Summer Fun

Well, another week has gone by, and we're another week closer to being done with school. (I say we, but you know, Dan.)

Jade's new favorite thing to do is play outside on the deck with some water. We just bring out a bowl of water and a few little cups and she goes to town. Eventually it ends up all over her and dripping down onto our neighbor's balconies.

But it's a great activity for when I don't feel like getting her in her swimsuit and out to the pool.

Here's Dan making siu mai dumplings. He even made some without shrimp, just for me.
Our friend Amanda showed us this really cool splash park in St. Louis Park. It was really crowded this day otherwise I might have a few more pictures. Don't worry though, I'm sure we'll go again.
Here is Jade doing her impression of The Great Cornholio. (From Beavis and Butthead)
Today we meet up with Ruth and Jasmine and Ashton and went to Mall of America. We met Blue, from Blues Clues. Jade, surprisingly, really likes these characters. She tried to reach in Blue's mouth.
This is a moose from the mini-golf course that they have in the mall. He liked Jade's piggie-tails.

He is giving her hand a kiss here.
We also met Dora today!! Jade was pretty excited, she kept touching Dora's face. She also reached inside her mouth. It was pretty hilarious.
Ashton and Jade were playing with Legos before lunch. Jade still doesn't quite know how to work the legos, she has more fun pulling them apart.

A week of fun!

We have been having a lot of fun lately. Don't worry, Dan is certainly not slaking off at school. He just got a 96% on his first test. He's doing so well and working hard. Here is an impromptu picture on our way to the park. :)

Our friends, the Smith's took us to this great park with a beach and fun playground equipment for the girls. Their daughter is a week older than Jade and it has been fun having a playmate for Jade.
Jade's natural smile has been coming out a lot more. She will say "cheese" for the camera now. She is just an absolute cutie!
I just really like this picture of Dan :)
This is a cute, little family picture from yesterday. We went out on the lake with the Randall's. We had a lot of fun tubing and some people water-skied.
When Dan and I got onto the tube we leaned too far back and tipped it over. This was before we were even moving! Jade must have thought something was wrong because she burst into tears. She settled down after a little bit but whenever we fell off the tube she'd start crying again. She's just a little tender-heart.

Dan and Jade, Dan's cousin Tyler and his Aunt, Ruth.
From the left: Dan's cousin, Nate; Ruth's sister-in-law, Julie; her daughter, Erin; Nate's girlfriend, Trish; Dan's Uncle, Lynn; and Julie's son, Benjamin. We all had a really fun time, even though I'm feeling the aftermath of those nasty tumbles out of the tube.

Edenborough Park

Much to my demise, Saturday was gloomy and rainy. We had plans to go to the zoo with Dan's cousin and her two kids. When we realized it might not be the best day to do that, we decided to try an indoor park. This one was called edenborough park and it was AWESOME! It was a lot of fun for Jade and also fun for Dan and I.

You can climb up into the playground. It's about the size of four McDonalds playlands all rolled into one.

I wanted to get some cute pictures of her or a video but there were so many kids, and she needed help with climbing and such, that it was sort of hard to get any good ones.
Jade played through her nap so when we left it wasn't more than five minutes before she crashed.
Yesterday, at the mall Jade and I got to meet Pablo from the Backyardigans. She seemed pretty excited. It was really cute.

Jade maneuvers down stairs.

Jade has been learning how to walk down the stairs lately. She's doing really well and always wants to go on the stairs instead of the elevator. When we get to the second floor she always wants to wander into the laundry room. She used to think it was a bathroom I think, because, she would make a grunting sound (which is the sound she makes for potty, don't ask me why).

Meeting Hello Kitty

Jade is such a huge fan of the park. I mean, what little kid isn't though. We found this nice little park pretty close to our house. Jade prefers the swings but she likes slides too.

This is a picture I snapped of Jade trying to show me how she can "jump". She still doesn't get her feet off the ground but it sure is cute watching her try. She just has the cutest smile in this picture.
On Tuesday, Jade and I went to Mall of America again, for Toddler Tuesday and we got to meet Hello Kitty. Jade kept saying "mow"(like now), which is how she says "meow". It was very cute. She wasn't nervous, just excited.
Here she is giving her a high-five.
She won a candy necklace for pinning the bow on a hello kitty picture. She wasn't too intrigued with it until I showed her that it was edible. Then she was all over it.
This is the face she made when I told her she couldn't put the whole thing in her mouth and to spit it out. She was really bummed.
Dan took this cute picture of Jade. She kind of looks like a little grandpa with that cardigan on.

