Good Times and Sunshine: Holidays

This summer we spent the 4th of July at my Aunt and Uncle's cabin in Wisconsin. Lake Puckaway to be exact. John and I had been there once before when Elsie was only 6 months old! It is a beautiful lake and a beautiful cabin. We took off on the 6 hour drive early Friday morning. Thankfully, both girls did really well. We had been having difficulties with Evelyn but we made plenty of stops to get her out of her seat and fed her before she got angry because she was hungry. We made the trip in just about seven hours with one long stop to get breakfast at a sit down restaurant.

We arrived, got the camper settled and then headed out on the boats with the crew. We spent the weekend eating, relaxing, and enjoying the company at the cabin. My mom and dad were there, along with Nicolle and Chris, Nicolle's friend Jenny, Drew and Nichole, Monte and Angie, and Angie's dad and stepmom.

Evelyn's first boat ride.

John went to put Elsie to bed. Looks like they were both too tired to finish the book.

The following day, we went out on the boat and my dad, Monte and Angie rode the jet skis. My dad gave Elsie a ride and then took her back to the cabin on it. Let's just say I was a little nervous haha

My cousin's dog Sierra.

Nichole and Sierra

Elsie hanging out in my parent's tent.

Nicolle who was halfway through her pregnancy at the time.

Chris getting some baby practice with Evie. Won't be long and he will have one of his own.

Enjoying their snack by the lake :)

I just love Nichole and my cousin Drew is so lucky to have found such a wonderful girl! We can't wait to celebrate their wedding in November!

We had a wonderful holiday! The neighbors shot off fireworks-big ones! Somehow Evie slept through it all and Elsie fell asleep half way through. haha.

June 19th-21st John, Elsie, Evelyn, and myself headed to Grand Forks, North Dakota for Chris and Laura's wedding. The week prior to the trip we ended up buying a minivan-a 2012 Chrysler Town and Country. The tipping point for us was so that one of us could sit in the third row and tend to Evelyn because she had not been doing well on the car rides. She cried and cried the weekend before coming back from MN.

We ended up leaving our place Thursday night and staying at my mom and dad's house and then got up and left early Friday morning.

Friday Donut Date!

I was excited to get back to my old stomping grounds-where I went to college. It had been almost 9 years since I had been there. We got up to North Dakota around 1pm.

Crossing the Border

Once arrive in Grand Forks, we checked into the hotel and got our keys but did not go up to our room. Instead we took a little drive through campus. The hotel that we stayed at, The CanadInn, was attached to the Alerus Center which is UND's football stadium. This is also where the wedding reception was going to be held.

Alerus Center

Entering Campus. Boy this had really changed over the years.

My old House. Delta Delta Delta-Lots of good memories here!

After driving through campus we headed out to the Ralph Engestad Arena where the UND Hockey team plays. The Sioux Shop is there and I wanted to get my family decked out in UND apparel. Back a few years the NCAA forced UND to retire the Fighting Sioux nickname and logo. So now the are just called North Dakota but will sound have a new nickname after almost three years. This also means that is is impossible to find the original Sioux head logo on anything anymore but here it is-still up on the side of the arena.

After checking out the store and not finding what I was looking for we headed into town to the mall where there is a Scheels which carries quite a bit of UND stuff. They had this goalie photo op and just had to have Elsie do it :)

Future UND star?

After shopping we headed back to hotel, checked in, met up with my college friend Krystle and her two boys. They live in Devils Lake and since we were so close (2 hours), they met us up there for the night and hung out the next day.

Our hotel had a waterpark and the kids had a blast playing around.

Fearless Elsie-this girl loves water slides and her and John went down the toilet bowl water slide numerous times.

Josh and John

That night for dinner we ate at one of the hotel restaraunts and then hit the hay early. We were all in and asleep before 10AM. The girls also slept until at least 7AM that morning which was wonderful! We got up and at the hotels breakfast buffet, ran to Target to get a few random things, and then headed back to the hotel to play at the water park again with Krystle and the boys as well as Ashley, Jason, Hunter, and Boyd.

Hunter and Elsie-Hunter wasn't so sure about the slide-apparently he doesn't like to get his head wet :)

Little Baby Boyd! He was a little over a month old.

Krystle and Evelyn

Coming down the toilet bowl slide:

Johnny, Josh, and Elsie

Waving from way up high!

Slide Races-Looks like Daddy Won!

This girl didn't swim much but enjoyed rocking her new swimsuit.

Around lunchtime Krystle and the boys took off and we got the girls down for a nap while John and I got ready for the 3:00 wedding. We ordered pizza for lunch and it was pretty yummy.

The wedding was at 3:00 in East Grand Forks. It was a beautiful wedding! The Bride of course looked beautiful. Unfortunately, Evelyn wasn't having it and Elsie was distracted by Finny. John took Evie to the back and then Elsie wanted to join them so then I finally was able to enjoy the ceremony. We headed back to the hotel after the ceremony so I could feed Evie before the reception.

Hanging out between ceremony and reception.

We had a great time at the reception. Elsie especially. She danced on the dance floor from the minute we walked in the receptions. There were SO many kids there and Elsie was loving it!

Doggy Pile on Jason!

And she LOVED dancing with Laura who "Looked just like a princess!" She even chased Laura down after the dollar dance because she didn't get a change to dance with her because we danced with Chris instead.

She danced a lot with Daddy too!

This is how Ashley and I spent most of our night. Evie slept through most of the dance.

Elsie totally latched on to Erin that night too! She had fun dancing with Erin on the dance floor and Erin tought her some new moves like "raise the roof" and "Hand on your knees"

At one point Elsie went up to the DJ and requested the Hokey Pokey. The DJ said he was going to play it but never did. Elsie kept holding out telling us they were going to play it and she wanted to wait to dance to it. Finally at 11, we decided to leave after waiting over an hour to see if they would play it. That girl was wiped out but she had so much fun!!!