed at it. And all of you absolutely loved the Poky sticks. You happily sucked all the strawberry coating off of one and then went on to babble-shout for a good 10 minute sugar high.

One more monthly Birthday til your big one. I think I need to try another fun cake next month!

Tamarack Nature Center

Last weekend we discovered what I consider the greatest park/outdoor space in the Cities. It's one of those "best places people aren't visiting," hidden gems, off the radar, kid-friendly spots totally worth checking out.

Maybe plenty of people know of this place, but I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago. It's the Tamarack Nature Center and it's in a Northern (i think) suburb, near White Bear Lake.

Max and I walked in first while Joe drove around for an extra 15 minutes with sleeping #2 & #3. As we approached the nature center there's this really cook frog sculpture covered in garbage that was pulled from the Mississippi (I just had to sing that little "M-I-SS-I-SS-I-PP-I" to spell that correctly) river. Max had fun seeing everything it was made out of.

First we headed inside to the nature center. I'd heard there was an outdoor play area but decided to go there once Joe, Otto & Wren joined up with us. Max enjoyed playing with all the real animal "parts" including these antlers, a deer hoof, lots of fur pelts among other things.

Once our whole family was together, we headed out to the nature area. It Was Awesome!

The 1st area was a big area with trees, logs, sticks, boulders and benches perfect for creative play. This was totally like the forrest right near our house, but with a bit more open space and just enough structure to spark their imagination. They played hard for a solid hour, totally engrossed in building, climbing and creating. When we walked into this area I immediately silently thanked the good people who decided to fence this area in. Little did I know the boys would have no interest in running away from this area for so long!!!

- A tree with a bunch of sticks around it like a teepee

- Max and I spent a solid half hour hauling sticks from the teepee to make a new kind of house with walls

- Otto took his time and made a really good campfire. He was quite precise and did a lot of detail work with little twigs.

- Big logs really good for running and jumping off of

- An outdoor, wooden xylophone

That was just the first of about five different outdoor play areas. They had a big rock wall with caves for climbing. There were a couple areas for sitting - some landscaped with cement and flowers, another in the woods with benches. Then there was a man-made river with rocks and sticks and water that pooled in sandy "beaches." Just enough water to sit in, cool off and play with. Although there appear to be a lot of people in the below photo, there really weren't. It was not crowded at all.

The last area we explored was a huge outdoor community garden they have. Rows and rows of squash, raised beds with herbs, bean huts and more.

- A view of the expansive garden area

- Max and the beanstalk

- The boys pumping water to tend to the crops

We'll be back! As well as on the hunt for more hidden gems around town!

Three of my Three

Wren's 1st Tooth. HF&M. 1st "Haircut."

Thursday, August 9th was quite the trifecta for Wren.

At Noon I noticed her first tooth (lower left) had cut through.

Around 2pm I noticed bumps all over her feet/toes. I thought they were warts that suddenly appeared. After double checking with Joe, Jamie, Diane and our Pediatrician, she was diagnosed with a big case of Hand, Foot & Mouth.

And then at 6pm after getting back from a walk around Calhoun & Isles, I went to get her ready for a bath and had to give her her 1st hair cut. Her hair had wrapped around the button and loop closure on the back of her shirt. It was so snarled and knotted that I had to cut her hair in order to get the shirt off of her. Not much hair was lost, but I insisted on Joe snapping pictures of this sad event. Snagged hair, her tooth, or the HF&M must have been the culprit for her crying while out on our walk.

*P.S. - I am soooo bummed. I totally meant to save the little snip of hair that was tangled around her button and I forgot. Her shirt got tossed in the wash machine without me noticing it. It wasn't until I was pulling it out of the washer after it was washed that I got a pit in my stomach because I lost her 1st cut of hair. Not to worry - plenty of hair for a 2nd cut. Someday. Considering it took me 3 years to cut my boy's hair, there's no telling how long it'll take me for my girl's hair!!!

Summer, Summer, Summertime!

Summer, Cristy, Jamie & Katie Chevalier. June 1983.

Summer.

When you have a name like mine you get a lot of questions - or assumptions - wondering if summer is my favorite season. But since it isn't, I quickly explain how I love all seasons, but summer usually ranks 4th behind the other three. Incredulous looks follow.

But over the course of the past few months something finally hit me (I really wonder why it takes so long for some things to click with me). It hit me that while I may not love the weather of the season, I do love the spirit of Summertime. The world is so alive, and has enlivened even more with each kid and each year they get bigger. I'm sure once they are in real school and actually have summers off from class, this summer's excitement - given they are 4 yrs, 2 yrs and 9 months - will seem like peanuts compared to what's to come.

At the beginning of summer I started a Summertime Bucket List because we kept tossing out ideas of what we wanted to do during June/July/August and I knew I'd never remember everything. Plus I wanted ideas at my fingertips for whenever we were looking for something to do. Any time I would wonder aloud about an upcoming event Max would say "Put it on our Bucket List."

