Comotrekker: Pictures Galore!

I think that I forgot to mention the fact that I was starting a new schedule at work in my last post. I'll be working early in the morning in order to accommodate our new schedule in the fall - but it seems to be hampering my efforts to do much of anything after the kids are in bed because I'm so tired. Blogging seems to have taken a back seat this past week, but I think I'm getting used to the schedule now & will try to post in the afternoons from now on.

This past week was filled with Taylor doing track, Ian doing t-ball, both of them doing swimming lessons, landscaping the front yard, parking cars during Back to the 50's this weekend, a neighborhood party on Sunday afternoon & finally a parade in Roseville yesterday!

Taylor is just amazing at track! She seems to be right in the middle as far as the age group of her peers, but she's one of the fastest and most competitive girls out there. She is still enjoying the relay races the best.

Ian and the t-ball - it was hilarious! Panod was able to come and watch all of these 3-5 year olds interact with one another and learn how to play ball. There is one coach, about 10 adult helpers, and nearly 24 kids! They are going to be broken down into 4 teams of 6, and they will be playing one another every Monday until mid August. Ian is very good at hitting the ball, he seems to be catching on to running the bases, and still needs some work on catching the ball in his glove. He really did love it and has been walking around for the past week shouting, "1-2-3 Gooooo T-BALL!"

Both Taylor and Ian have shown so much improvement in their swimming skills since last year! I was blown away at how easily they jumped into the pool, listened to their teachers and Taylor even got to bump up a class to the level 3's! Ian's class is very large, but his teachers seem to do very well with all of them. He is working on putting his face in the water and making bubbles, and Taylor is working on turning, not lifting her head while doing the crawl stroke.

I really had to do the landscaping in the front of the house. It had been a large pile of dirt since construction started on our street over a year ago. They finished up the construction project back in May of this year, and I have had a pile of dirt sitting in the front of the house ever since. One of our neighbors was nice enough to hear that we were looking for a specific type of rock to do the landscaping with, and he was able to get some for us from his job and delivered right to our front yard for free! (He's being repaid with homemade dinners & pies from Cafe a la Lori) I got busy on Friday morning and was putting the finishing touches on it by Friday night. The plants in the picture are all perennials and will come back every year. Most are spring blooming and it will probably take about 3 summers for it to look the way we would like. Grand total for the project: $24 for the plants and pea gravel!

Back to the 50's was this weekend and it always means a neighborhood party while we park cars on Saturday. Friday was the night to sit out on Snelling and watch all of the 11,000+ old cars stream out of the main gates. Over the years we have learned that if you yell at the ones you like you will likely get a wave, a honk, and the scream of the hot rod burning his tires for you! We all had a blast, even though it did start to rain after a while.

Now if you've never been to the Roseville parade - you haven't been to a parade! It's that amazing! It goes on for nearly 4 hours!! The kids and I will usually drive down Lexington Ave. about 4:00pm and stop to drop off a blanket and chairs in order to make sure that we have a spot saved for us when the parade starts at 6:30pm. This year, we brought our dinner to eat while we waited for it to start and some goodie bags to catch all of the candy and goodies that get tossed at us as the parade goes by. Taylor and I got so tickled at Ian because every time a float would go by with the beauty queen winners for local cities, Ian would wave and jump up and down until a the pretty ladies smiled and waved back at him!

That's about all I can think of for now.... enjoy the pictures & thanks for reading!

Ian running the bases at t-ball