Hello there, old friend.

If you look at the post below this one, you will see that it has been just over a year since my last blog post.  Seeing that makes me sad and brings on a ginormous wave of mom guilt.  After all, this blog is pretty much the only way that I managed to officially record the photos and memories of the goings-on in our lives.  My memory already isn’t what it used to be, and now a  whole year of little anecdotes and stories are missing from the record.  But as they say, the show must go on!  Better late than never!  Carpe Diem! 

So for now, I am picking up as if we never left off and plowing forward.  We are getting ready to cap off what has been a busy summer with a few more weeks of fun, family and friends.  Then it will be off to Kindergarten for Ben (sob!)  and Preschool for Hallie.  They are both really excited even though I have mixed emotions about both.  I mostly just can’t believe that both of my kids are so grown up.  Time really does fly.

A few highlights from our summer – in picture form of course. 

My sister Sasha came from LA to Fargo to visit for a long weekend so of course we made the trip there to see her.  We took some family pics and the kids had a blast with a water balloon fight.  (By the way, water balloon fights are only fun for the people that don’t have to fill up the balloons.  Those buggers are hard to tie!)  Ben also graduated from preschool that month and we got a sort of decent family pic afterwards, so I included that too.

In June we spent a lot of time outside soaking up the sun.  We have become regular visitors to Bush Lake which is only about ten minutes from home and has a great beach.  We also headed up to Jeff’s family cabin at Lake Mille Lacs for a weekend and we squeezed in a Twins game too.  It was HOT, HOT, HOT at the game and (of course) they lost, but we still had a good time.  Warning – more pictures ahead.

Fun times at Bush Lake:

More fun lake times, this time at the cabin on Lake Mille Lacs.  It was a little chilly but we still got in some beach time and one successful boat ride.  The second boat ride was decidedly less successful, unless you consider almost sinking the boat in monster sized waves a success.  Ben honed is crayfish carrying skills (2nd pic down on the left) and was pretty proud of himself.  And he and Hallie both practiced their window jumping.  They love jumping from that little window down on to the couch and insisted I take pictures of their crazy jumping faces.  Hallie’s will crack you up, guaranteed.  They also got in some goofy time with Auntie Katie and Hal snuck in a snuggle with daddy.

And here are a few pics from the Twins game to wrap up June.

We had a really busy month of July so I am going to have to give it its own post since this one is already running long.  I hope you are glad to see the blog back up and running, I know I am!  If you haven’t already taken a look, some of what you missed over the last year is on my Tumblr account.  It is really easy to update from my phone, so I share pictures there more than anywhere else.  Here is the address if you want to check it out: http://tiffanyerdall.tumblr.com/