And so here's our bucket list (with lots of fun things experienced by us this summer...note the ----- in front of things we've already done). Over the coming weeks I'll post a few entries sharing more details on the different Summertime things we've done.

Summertime Bucket List

------Pirate Party

Pizza & Sundae Bar Party

LH Cornfeed Aug 9, 6-8

Como Town

Children's Museum (Aug 12)

------- Science Museum

------- Valley fair

MN State Fair (Aug 23)

-------Farmers Market

SLP Rec Center

Bandshell Music/Movie

SLP amphitheater

WAC packs

------- Sculpture garden

------- Arboretum

--------Twins game

Bike Max & Otto to school

Trolley

Rollerskating

Bowling

Bike

-------- Beach (Harriet, Calhoun)

-------- drive thru ice cream pj's

Hike - three rivers, w backpacks

------- Camping/Fishing

------- Taylor's Falls

------- Whitewater

Itasca

blue mounds, glacial lakes

Tamarack nature (off 35E)

------- Minnehaha Falls/Bike/Pool

------- Hyland Park Play Area

------- Elm Creek Park Beach

Fort Snelling Park

------- Splash pad

Cute Things They Say: Morning

Awhile back, when the kids were religiously waking at 5am (instead of the glorious 5:58am trend we've been on for a bit now), here's how a conversation went down between me and Max around 11:15am one morning.

I was loading the kids into the car for a quick grocery trip to Costco. We had done countless things that morning. I guess not countless - it was probably close to an even hundred between making breakfast and eating breakfast and the forts and music and park playtime and eating the second breakfast and walking around the block and doing art and eating yet a third breakfast and picking up toys so that we could get to Costco and come home to a tidy house just in time to tuck all three into their beds for n.a.p.t.i.m.e!

As I'm buckling Max into his carseat he looks at me and asks "Mom, is it still morning?"

I simply say "Yep, it is" because I've realized that the simpler the answer, the better most times. But, ooooh, the thoughts his comment sparked and the things I could have said!

And then, in one sentence, Max summed up my numerous unspoken words with "Mom, why are mornings sooooooo loooooong?"

To which I wanted to - and think I did - respond, "because we've put in nearly 8 hours before Noon!"

As luck would have it,

yesterday was Max's four and a half Birthday. And National Ice Cream Sandwich Day.

Whitewater State Park Camping

Last weekend we set out for our family's 2nd camping excursion of the summer. 90 miles southeast of Minneapolis, or about 20 miles east of Rochester - Whitewater State Park.


Earlier in the season Joe and I had perused a lot of the Minnesota State Parks online to pick our top choices for visiting and camping. Whitewater immediately rose to the top of our list due to the relatively short drive from our house, beautiful description of towering bluffs, a winding river in a lush green valley and last but not least, the promise of a "noticeable absence of mosquitos."


I loved Whitewater from the moment we rounded a corner, headed down into the valley and my cell phone faded from 4 bars to 3 bars to 2 bars to 1 bar to No Service while nearing the State Park sign.


Our campsite was in a good location right along one of the branches of Whitewater river, and near the bathrooms. Which was great for me as I stayed hydrated. But meant nothing to two toddler boys who thought Daddy and I weren't catching on as they repeatedly rushed to the edge of the woods exclaiming "Oooohhhh, I have to go pee sooooooo bad and I waited toooooo long I can't make it to the bathroom." To which we'd point to the trees and say "No worries, just pee right there." We had to change our tone and words very quickly come Sunday afternoon while enjoying time at the outdoor exhibit at the Science Museum ("Don't you dare pull your underwear down. You've gotta hold it till we get to the bathrooms inside the museum!")


We camped two nights this time and all went well. While bottles are a minor annoyance, the boys are in their element outside, in the woods, getting dirty - annoying bottles are well worth it for peaceful boys.


We spent time hiking some trails, fishing in the river, swimming on the beach, exploring the campground, making campfires and cooking over them.

Pitching our tent. The boys are great at getting the rods extended so Joe can lace them through the tent.

Wren loving crawling around in the dirt. I love how gratifying baths and laundry are following camping trips.

Our little monkeys swinging from the clothesline.

Learning how to build a kindling teepee to help start the fire.

Lounging by the campfire

We started our hike with Otto and Wren each in a backpack, but shortly after starting Otto decided he wanted to hike too. The boys did a great job on a moderate trail and made it to the top for a gorgeous view overlooking the river valley.

Gone Fishin'

Helping Otto reel in his first of two catches!

1st catch: An itty bitty fishy

Asking Otto if he wanted to kiss the fish he caught (a tradition that we learned of while on a fishing excurion on Lake Michigan several years ago), to which he said No! It was a slightly bigger rainbow trout that was "gut hooked" so we kept it for a "shore dinner" that night. Max loved the fillet (with ketchup), but not Otto.

A morning stroll through the campsite. In PJs for Otto and underwear for Max.

A cool leaf Max loved

A wolf on display at the Visitor's Center. Apparently wolves and bears are still sighted nearby.