Minneapolis Farmers Market

Here is a picture of Jade all dressed up for Cinco De Mayo! Just wanted to throw that in there since I'd forgotten.

Last Saturday we took a trip downtown to check out the farmers market. It was really neat. There were a lot of cool vendors selling their local wares. Everything from clothes to metal yard animals, flowers, fruits and vegetables and Wisconsin cheese of course.
Jade and I enjoyed a delicious foot long.
Dan enjoyed this monstrosity also know as a bratwurst.
There was even a man playing an accordion. Jade really thought it was cool.....ok, I think I'm the only one who thought it was cool.
Here is a picture of Dan's latest culinary creation...galanga soup. It was delicious.

What happens when....

What happens when one day you think to yourself... I think I'll make about 60 pot stickers and then freeze them for later; only you neglect to allow them to completely freeze before submitting them to the awesome vacuuming power of the foodsaver, resulting in a huge conglomeration of potstickers that have melded into one another inseparably?

Well, what happens is that one day you have to sit down to a 3lb plate of potsticker casserole. not that that's a bad thing... just a little embarrassing..... Classic Dan.

The one with all the pictures

Long time, no update huh? Well, a lot has been going on. I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath for an update and here it is.
We celebrated Easter with my family a couple weeks early. Here are a few pictures of Jade hunting for Easter eggs. She started to get the hang of it after a few eggs.

After the egg hunt we had a pinata. We were also celebrating my twin brothers' birthday so we couldn't let an opportunity go by for a pinata.

This past month has been so crazy mainly because we moved to Minnesota!! We broke down our trip out into three days. We stayed with Dan's sister, Stefanie and her husband Kevin for a few nights. It ended up being a little longer than we had planned due to a blizzard on the plains that we didn't want to drive through. They were so accommodating though and we had a lot of fun. We made a delicious Chinese feast one of the nights.

Jade wasn't feeling well, unfortunately, so I didn't get any pictures of her and her cousin Rylee playing together.

This is the only Easter picture I took (it's in the lobby of our apartment) because our Easter Sunday was rudely interrupted by the fact that our car had been broken into! We headed down into the garage, which is shared by everyone in the building, and noticed someone had smashed in our passenger side window and taken our navigation system. That was only our second night here!

I gave Jade her first haircut. Here is the before picture. (It really was just more of a trim to get all those little wispy hairs out of her eyes.)

She was fairly cooperative, but just wiggly.

Here is the after photo.

The Mall of America has this awesome program called Toddler Tuesdays where they have different activities and such for kids every Tuesday. Jade and I love it and have been every week since we've been here.

This particular week was about the princess in the brown paper bag (or something like that), it was a very cute story and they had a local theatre come out and do a short performance.

The dragon was really neat! Jade was a little apprehensive but she did want to go up and see the dragon.

Jade has started attending nursery now at church. She seems to enjoy it, although, I think she will like it more when she starts to recognize some of the other kids. She just needs to make a nursery buddy. Most times when I peek in she's sitting on one of the teachers laps.

This is us taking a walk on the path that goes around our apartment complex. It's very nice, I'd guess that it's about a third of a mile track. It goes right past the playground so of course we stop at the end and let jade swing. She LOVES swings.

Today we went to Toddler Tuesday and they had a Mexican band and told Mexican stories and we learned the Mexican Hat Dance. It was a lot of fun.

I took this picture today of Jade, she's getting so big. She's just a sweet baby and lots of fun.

Baby goats

Our last trip to Idaho sort of made Dan and I want to get some baby goats. These kids were so cute, they kept climbing in and out of the trough. We saw baby ducks and baby chickens too. McKee's pet shop in Chubbuck has a fun "petting zoo", really you just walk around and look at the animals but the girls really loved it. Jade would walk right up to the fence and try to poke the goats in the eye.

Here's a picture of Jade riding forward-facing for the first time in her car seat. She was so excited it seemed.
Stefanie and I took Jade and Rylee to the play area in the mall and they really had a blast, jade was crawling through all the tunnels and sliding down the slide, except, she likes to linger at the bottom of the slide so I always have to move her so she doesn't get pummeled by some other kid.
Grandma Lou, reading bedtime stories to Jade and Rylee (who are wearing matching jammies).