Our Diva

She seriously changes clothes 100 times a day and is upset when I don't let her go out of the house in the outfit she chooses. She doesn't understand why she can't go out without a shirt on, yet!

Exhausted

Pumpkin Carving 2010

Thank you, Grandma, for the pumpkin!

Maida did the honors of pulling off the stem.

Skogen helped Maida scoop out the insides (or rather, covered up the hole so that she couldn't get her spoon in there - everything's always got to be a fight!).

Klaasen had a great time watching! He sat there for 45 minutes as happy as could be and when I took him out of the bumbo, he had filled his pants up to his shoulder blades! It was a MESS!

Maida picked out the design and she really wanted a Cinderella. This is the best Cinderella I could do. I looked at a picture of her face for a guide.

Maida and Klaasen enjoying our pumpkin carving night.

We turned out all of the lights and lit our pumpkin!

Happy Halloween!

Good Deals

Getting good deals make me happy!

Sharing good deals makes me even happier...

Go to www.uddercovers.com for a FREE "udder cover" (nursing cover - normally costs $32). Once you get to the website, you can pick out the nursing cover that you like and enter the quanity. Then at checkout, enter the promo code: cousin2. (You will have to pay shipping.) I have been borrowing one of these from a friend and I am so excited to have one for myself. If you don't nurse, you can always buy one for a baby gift. They're great!

This is a double good deal because as soon as you purchase your utter cover, it will give you a promo code to get a free sling (normally $39) from Seven Slings (you have to pay shipping for this, too). I already have one of these slings and LOVE it! This would also make a great baby gift for someone.

Too Small for Mr. Big

I'm thinking his bassinet is getting a little too small for him!

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Sever's Corn Maze

Two Saturdays ago we went to a corn maze with our young adult group from church. This wasn't just an ordinary corn maze. Here's a aerial view of the corn maze:

You can probably tell by the awesome design what the shape of the corn maze was! I have no idea how in the world they plant corn this perfect, but I think it's just amazing! This year's maze challenge was to look for six pictures of Viktor, the Viking mascot. If you found these pictures hidden on six of the 26 signs (which had fun facts about the Vikings on them), you could be entered in a drawing for Vikings tickets. We didn't complete the challenge because we only lasted in the maze for about 20 minutes. There was too much more that we wanted to see and do at Sever's Corn Maze. It was also very hot and we were sweating trying to get through the maze. It was not typical fall weather for Minnesota, being in the 90's! One year ago on that same day, we had three inches of snow on the ground in New Hope! Wow!

We enjoyed some food from many of the vendors there. My personal favorite was the slow-roasted sweet corn on the cob and the lemonade. While eating we were able to meet Viktor, the Viking mascot, and two of the cheerleaders. We also enjoyed the sounds of the live music in the background and the kids played on the hay bale maze, which was a great place for our kids to run around in, until Eli, one of the little boys from our group, got lost. He was lost for a good 20 minutes. Apparently he had walked out of the hay bale maze without any of us knowing and walked clear down to the other end of the maze courtyard. It was pretty scary!

After we ate and tried the corn maze, Maida got to ride a pony, and then we went through the petting farm and exotic animal barn. Maida and Skogen were able to feed and pet many of the animals. After seeing the animals, Erik tried the pumpkin slinger.

Here are some pictures from the afternoon (click to make bigger).

The last thing we did before we left was take a dive into the corn pool. It was our very most favorite thing of the day. The corn pool was about three feet deep, made out of 10,000 bushels of corn. It was bigger than an Olympic-sized swimming pool. I've never seen so much corn! It was so nice and relaxing to lay in and fun for the kids to play in, too. I would have been happy to skip everything else at the maze and just relax in the corn all day!

I think our family will be making Sever's Corn Maze a yearly activity!

We Play A Lot of Pretend

Maida's favorite thing to pretend is that she's a wife and a mom, however my personal favorite thing that we pretend is photographers.

While Skogen is napping and with Maida as my assistant, we build backdrops (with dirty bed sheets thrown over the baby swing) and snap some pictures with my fancy camera (the camera on my phone).

Here is our baby in the basket shot...

I didn't have a basket big enough to hold this 19 pound 1 ounce baby boy, but we pretended that it was just what we needed. I also couldn't get the camera to focus on his face, but since our little baby model woke up two seconds after this picture was taken and this is the only picture we took, we're pretending that it's all perfectly in focus.

I'm hoping that by the time we have a fourth one, Erik will let me pay for professional pictures, and then I'll not only get great pictures (and more than one), but then I'll be able to pretend to be a model, too!

(Ha! Just pretending again - about the fourth part...)

I wear many hats...

Maida wears many crowns. :)

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Little Dancing Princess

Did I tell you that Maida started soccer this year? Ha! That will be a whole nother post for a whole nother day... on a day when I feel like talking about it. Today I want to talk about something Maida LOVES... dance!

