Halloween

Halloween this year was pretty crazy for us. The activities coordinator asked me to host a Halloween party for the whole apartment complex. It went very well, and a ton of people showed up, more than twice as many as we were expecting.  We had a costume contest, and some carnival games.
Joslyn has been really into Lego Batman ever since we watched it on the car ride home from Washington, so I made her a Lego Batman costume, and Dorian was Lego Superman. Aren't they the cutest??

To keep with the Lego theme, Isaac and I were Lego blocks!

For Family Home Evening the day before Halloween we carved pumpkins. The kids both colored on their pumpkins while we carved ours. Isaac's is the pumpkin inside a pumpkin inside a pumpkin, mine is the train. Joslyn's has a face on it that she planned out ahead of time, and Dorian had a great time with the markers haha.

Isaac's pumpkin

My pumpkin

North Dakota High Point

I thought I posted this a long time ago, but I guess I forgot to click the post button. 
I'm skipping to the end of our trip now, because on our drive home from Washington, we went to the highest point of North Dakota! This one was White Butte, with an elevation of 3,506 feet.

This one was pretty scary for me. Online, everyone was talking about how when they went they saw rattle snakes! I was pretty nervous about going, especially with the kids. We saw a couple snake holes, but no snakes.

It was really weird when the trail turned from brown dirt to white sand. But the white hills made for a interesting view the whole way. 

From the top.

It was also super windy the whole hike.

High point number 7!!!

Nebraska High Point

On the third day of our drive out to Washington we all the way down to Nebraska to get the next high point. This one was Panorama Point, and it was our easiest high point.

 It had an elevation of 5,424 feet, and standing at the top (which we drove all the way to, with no hiking) you couldn't even tell that it was higher than any other point around it. It was all just sooo flat!

See those black dots in the distance on the left? That's a heard of bison! Yup, we think they were about half a mile away from where we were. There was a really big sign on the road that said you had to drive to the high point, and not walk on the road because of bison. So the whole way we joked about seeing them, and then we totally did! It was pretty cool.

High point number six! Woohoo!

South Dakota High Point

On our drive out to Washington for the Swift family reunion, we extended our drive by a couple hours so that we could get another high point to add to our map. On the second day of our drive we stopped at Black Elk Peak, the highest point in South Dakota with an elevation of 7,244. The hike was not too bad, but it took a while for us to do it. Especially once we let the kids walk on the way back down.
This one was really cool because at the top, there was a stone tower that used to be used for a wildfire look out.

Those girls walk out right as I took the picture, but I didn't get any others.

There were also so incredible views all along the hike. They say that on clear days you can see four different states from the top. Colorado, Nebraska, Montana, and of course South Dakota. It was a pretty cloudy when we went, and even rained a little, so I have no idea if we saw any of them other than South Dakota.

We took a little break at the top and let the kids explore the tower a little.

This is all of us together at the top of our 5th high point! Now that we have five, we finally feel like we're real high pointers!

Joslyn's birthday!

Joslyn is just growing up way too fast. I can't believe that it has already been three years! She has grown into such an amazing kid! She is so well mannered, sweet and kind. She is always trying to think of ways to help make others happier, and she loves to make people laugh.
For her birthday, she got to choose her meals. For breakfast she wanted Kix cereal. For lunch she picked Monte Cristos, and quesadillas for dinner.
A few of her friends have had birthdays in the last couple months, and she got to go to their parties, so she really wanted to have a birthday party with friends too. So I took her to the store to get ideas for the party, and she ended up just wanting party hats and a bunch of bubbles, so that was really easy. The kids had a lot of fun!

We recently checked out The Rainbow Fish book from the library, and she loved it. So when we talked about cake for her birthday, it was not a surprise that she wanted a rainbow fish cake. She was also pretty insistent that she needed an ice cream cake. I had some problems with the tail, and ended up having to just leave the fins off, but Joslyn really liked it anyway.

But I think the highlight of her birthday this year was her bike. She's been trying to ride all the other kids' bikes at the playground, so she was so excited to finally have one. And she's gotten good really fast!

Just Summer

We have been having a great summer so far. It's been nice spending time outdoors, and exploring. The kids especially enjoy spending time outside.
About a mile from our apartment is a big park with a wading pool. So we walk there a lot and to cool off in the water.

