Home Sweet Home

We rolled into Minnesota last Thursday and checked into the Mystic Lake Casino RV Park, needed to spend some time with the MN grand kids. BTW the RV Park at Mystic Lake is open year round...yep I said year round. Crazy huh? It is a great park however and close to Lenny and Kelly's which is the icing on the cake.

You cannot imagine how happy I was to see Julia walk out the door with her daddy and in a happy and very excited voice said, "Grandma". Julia, Shelby and their parents moved from Nicollet to Prior Lake April 1 and Julia was more than happy to show us her new house. She ran from room to room announcing, 'This is Shelby's room, and ' This is my bathroom' (she's two and even though it is her and Shelby's bathroom everything is hers and hers only), 'This is momma's and daddy's room, and then.......
This is my bedroom

It's a comfortable home large enough for a guest or two :) with neighbors who are younger with young kids of their own. There is even a babysitter next door! Lenny says that on about day two the next door neighbor girl (who is 8) knocked on their door at 8pm asking if Julia could come out and play. It will be great for the girls to have a neighborhood with kids next door...good luck keeping Julia in the house this summer, haha.

And here is Julia's almost always smiling little sister Shelby Maria. Is she not adorable.

I wondered if we could do something fun one day and because the weather was not nice enough for the MN Zoo we headed for Underwater World at MOA. Now Julia was a little (a lot) apprehensive about going in the dark tunnel surrounded by water as you can see. To heck with the cool fish daddy lets get out of here.
She was much happier when we found these 'pretty fish' and were no longer under the water.
Shelby on the other hand just took it all in
I loved it actually. How often do you get to see the underbelly of a swimming shark.
This was much more to Julia's liking.
And then Julia and Grandpa spending some quiet time watching Tangled. BTW the purple chair that Julia is sitting in is the one that I made her almost two years ago. It was a great project because she loves it:)
We came to our official-summer home Monday. Everything was in place, nothing amiss thank goodness. You know I had forgotten how slow the internet service is here in the woods and it has taken me forever to get this blog loaded!

David immediately busted into laying the wood floor in the new living room and I am STILL trying to find places for all that we took out of the camper and organize the house.

Happy Easter to you all.

Texas 2011

This was an interesting trip to say the least.
First and formost was our 5th grandchild was born. Aiden Micheal came into this world 2 weeks early and pretty effortless...I am sure due to the daily yoga that his momma does. Pregnancy may not be-and is not- easy for her but delivery consists of getting to the hospital in the nick of time!
Here he is only a few hours after he was born.
And with his proud, and very good, daddy.
My biggest regret is having to pack a year's worth of grandparent time into one week...it sucks actually but we have to make the best of the situation so we spent lots of time with Abs. Abigail's middle name happens to be Rose and since she was trotting behind the rose bushes I felt it appropriate to snap a shot of her behind her namesake:)
Abs is a pretty good subject. She has these great facial expressions and loves to explore her environment. And it might be that grandma allows her to explore a bit farther than momma and daddy do.....shhhhhhhhhhh it's our secret.
I couldn't resist manipulating this picture of her peeking out from behind this tree
Abs loves bubbles and I bought her her very own bubble gun...squirt-er...whatever in the heck is the correct terminology. Umm she's a Texas girl so perhaps gun is OK?
And as you can see she had a blast with it
I can't figure it out...both Abs and Julia like to thieve and drink out of whatever water bottle I happen to be drinking out of. I say they are just grandma's girls and that is all that needs sayin about that.
This is a rarity, grandma and grandpa and the grand kids all in one picture together.

Texas is known for many things but a biggy is their blue bonnets. We were lucky enough to be there when many wildflowers were blooming. The most stunning in my opinion are the fields of blue bonnets.
And then there is the BlueBonnet Festival in Chappell Hill Texas. Ry, David, I and Abs went early in the morning (attempting to avoid the heat) hoping to see all of the crafter's stands, food stands etc....blocks of them in fact in this small little town. As it so happened the festival didn't start until noon...go figure we were there at 9am. Ah well we walked through the town and I busied myself taking pictures of the historic homes and buildings.
Porches, wonderful inviting porches


And benches surrounded by plants
The historic Chappell Hill Bank building
And Victorian homes
And on a back route to Ryan's, what is Texas without the Brahmas. No longhorns although I looked for some.
And windmills...I love windmills
The front of a great old building that looks like the inside of our porch with the old barn-board and corrugated tin
An old church that was soon to be torn down. Oh what David could do with that wonderful old wood
To top[ it all off....fleas. Yup I said fleas. Damn..... They do thrive in damp hot weather...it was damp and damned hot while we were there and the grass was infested with fleas. They are a nightmare and despite monthly treatments Peeko became infested scratching himself raw. We bathed him twice in special shampoo, sprayed the camper twice with flea rid spray....washed the bedding more than twice, vacuumed numerous times...blah blah blah. We are hoping just being gone takes care of the problem and of course the cold weather will help, the fleas anyway.
Thanks kids for the southern hospitality.
Texas was the last leg of our snowbird trip and we are currently about 500 miles from home. It was a great winter and we saw a lot and learned a lot but it will be nice to be home again. I am of course anxious to see out Minnesota girls and their new home. Here we come Leonard family.