Maida started ballet and tap last summer. She absolutely LOVED it. We decided to put her in it again this fall. She LOVES it even more! I love seeing Maida do something she enjoys and is so happy doing. It's fun to hear her talk about dance class and it's especially fun to see her practicing some of her dances at home.

I always dreamed of having a little dancing princess!

Special Visitors

We had some special visitors stop at our house to meet new baby Klaasen!

My cousin, Sandy, from Arizona! Klaasen liked her so much, he eventually fell asleep on her chest, all snuggled in comfy and warm.

My cousin, Dean, and his wife, Carla, from Washington! Dean is the oldest cousin of the family and I am the youngest cousin of the family (on my dad's side).

It's to fun to see family from so far away. I only wish I would have gotten some pictures of their faces!

Snotty Sicklings

The kids have been sick for five weeks. I finally gave in and decided to take them into the doctor. This was the first time having all three of them checked at one doctor appointment. We saw a great pediatrician (who put up with kicking, screaming, whining, and fighting) and the appointment went better than expected (after I told the kids they would be rewarded with Icees from Target while we waited on the prescriptions - it always helps to have an incentive!).

Skogen was diagnosed with a double ear infection and a sinus infection. We are treating him with amoxicillin.

Klaasen has a right ear infection and possible sinus issues, too. Even though his ear infection isn't as bad as it could be, we still decided to treat him with amoxicillin since he was really struggling to breathe out of his nose and was frequently gagging on stuff he was coughing up.

Maida has a right ear effusion, but we decided not to treat her at this time. We will keep an eye on her symptoms and treat her if they are still present in a week.

This is the first time I've had to keep medicines straight for more than one kid at a time. Luckily Skogen and Klaasen both take it twice a day. That makes it a little easier. I'm really hoping they get better soon! I'm so sick of snot. I've never seen so much of it! Now we're also dealing with the side effects of the amoxicillin... poop! Runny poop! Lots of it...

Maida's First Field Trip - The Apple Orchard

A couple weeks ago, Maida got to go with her preschool on her very first field trip! My mom came down and took care of Klaasen and Skogen so that I could go with Maida and her class.

We arrived at the orchard early in the morning and Maida was not happy about me trying to take her picture when she was so cold and tired.

The orchard had so much to do and see, but we started with a quick lesson about apples.

The instructor had some of the kids participate in a little skit to show everyone cross pollination. She explained that this particular orchard actually has a bee keeper to make sure there are enough bees for the cross pollination of all of the apple trees because it's very important for the apples. That bee keeper must be doing a pretty good job of keeping bees because, boy, there were a TON of bees all over the place!

The kids also learned about all the ways apples are watered.

Then we went on a hayride! Maida was so excited about this and she couldn't wait for the tractor to fire up and take off!

It was a big surprise when the hayride lasted almost 30 minutes because it was a lot longer than anyone expected. They took us through the orchard and then on a bumpy, narrow, little trail in the woods where they had decorated with characters from fairy tales. The kids loved looking for these life-sized people and animals!

There were a lot of parents that were able to come on the field trip with the class, however I think that I was the only one who fell off the hay bale in the middle of the hayride [thank you Maida for forgiving me for the embarrassment I caused you - so much for making a good impression on all of your friends and their parents!]. The farmer driving the tractor that was pulling our trailer got stuck in the mud. I decided to lean over and take a picture right when he gunned it and I went f-l-y-i-n-g off the hay bale and across the trailer. It was SO embarrassing.

We didn't actually get to pick any apples, but we got to look at all of the apple trees!

We also got to have some apple snacks!

Apple donuts, apple cider, and a fresh-picked apple!

After we were done snacking, we went shopping in the store, but everything was way too expensive! I had no idea that apples were more expensive at an orchard than they were in the store!

We really enjoyed the fall mums.

And all the pumpkins to climb on.

But climbing on the choo-choo train was a lot more fun!

The goat really liked to climb, too, and used this ramp to climb all the way up on top of the barn (it's a bummer that I didn't get a picture of that).

There was a little pony.

There was a calf.

There were chickens.

Maida was really concerned when she didn't see any nests for the chickens to lay eggs on, so Ms. Tiffany showed Maida where the chickens laid their eggs in the little chicken coop.

There was a huge hay stack to climb on! Maida was too scared to make it to the top.

We found our way through the corn maze!

And we found our way to one last thing to climb on.

Maida enjoyed being taller than me and was up there chanting, "I'm taller than you are! I'm taller than you are!"

It's a good thing that Maida wore her rubber boots because the grass was still wet from the dew and Maida hates it when her shoes get wet! I was glad that I spent the $6.00 on these puppies the day before we went.

It was such a great first field trip. Maida didn't want to leave!

Maida and the Viking Cheerleaders

Maida got to meet two of the Vikings' cheerleaders on Saturday at Sever's Corn Maze! She was so excited, not only because they ooohed and awwed over how cute she was, but because she wants to be a cheerleader someday, too!

Vikings play on Monday Night Football - SKOL VIKINGS!!!!!!!