Memorial Day & More

We had a simple but great Memorial Day weekend here in Minnesota.  Thinking back on it neither Lisa or I could remember what we actually did on Friday night -which means the weekend lasted just about as long as it should have.

We spent Saturday taking garbage to a dumpster, cleaning up around the house, and Lisa and I went out on a date.  -That was nice.  We skipped Punch Pizza this time (more on that later) and went to Five Guys, Dairy Queen, and parked at a local...  well park I guess.  Some nice quiet time alone.

Sunday just kept getting better and better.  It started with church, I think the lawn got mowed at some point with Kellan on my back, then off to get some groceries; we stopped at Goodwill to drop off more of our crap.  I ended up finding a bike for Finn for $2.50 (Yes that's two dollars and 50 cents).  Then we picked up some eggrolls we saw being sold from the side of the road.  -They were cheap, really good, and available every last Friday of the month, so that's on the calendar now.  Lastly, we picked up flowers for Layla's ballet instructors and tomatoes and basil for the garden.  I managed to get the garden tilled, planted, and fenced Sunday evening before it rained on Monday.  'Whew'...

Here are Lisa and some children hanging out while I'm working in the garden.

Back to the Pizza.  On our last date, we DID go to Punch Pizza, which is easily my favorite place to get pizza here in MN.  In typical Jonas fashion I thought to myself last week "I mean, how hard can this be?"  So on Friday I bought the ingredients, which I had to go to a nice grocery store for, Saturday I made the dough, and on Sunday I tried my hand.  Here I am all prepped and ready to go.  What could go wrong?

How I thought the pizza would turn out:

How it actually turned out:

Okay, I did actually manage to make at least one somewhat halfway decent looking one.  Still didn't taste very good.

Kellan didn't seem to mind how the pizza looked.

All in all, it did not go well.  It took me five tries to get yeast right, which should have tipped me off that the rest of it wasn't going to go well.  Getting the pizza on and off the stone proved to be the biggest struggle, which caused me to break Lisa's pizza stone.  Anyway, some lessons learned for next time:  and there WILL BE a next time...

Okay so on to the "More" as stated in the title.  A few weekends ago I took the kids to the last play of the season, and it was really good.  I'm not usually one for kids plays, but this was done very well.

I suppose some random pictures of kids would be appropriate.  Here we are hanging in the front yard, which is Kellan's favorite place to be if he can't be on a walk or preparing to go on a walk, or in the garage with the heavy machinery.

Also some random pictures of Kellan, who is making his thoughts known more and more every day.

Okay.  That's all for today.

Laryngotracheobronchitis (Croup) has taken over the Schaefer house

Without getting too heavy into the details (since that is where Lisa shines, not me) we have had a respiratory thing wave through our house, only instead of moving on like it normally does after a day or two, it's decided to stay for a while and feast on our children.  And not just our children, I've been up multiple times during the night the past few days with an air breathing apparatus trying to get my breath back.

It started last week one night around 3:45am when I ended up taking Finn to the ER.

The doctor said that whatever is going around is particularly bad this year, so we ended up picking up more medication at the pharmacy the next day.  Eventually, Cora got it.  Last night was particularly bad.  Watching your little one hack up a lung and not really being able to do anything for them is the worst.  I will say that watching Carmen Sandiego while snuggling with Papa is probably the best medicine...

Thankfully Lisa, Kellan, and Layla have not come down with the barking cough, so that's a blessing.  I thought Layla got it, but she was just tired from going to Aunt Andrea's house and helping babysit for her.  I don't have any pictures of that, but needless to say, Layla was thrilled to go and be a "mothers helper", and she was amazing at it.  She really does have a tender heart that looks out for younger children.

Despite the sickness Lisa is having to endure from our kids, we still manage to find a little time to enjoy being outdoors.  I think it's mostly due to Kellan's insistence that we spend lots of time in the backyard and going for walks.

We also celebrated Mothers Day (and a few birthdays) this past weekend with our Minnesota family.  Fish tacos were the order of the day.  

Edgewater Swimming Vaction

Every year we do our swimming vacation up at the Edgewater Hotel in Duluth.  This year we had postponed it quite a while and definitely heard about it from the kids.  Last weekend we finally made it up there.

Our little vacation has looked similar in the last few years.  Mostly the kids stay in the part of the park that's made for little kids and don't often venture out to the big kid stuff.  This year, after about a 1/2 hour, I grabbed Layla's hand and marched her over to the waterslides.  ALL the kids were worried about them, Finn the most.  Layla enjoyed the blue one right away (which is the one you go down with Papa on a tube).  Cora and Finn also liked the blue one, but Cora insisted that we go down it over and over and over.  She couldn't get enough.  Finn decided that twice was good enough for him.

The other waterslide was green and Finn was not going to go down that one because it was a single person slide with no tube so he couldn't go with Papa..  and it was dark.  I took Layla up there and for about five minutes I helped her build up enough courage to do it.  I could tell she wanted to but was just scared.  I told her that if she was brave enough, and could muster enough courage, in one minute she could conquer her fear and be the first Schaefer to go down the green slide.  She did it and was SO happy she did.

So this years vacation was marked by our children venturing out into new places for the bigger kids, and of course by Kellan, who loved the water just as much as the others.  When we would sit to the side he would want to be put down and immediately crawl to the edge of the pool -so that was fun.

All-in-all a wonderful time and another installment to our family swimming vacation series.

I spent like 20 minutes looking for a pair of Layla's goggles, only to find out that Kellan had them tucked away and was holding them while he slept on Mama.  Good times.