"L" for Love....

While the kids were swimming with their friends, they kept hollering a quote from one of their favorite movies, Dodgeball...."L for Love"!!! Here they are showing us their "L"'s.

TOWERING SUNFLOWERS

The kids came with while we were canning pickles and did some swimming. They took a short break from the pool so they could pose by this giant sunflower!! I couldn'tbelieve how tall they were!!!

CANNING PICKLES

Some friends and I got together on Saturday and canned pickles. All together we canned 3 1/2 bushels, which came out to approx. 168 quarts!! As you can see, the men were hard at work while the women slaved away in the kitchen!! The men did help stuff the jars and one of them helped with the processing. We went through 11 gallons of vinegar, 5 boxes of salt, 7 lbs. of sugar and 4 gallons of water!!!

A CAMPIN' WE WILL GO...

We went camping this past weekend with a group of friends to Baylor County Park in Norwood. The weather was amazing and the campground was beautiful! Ally and Lucas were camera shy all weekend but above Cole is posing with his friend Grace and below Warren is helping the kids build a "sand city". For those of you that don't camp, I highly recommend it!!

BASEBALL FINALE

Lucas participated in Bi-County Baseball this summer. We were running for 5 weeks for ball practice and games. It was awesome to watch how these boys improved in such a short period of time. Warren helped coach and I think he learned alot too!! Here's a group shot on the last night. Way to go boys!!! We're proud of you!!

OH I WISH.......

Me and some friends went to New Ulm on Saturday morning for pedicures and look what we found!!!!! I have always longed to be up close to the Weinermobile and now that dream has become reality!! HAHA!! We even all went in front of the giant weiner and did our best at singing the Oscar Mayer Weiner song....as a consolation prize we were each given a weiner whistle. How many of you can say that you are the proud owner of a weiner whistle?

TELL IT TO THE EAR

The tattling amongst my kids and the daycare kids has gotten a little out of control lately so today I made a sign and hung it on the door. The kids now have to tell any minor tattling issues to the ear. They were lined up to talk to the ear for quite awhile this morning. We'll see how long it lasts....

COLE'S NEW NIPPLES

Cole came upstairs the other day with a revelation....he's convinced that he's growing two new nipples!!! I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants!!! He's so skinny that his ribs leave an indent on each of his sides...hence the "new nipples".

COKE EXPLOSION

We did an experiment in daycare this afternoon. We dropped a Mentos into a 2 liter of Diet Coke. It was sooooo cool!!!! I highly recommend it!! The kids loved it!!

MORE CELEBRATION PICS

Here's a couple more pics from the weekend.

The picture on the top is of a cake I made for the Hershey's Bake Off contest. I took 3rd place out of 11 participants. I was so surprised!!! It was my Grandma Mortensen's recipe.

THE HANSON'S & THE BLUMHOEFER'S

We caught up with the Hanson's during Farm City Fun Fest. We all had a great weekend!!!

FARM CITY FUN FEST

Warren once again went against better judgement and chanced the sun....


....I think he lost.

BURN BABY BURN

Warren's vacation wasn't quite as good as the rest of ours. He has this crazy idea that real men don't need sunscreen.....

He also is allergic to deer fly bites and every time we go up north he gets bit. He happened to get bit on Saturday a couple hours before the boat parade....on his forehead. We called him Cro Magnon Man all weekend. His forehead swelled up and the swelling extended down his nose so his eyes were beginning to swell. He popped a Benadryl and enjoyed a little siesta.

The swelling went down on his forehead and he recovered well. but then when he was getting ready to come home he got bit again. This time in his foot. His ankle and foot are still swollen. I think next time we go I'll just wrap Warren in bubble wrap!!!

MORE 4TH PICS

Cole was not happy about having to wear a life jacket on the boat for the parade. He didn't want to cover up his cool Hawaiian shirt. So we had him wear the life jacket under his shirt. That REALLY made him angry until we told him he looked like the HULK with big muscles. He had to flex and show me just how big those muscles are.

4TH OF JULY

For the 4th we went up north of Brainerd to a little town called Emily and stayed at some friend's cabin on Little Trout Lake. We decorated their boat for a boat parade on Saturday. Lucas didn't want to wear a grass skirt until he thought of wearing it on his head!!! He thought that was a much more manly way to wear the skirt!!!