North Shore - Day 1

As most of you probably know by now, Brice and I take an annual trip up to the north shore of Lake Superior for our anniversary. This place is special to us since it is where we spent our honeymoon and it always reminds me of that newly wedded bliss.

This years trip, to say the least, has been quite eventful. I'll have to split the synopsis of our trip into a few posts since there was so much going on.

Monday morning - we got up as usual, right around 7am when our alarm clock, Karsten, awoke from sleep. Brice got started on breakfast and I got to packing everything we needed. We were out of town by about 10:30am and arrived in Duluth around 1pm. It was raining the entire time we were driving and as we got closer to Dulth, the temperature kept dropping from more than 40 degress to just over freezing. When we stopped for lunch, the side roads were covered in slippery slush.

After lunch, we decided to go to the Great Lakes Aquarium (my favorite place to go) since we couldn't check into our hotel until 4. We decided to go without the stroller for the first time and just let Karsten roam the aquarium freely. He had such a great time! He's always liked fish but he's really starting to understand the fish more. He even tried petting a sturgeon! He was watching Brice and I reach in to touch them so he wanted to as well. Brice helped him over the sturgeon tank, he reached in to touch it and pulled his hand out of there really quickly! He loves the water but I guess he's not a fan of actually touching the fish yet. The aquarium has this big model of all of the great lakes complete with locks. You can put a little boat into Lake Superior, move it through all of the locks to eventually get to the Atlantic Ocean. There was this smaller part that was just the perfect size for Karsten so I gave him a boat to play with....of course, I didn't realize until he was already soaked from the water that there were smocks for the kids to put over their clothes so that exact thing wouldn't happen.

After Karsten wore himself out at the aquarium, we decided it was time to load him back up in the car for the shorter portion of the trip up to Two Harbors. As we left Duluth, we noticed the power lines and the trees along the road caked in ice from all the rain that had fallen. Of course, we thought nothing of it. We arrived at Grand Superior Lodge to check in and there was one light on in the entire lobby and no heat. Come to find out, most of the power from there and farther north was completely out and they didn't know when it would be back on. Parts of the hotel had power but our room was not one of those and it didn't have any heat either. They decided to move us to a suite with a fireplace so we could at least have some heat. We were given candles, flashlights and jugs of water so we could flush the toilet. We realized that most of the room had electricity and we were able to put a movie in to keep Karsen partially occupied but the outlet where the fridge was plugged in wasn't working. We stocked up on ice that they had left over in the restaurant to keep all of the food and milk that we bought in Two Harbors cold. Since there was no electricity for the chef to cook in the restaurant, they had a sandwich bar so we could get something to eat that night. I'd have to say, that was a very interesting experience!

In closing, a few pictures from the aquarium. Can you tell how wet Karsten was?

Celebrating warm weather

In celebration of the weather FINALLY getting warm and the snow finally melting, Karsten and I spent a good chunk of the morning outside. Remember his new friend, the vacuum? Well, when we're outside, his friend is the shovel.

Yesterday when we were outside I showed him a few pinecones. He was still after them today! He carried one around for a while until he dropped it about 10 times and then he gave up.



A couple of nights ago we had turkey burgers and french fries. This kid LOVES french fries! Since he had never had them with ketchup before I decided to put a dallop of it on his tray to see what he would do. The first few times he would dunk his fry and then just suck the ketchup off but it didn't take him long to figure out how to dunk and eat. Now I have to look forward to getting ketchup stains out of his clothes!


Last night we had sloppy joes and after Karsten was done eating he took his sippy cup in his mouth and was waving it all around to be a goof.

Hopefully you will all be able to get out into this beautiful weather we have finally been blessed with. We will be putting it to good use!

The promised pictures

How does time fly?

Yikes....it's been a long time since I've done any blogging. I used to do my blogging during nap time but now that Karsten dearest only takes one nap a day I usually get in some relaxing mommy time (you know, taking a shower, eating, maybe napping a little). Sometimes when I even try to be on the computer during awake times Karsten is not very fond of that so I usually just leave it off.

Karsten is now, as of yesterday, 16 months old and weighs a whopping 26 pounds! I thought I would make a list of all of his favorites for you to enjoy.

Food: bananas (he goes through a bunch of these a week) and any bread product, especially pancakes

Words: na-na (banana), ba-ba (Sponge Bob....you know, Squarepants. We watch a lot of him) and ma-ma (this isn't reserved just for me....it's Brice, everyone at daycare, all of our dog friends - he hasn't quite grasped that concept yet)

Activity: vacuuming! I have a picture of that but a certain someone walked away with the USB cable so I can't upload that to the computer just yet. He is also a big fan of dancing. Anytime there is music playing he's bopping along and waving his arms.

We've had the cold going around our house that has been going around....lots of congestion and coughing. Karsten got it first and was better in about a week with nothing lingering. After he was better I got it and I'm still dealing with the effects of that stupid cold two weeks later. I can't WAIT for the sick season to be over!

I'll close with a few pictures that have actually been uploaded. When I find that elusive USB cable I'll be sure to post some more.


Karsten went through this "cooking" phase for a couple of weeks. He would pull all the pots and pans out of the cupboard, along with all of the utinsils out of the drawers and carry them all over the house. I'm still finding utinsils hidden in crazy spots.



On Martin Luther King Jr. day we decided to take Karsten to Edinborough Park in Edina. They have a little toddler play area and this great big play area for the bigger kids to climb in and then they have a gym area where you can play with balls and ride scooters. He had a fun time. Of course, he got a cold after that.....



As I said above, Karsten LOVES pancakes. Brice makes him pancakes probably once a week for breakfast. Well, this morning he decided to make chocolate chip pancakes and the picture speaks for itself.



Since Karsten is down to one nap a day he sometimes is so tired he can't even make it through 10am without falling asleep. This morning we were sitting on the couch watching cartoons and I started thinking what a good job he was doing actually paying attention. I came to find out that he was sitting so still because he was sleeping!