HUGE adventure with Grandma Cindy and Papa Gary

A few weeks ago, Josiah got to go on a "HUGE adventure" with Grandma and Papa and cousin Addison.  They all took a road trip to the cities to the Children's Museum.  Uncle Josh met them there for the fun!   Obviously, Josiah and Addie were uber-excited and walking calmly from exhibit to exhibit was not in the plan:-)  As Grandma said "Good thing there were 3 of us to keep tabs on the 2 of them!"  They all had a good time but were (adults included) ready for a nap when it was all over:-)

Josiah was feeling very participatory in story time

Look at that face, think he was having a good time??

Papa helping Josiah check out with his groceries

Addie picking up a few essentials

Josiah loved to mail packages at the
mailbox....his favorite part?  "It was weely LOUD mommy!"

"We ate chicken at Old McDonald's!!"

Trees, trees and more trees

As I've more than likely mentioned a few (thousand) times before, I absolutely LOVE the Christmas holiday season and all that comes with it!  Christmas Carols make their debut in my car the day after Halloween and do not cease until at LEAST mid-January...just ask my "I-used-to-work-retail-and-cannot-stand-Christmas-music" husband:-)  I've started Josiah on this tradition as well and his current favorite song is "Go Tell it on the Mountain"...has nothing to do with his love of all things loud I'm sure:-)

A local organization (Hiawatha Homes) puts on the Festival of Trees every year that features MANY decorated, themed Christmas trees that are auctioned off with proceeds going to benefit the organization. (Jan, you NEED to get one of your themed trees up here next year!) Although they have been doing this for years, I have never been....until this year!  Late Saturday (after stuffing ourselves with yet another turkey dinner) a few of us decided to rouse ourselves from our triptofan (sp?) coma and go so Cindy, Ashley, Vanessa, Addison, Bennett, Josiah and I headed down to the Civic Center to check it all out.  Josiah is WAY into Christmas lights and Christmas trees right now so the majority of the words coming from his mouth were "Wow"  "Oooo" and "Wook at dat one mommy!"  It was a great experience and one that I think we will make a tradition in years to come.  Here are a few pictures:

Addison (3), Josiah (2) and Bennett (7 mo)

"Wook at dat one Mommy!"

Grandma and her "angels"

Ashley, Vanessa, Bennett, Cindy and Addie enjoying the view

Winter Wonderland!

Kind of hard to see but this tree was mounted on
top of a hand-carved, wooden, working carousel!!  So cool!

After seeing all the beautiful trees, I was inspired to go home and pull ours out immediately...didn't quite measure up, may need the Ingy touch Jan:-)  What do you think??

Fall Fun 2011

We have had a BEAUTIFUL fall here in MN this year. Lots of crisp air but warm sun that make for amazing afternoons outside running in the crispy leaves!  As far as I'm concerned, we could have this weather year round!!  So, with the favorable weather has come many an outing.  Here are a few pictures chronicling our fun fall!

Playing in the leaves
Erik, Addison (3), Josiah (2) and Seth

Who doesn't love rolling down a hill??
The daddies were definitely more dizzy than the kids:-)

Papa Gary's awesome fire

Mmmmm.....s'mores!

Orchard time!  Ready for the bumpiest hayride known to mankind?!
Josiah (2), Miles (3), and Henry(1)

How big am I this year?

Try to get 3 toddler boys to pose for a picture....riiiiiigggghhhht!

The boys were ultra concerned about the fate of this
poor biker until we showed them that it was just pretend:-)

The goats were a BIG hit!  The boys picked up every
 kernel of corn they could find to feed to them
and the little goats gently took it from their hands...precious:-)

With fall comes....HALLOWEEN!!  As many of you know, we have an annual Becker Halloween bash at my parent's house and dressing up is HIGHLY recommended. It's so much fun to see every one's creativity every year and now that we have a crop of wee ones around, the fun has multiplied!  Since Halloween fell on a Monday this year, the party was on Saturday so we could party it up without fear of having to rise too early the next morning!

I know we got one with Seth but do you think I can find it?  No.

Peter Pan (Miles) and Tinker Bell (Robin) came with
Curious George (Henry) and The Man in the Yellow Hat (Kyle)

Yellow (Nick) and Black (Olivia)...it's a song by an artist that
I don't know...but my Grandma does!  Go figure?

Colonel Mustard (Steve) and Mrs. Peacock (Jeanie)
They won first prize for Best Costume this year!

