A week in review

Colored Chalk! Julia and Annie gave Psymuhn a little make-over. He is modeling for us ....
Daddy and Julia are sewing a fun froggy quilt for the quilt auction at Camp this SAturday
Riding in my stroller
The Duluth Harbor at twilight
The Fitgers complex
Watching the boats go by
Naked baby!
Swimming in Lake Superior can happen: 1. if you're hot enough, and 2. if you don't mind staying in the top two feet of water. If you stick your legs down too deep......NIPPY!
Julia has learned how to take the Puppy for a walk! She is very good at it, and Psymuhn is learning to not pull too hard or she "yells" at him....


Julia did lots of fun things this week. When Mommy wasn't on call, we made use of the hours of daylight to the best of our abilities.

Oopie...no camera today.

Hi friends!

This afternoon, Julia and I went down to Park Point and had some fun at the beach. I had no idea how many new words my daughter has been REMEMBERING in the past week or so. She got out of the car, and it was "truck!" (a chevy drove by). Then it was, "sand," "rock," "boat," "fish," "Puppy!," "baby," "stick," "pop," "bug," "airplane," and even "moon." (You know how you can see the moon sometimes even in the middle of the day? Well, Julia likes to find it and point it out to me. Her verbal abilities are just exploding! It's a bunch of new words every day, and the STICK!

We stopped by McDonald's for ice cream on the way home, and she saw a picture of some nuggets...and sure enough, "chicken!" So, she got some chicken nuggets and devoured them. mmmmm....

Fun with Annie

Julia is reading her favorite book right now, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." She tries to read it out loud with you. Her favorite part is where the caterpillar gets obese from eating all that cake. Her dad taught her to sing "bum bum bum bum" (like the sound of a very heavy thing walking along) for this page.

Julia and Auntie Annie.

Julia and her friend, Maddie. We went to Alisha and Jeremy's house for supper and the girls, who are just three months apart, had a fun time sharing Maddie's toys.


Julia has grown to love her "shows." Here, she is watching "praise baby," a video that Maddie's mom put on.

Cherry picking

Julia is helping harvest the cherries! First, she spots one and plucks it off the bush...
Then it's brought to Mommy (see it in her left hand.)
OK mom, here you go!


WAIT! First I must slime it up! See the trail of slime coming from my mouth to the cherry?
MMMM....I guess I"ll just eat it instead of giving it to you.

The baby and the daisies
Cruisin around in the front yard.

In this random picture, Julia is wearing regular clothes, a swim cover-up, and her hat.

When we moved into our house a few years ago, I vowed that we would have a hedge. The alley runs behind and next to our house in a diagonal fashion, so a hedge keeps us out of the alley. I planted a bunch of Nanking Cherry bushes, which make these little bush pie cherries. They are kind of tart to eat but make a great jelly.
I took Julia outside to help me pick them. To my surprise, she was a great help! Right away she understood that you need to pick the little red balls off the bushes and put them into the bucket. I think she picked more than I did! The only problem was after she tasted one and liked it. After that, only about a third of the cherries she picked ended up in the bucket. The rest ended up in her mouth!

Weekend in Alexandria

The water park at arrowwood. Pretty cool.
Mommy and Julia on our little shopping adventure. She picked out a "shoe"...but didn't realize it was just a cardboard insert. Maybe she's starting a new trend!
Julia helped us pack the car.
A grumpy girl on the bed on Sunday morning. We didn't want to leave, either!
Julia really enjoyed the water park. I didn't take many pictures because we were having fun and it was wet....everywhere!


Mommies need cocktails once in awhile. This one was sooooo good that I had two of them. Julia had a kids meal that came on a frisbee as a plate. We were playing "fetch" with her that night. She is a pretty good retriever!
Taking time to pose with grandpa. Julia is scowling because the sun is in her eyes, not because she doesn't want grandpa holding her...

Wow! We just got back from a fun weekend. I was asked to speak at a conference in Alexandria, and the organization offered us a free trip out there and two nights at a nice resort...so we took the offer! The presentation went REALLY well, and Mike, Julia, and I had a wonderful time. Grandpa Noel came to my talk and then stayed the weekend to have fun with us.

The resort (Arrowwood I think) had two pools and then a huge indoor water park to play in. They also had a nice outdoor tiki bar that served great burgers and cocktails where you couldn't even taste any alcohol. mmmmm.

Julia has been learning two or three new words each day. She never ceases to amaze us. This morning I asked her if she was "hungry in her tummy" and she replied, "Ketchup." Ha ha ha!

On the way back home to Duluth, we spent a few hours in Crossroads Mall visiting grandmas Ruth and Beth. Now is a great time to shop as everything is on sale.

Now it's back to the grindstone with us. Mike goes back to the pharmacy tomorrow, I"m on call Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday this week...and my next day off is in August. I will pay for the fun times we had....but I"m sure it was worth it.

Canoing in Sugar Lake

Here are a few pictures of our canoing adventure we had over the 4th. Julia refused to wear a life jacket (WWIII), so we stayed in the shallow water. In her defense, the life jacket was just too big for her and her little chin could barely make it past the zipper. As you can see, she tried to tip us. Much to her daddy's dismay, I tried to teach her that the best way to tip a canoe is to be parallel with the waves.....

A trip to canal park

"Hmmmmm...do I dare walk through that thing?"
They have some fountains that shoot out of the ground in Canal Park. Julia liked them, but enjoyed the puddles they created even more. She can't resist a good puddle to splash in.

Julia LOVES to play with the seagulls. She has officially learned to throw food at them. The come squaking over to her....and instead of being afraid, she pounces on them! She managed to pull a tail feather out of one unfortunate birdy.

They encircled our daughter!!!
Dancing the day away with Auntie Annie. They had one of my old Madonna CD's out and were dancing to "Like a Prayer."

Last night, Mike and Annie and I took Julia down to Canal Park to shop, feed the seagulls, and eat some ice cream. Julia went nuts over the "birdies." We had a great night.

A day at the beach

Mommy went swimming alone because nobody was crazy enough to get in the seemingly forty degree water with her....
Julia stayed on land and played in the sand. She enjoyed destroying Daddy's sand castles.
Julia is sitting in a pile of ruins...it was once a sandcastle city.
.Julia's homemade swimming pool. The lake water was too cold so we dug her a pool in the sand and it was much nicer.

It was a hot one in Duluth today! Anytime we get over 85 degrees, everybody in town has to leave the house and go to the beach because air conditioning is a rare find up here. Swimming in Lake Superior is always an adventure. You get in and you jump right back out because it's freezing. Then, you slowly get up the courage to get back in and you stand there and feel your legs burning with cold in the water. Most people stop here and get out. Few choose to stay in longer, perhaps the coldness numbs your sense of reason first....and then there's those of us that have a built-in, God-given wetsuit.

Anyways, the hot weather and the fact that I was off (!!!) led us to Park Point beach today, and we took our friends Dan and Jessi, and auntie Annie. Julia had a wonderful time playing in the sand. We built her a little personal swimming pool in the sand so the water would warm up enough to sit in. Julia played for almost two hours before she threw the towel in.

We went home and slept after that while Daddy did some long-awaited projects around the house. Then it was off to DAn and Jessi's for movie night: the Neverending Story. What a classic.

I hope we get some sleep in this heat as I am on call and Mike is home alone with the baby tomorrow. We put a box fan in the window on High.