There is also a really great splash pad pretty close to us that the kids love. I was worried that Dorian wouldn't like it, because he didn't like it when we played in sprinklers with our neighbors. But, he took to it almost immediately.

 The library system around here is totally awesome! They have so many summer story times and activities. They even bring in local performers and have shows for the kids. Joslyn especially loved the butterfly story time/craft day, and both of the kids loved the puppet show!

On the weekends we have tried to go explore the city a little bit more. After visiting Gold Medal park on Independence day we decided we wanted to go back and look around more. There were some sculptures in the park that the kids liked.

Right next to Gold Medal park is an ice cream shop that everyone around here talks about, called Izzy's. So we decided to try it out (I'm always up for trying new ice cream places ;). The Izzy scoop is what it is known for, and that is basically just a tiny scoop of ice cream on top of your other scoops. We got each of the kids their own Izzy scoop.

and Isaac and I shared an Isabella scoop.

It was pretty expensive, and I wasn't super impressed with the place in general, but I did really like their green apple ice cream. It tasted like a jolly rancher!

Another day we were driving by the U of M St. Paul campus, and we found these!

We thought they were pretty fun!


A few weeks ago, Joslyn had her last day of preschool! We did a little co-op preschool with some of our neighbors, and it was so much fun! We'll probably do it again next year!

Aren't they the cutest??

Fourth of July

This year, we didn't have any clue what we were going to do for the 4th of July, so like 2 days beforehand we were talking to our neighbors, and we decided to get together and barbecue, because they weren't doing anything either! It ended up being a lot of fun.

We weren't planning to keep the kids up for fireworks, but after the barbecue they were both so tired that they napped until after 5, so we decided we would check out the firework show on the Mississippi River. We went to the park right on the river. It was super crowded, but we had a pretty good view, and the kids both loved it. While we waited for the fireworks, Joslyn did some sparklers, and we ran into some of our neighbors!

Waiting for the fireworks to start

After the show we had to walk about a mile back to our car, and the kids we're both so worn out.

We were hoping that they would sleep in the next morning because they were up so late. And they did a little bit, but we we're still up by 6:30. Maybe our kids will let us sleep in someday, but it's not looking like it will be any time soon! Haha
Hope everyone had a good 4th of July!

Sculpture Garden Reopening

Last Saturday was the grand reopening of the sculpture garden. We've been to the garden before, but they recently added several new sculptures and totally redid the landscaping. The reopening was supposed to be the week before, but they had to push it back a week because we had a lot of rain last month.
The grand opening was a big event with tons of fun activities for the kids, community sponsor booths, and the Walker Art Museum across the street was free too.

The famous spoon and cherry statue.

 One of the sponsors of the event was Blue Bunny, so they handed out free ice cream cones to everyone! The kids loved it. I don't think Dorian has ever had so much ice cream before. When he got to the bottom half of his cone, he was done and handed it to me. It was just too much.

You can't tell, but Isaac is standing next to the Blue Rooster with the kids in the stroller, and Joslyn is wearing a blue rooster mask that they were handing out. And Dorian is passed out because it was way past his nap time. 

At the Walker Art Museum they had a cool color by number art project that everyone could work on. The markers were huge, and Joslyn just thought that it was so fun!

Dorian tried it out too, but he kept grabbing the tip of the marker and got the ink all over his hands.

We got to go out onto the roof of the museum and it was a lot of fun. They had giant bean bags for sitting in, and the view of the Sculpture Garden was awesome! While walking down the steps, Dorian tripped, and hit his head. Now he has a big bruise there, so he didn't have quite as much fun on the roof as Joslyn did.

It was a lot of fun going to the reopening.

Also, a few weeks ago, they started doing construction on the parking lot right outside our apartment. They tore up all the asphalt and the sidewalks. They estimate that it will take 6-8 weeks to finish it. The sidewalks that they tore out went right up to the front of our building, so we have to use the back door every time we leave. They're also replacing windows in the building next to ours, so we have construction on all sides right now.

This is the excavator just pulling up squares of the sidewalk like it's nothing! 

The one good thing about having all the construction is having all the trucks around. Dorian loves to watch the trucks. He makes sure to point at every single one when we walk by, and he wants to know the different names. I've had to look up some of them, because I really had no idea what they were!

Dorian watching the trucks.