Dancing at Breezy Point

Can you recognize anyone in this video?

A big ol' tooth

Finally! A picture of Raleigh's top tooth. I've been trying to get a good picture of that for a while now. You also can see his second top tooth working its way out.
And here's a pic of Raleigh showing you how well he can pull himself up into a standing position. The picture was taken at the lodge that we rented in at Breezy Point.




Here's Grandpa Dave making noises through a tube for Raleigh. It's fun to see how babies bring back people's childish nature.

Vacationing at Breezy Point

I won't have pictures to post until this weekend. Josh, Raleigh and I are vacationing with his family at Breezy Point Resort in Minnesota.

So far, Josh and Jamie have been fishing at 5 am, Raleigh has played in the sand, and us women have gone grocery shopping.

Yesterday, we enjoyed the sandy beach that continues into the lake in the form of a very very long sand bar.

Raleigh really loves the warm water.

I'll post wonderful pictures and/or video later this weekend.

Harry Potter/ Felted Soaps

I'm so very excited for two reasons.

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows comes out at midnight tonight. I will be attending the Barnes & Noble book release party with some friends.

2. My friend Chelsea has created some beautiful felted soaps that she is picturing on her blog. Seriously, go check out her soaps. They turned out better than I could have imagined. Once again her use of the perfect colors astounds me. She is such a talented and great artist. I'm sure you all can expect great things from her. And I'll try to remind you to check her blog and her website whenever she puts up new stuff.

Chelsea's blog: http://chelsea-odden.blogspot.com/

Her website: http://www.funkyneedle.com/

Mmmmm...Watermelon

The company that I work for put on an employee picnic this week and Raleigh tasted his first bit of watermelon at the picnic.




Ah, reminds me of the Home boat and travel show back home. My mother used to be a member of The Women of Today, and they had a cotton candy booth at the home boat and travel show. I can't even consider trying to figure out how much cotton candy I consumed in my childhood. This little bit brought back good memories.

"Mom! I'm stuck!"

" Yes! A plastic cup, just what I wanted."

"Hey, did you know my socks are inside out?...Thanks Dad!"

His First Drum Lesson

Raleigh had his first drum lesson last thursday. After we had dinner to celebrate Erika's birthday we went back to Erika and Joel's to have yummy cake.

While all the girls were in one room and all the boys were in another, Joel handed Raleigh a drum stick and it turns out he was a natural. I think we'll have to get him his own little mini-set to play on.



I stole this picture from Erika and Joel's blog. See my blog roll to the right of this entry for the link.

In the last few days, Raleigh has popped out another tooth. Now, he has two bottom teeth and one top tooth. He's also reached the stage where he cries whenever I leave the room. That is kind of annoying, because Josh has to distract him so that he doesn't see me leave the room. If he doesn't see me leave the room then he's fine, but if he watches me and then I'm gone, he cries.

Floor time and Bath time

Ok, so I'm ashamed that it's already been a week of Raleigh crawling and I haven't even posted about his achievement yet.

He started crawling at my parents' house over the fourth. Now, he's even pulling himself up to a standing position on the furniture. Yikes! I guess we really need to buy baby gates now :)

Here are some fun pictures of Raleigh last night, all dressed up to celebrate Erika's birthday.






Can you tell that he liked his laces?


Bathtime is much easier now that Raleigh can sit up on his own. We have these little green plastic frogs that stick to the bottom of the tub to keep it from being too slippery and we only fill the tub with about 2-3 inches of water so that we can lay him on his back to wash him.

Happy Birthday to Erika!!

I'm not sure how old she is but I do know that she's younger than I am ;)

I hope it's a good one Erika! See you tonight at Dinner.

Raleigh at the beach

Here are some pictures of Raleigh at the beach this past week.

A Whole Bunch of Posts/ My Favorite Place

Hi all,

Don't be overwhelmed because I've added 6 posts in just one day. I decided to split up my blog about this past week into a few different posts.

You can find them here:

Best of Friends:

http://dandeelionsoup.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-of-friends.html

Strawberry Farm:

http://dandeelionsoup.blogspot.com/2007/07/strawberry-farm.html

Fourth of July:

http://dandeelionsoup.blogspot.com/2007/07/fourth-of-july.html

Felting Soap:

http://dandeelionsoup.blogspot.com/2007/07/felting-soap.html

Wrap up of Tyler's Visit:

http://dandeelionsoup.blogspot.com/2007/07/wrap-up-of-tylers-visit.html

And Then to complete my posts from the week, I have pictures of my favorite place in the whole wide world.

This is an old mining pit that has filled with water. You can see that the water is crystal clear and absolutely beautiful. When I was younger, my brothers and I would swim across this body of water to search for agates on the other side. I have a lot of memories at this lake. Enjoy the pictures.

Felting Soap

I took Chelsea into GR to visit our yarn shop, where she purchased some fun-colored wool. When we got back from town, we felted some soap bars with my mother and my two oldest nephews.

After we finished felting them, we put them outside to dry in the sun.

Best of Friends

I had a bunch of fun putting together this video of Raleigh and Sam. It is always fun seeing them interact together now that they are both more aware of their surroundings.

The Strawberry Farm

On Thursday, we went to a local strawberry farm to pick berries. They were the most delicious berries ever and it was really hard not to just sit and eat the berries instead of putting them in our collection buckets.

Each of us (Mom, Barb, Chelsea, and myself) picked 2 buckets each. And at $8/bucket it was completely worth it. After eating strawberries from the grocery store for the past 10 years, I had forgotten how delicious they were when they were freshly picked.

Barb canned her berries, Chelsea and I froze ours, and Mom used some of hers for making strawberry daquiries.

The Fourth of July

Mom woke up early to save a spot for us at the beach, and Raleigh and I joined her after about a hour and we both took turns driving back to the house to get supplies for our day at the beach.

Aside from some really rude people that tried to bully us out of the spot that we were up so early to save, the day went really well. We had about 5 families there, and my brother David brought his boat out to give tubing rides and boat rides to all that wanted to take part.

Mom cooked BBQ chicken and ribs on the grills, and before that there were hot dogs for the kiddies. Barb made some delicious potato salad, and Mom had her normal rotini salad (The only pasta salad that my dad will eat, I think).

We had a little smidgen of rain drops, but we stood fast and held our ground while other beach-goers decided to call it quits. After the rain let up, the day went back to being all sunshine and a bit of breeze. This was probably one of the best Fourth of July celebratiosn we've had in years. The weather cooperated, the food was delicious, no injuries, and only fun to be had.

Wrap-up of Tyler's visit

On Sunday, we all drove out to Buffalo State Park to go swimming. We even went on a mini-hike on one of the walking trails. The mosquitos were horrible, but we did find wild rasberries.

I don't remember which day this was, but Tyler and Josh moved the fort that they built in the livingroom into Raleigh's room so that it would be out of the way a bit. Tyler spent one night sleeping in his fort.



And here are some video clips of Raleigh's June and a bit of Tyler's visit.

Wow! What a week!

... I took over 300 pictures and I don't know how much video this past week. We had a blast. We're home now, and we're just trying to catch up on some sleep. Josh and Raleigh are sleeping and I'm going to do the same after I enter this blog.

I'm planning to post 5 separate blogs and then one blog that has links to the other blogs. I'm hoping to do this tomorrow. So check back then.

No blog until Saturday evening

We're at my parents for the rest of the week and we had such a fun 4th of July. I'll have pictures and hopefully video to share starting on Saturday. We'll be leaving here on Saturday morning to head back home.

We'll see you then!!