Referee (Grandma Sissy), Gabriel the Angel
 (Grandma Greseth) and Prisoner (Rosie)

Beautiful Eskimo (Ellie) and her Igloo (Scott)

Zorro (Doug) and his lady in red (Terry)

Go Vikes!!  Coach (Brian), Player (Blair)
and cutest cheerleader EVER (Quinn)

Sonny (Mary) and Cher (Todd)
2nd prize in the Best Costume category

Cat In The Hat (Mike) with
Thing 1 (Nykkole) and Thing 2 (Nancy)

It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!
Charlie (Marc), Pumpkin (Callan) and Peppermint Patty (Jen)

Honey Bunches of Oats:-)
Laura and Jake

The whole Becker Clan (minus Helen)

What's Halloween without a few carved pumpkins??  A few years ago (pre-kids) we used to get together and spend hours carving intricate pumpkins.  Now that the kids are coming in droves...we still got together to carve but the patterns have simplified:-)  Check it out:

His first reaction to seeing pumpkin guts:  "eeewwwwwww"

For the ACTUAL Halloween holiday, we did our first Trick-or-treating with Josiah.  Grandma Sissy's place offers trick-or-treating and we took them up on it!  Indoors, warm and safe?  Yes please!  After a few quick stops to show off his Builder costume to Grandma, Papa, Grandma Pat and Grandpa Dewey, we headed to Homestead for the Halloween Kiddie Parade and trick-or-treating.  Josiah was in a great mood (who wouldn't be with people handing you candy every 2 feet) and kept proclaiming "I'm a builder and I save the day!"  OK Buddy:-)

Waiting for the parade to begin

After all that fun, a fella needs a nice warm bed
FULL of friends (obviously) to come home to
and get a good night's sleep!!

Addison Marie turns three!

Our niece, Addie, turned three years old on September 16th and we were all invited to her house on the 18th to celebrate.  Addie sure knows how to throw a party, there was yummy food, fun games and of course, CAKE:-) She is a sweet little girl and I can't believe she is three already, time moves too fast these days!  Here is a little video of the day, we all had so much fun!!

Friedt Family Vacation 2011

Well, I started with over 350 pictures but was able to whittle them down to a manageable amount...still too many to just post the pics though so here is the slideshow instead:-)  As you'll see, we had a really fun time and amazing weather!  A BIG THANK YOU to Jay and Renee for letting us crash at their "cabin" (read: beautiful lake home) for the week, we appreciate it so much!!!  Josiah is still talking about going on "bay-cation" at the "caven" and wants to know when we can go back:-)

Cousins are the best

As I may have mentioned before, I was blessed to grow up with LOTS of cousins around who became more like siblings than cousins.  In fact, as we have all started having kids, we refer to each other as cuz-aunts and cuz-uncles:-)  It goes without saying that I am thrilled that Josiah has several cousins already with one more on  the way and it is so fun to see them play together and exciting to know they will get to grow up together.  Sure, there is the occasional round of tears because someone pushed someone or someone took someone else's toy but they all love each other and get so excited to see each other, it is priceless!  The other day two of Josiah's cousins (Addison and Henry) stopped by to play and we had a little pool/sandbox party complete with lunch on the new picnic table.  Such fun!!

Bubbles!

Josiah and Addie got bubble guns from Uncle Josh for Easter and had a blast with them!!  Josiah was a little slow to pick up on the concept but after a few tries, he got it down and then wanted more, more, MORE!  Thankfully Uncle Josh was nice enough to spend a good portion of the day "dipping" the guns into bubble solution so the fun could continue:-)  Check it out!

Easter 2011

We had such a nice, relaxing Easter weekend this year filled with family and fun and of course, Easter Egg Hunts!  You read that right, I said hunts...as in multiple...2 to be exact.  Last year Josiah was way more interested in the plastic grass in his basket than he was in the eggs themselves much less the contents of the eggs. Not so this year.  It took him about 4 seconds to realize that the eggs were free for the taking and contained "tandee" (candy).  He just walked around saying "nother one" "I get nother one egg"  He had a blast:-)  We are so thankful once again that our families are so close and we get to celebrate with all of them.  We thank God not only for that but for Jesus and His ultimate sacrifice.

As is tradition, we had the Becker Easter gathering on Saturday and gathered at my mom and dad's.  My cousin Jerry made the trek from Milwaukee and this year we were extra excited that my cousin Bill and his two cuties Maddie and Cooper could make it too!  Later in the day a good number of the Greseth side of the family joined us for more festivities and game playing.  We were also excited to have Josh and Tressa join us with the newest member of the family, Blayne Jerome who was a mere 4 days old!  We all got extra baby snuggle time too since along with big sister Cambelle, Ben and Brie brought their newest itty bitty, Paige, for us all to love up!

All dressed up.  I LOVE Henry's face in this one....can you hear him
thinking "Who's brilliant idea was it to take pictures
before the candy??  Let's get this hunt on people"

Froggie Easter basket.  Very appropriate for Josiah, no?

Maddie and Miles waiting for the hunt to begin!

"I fine nother one egg Mommy"

Cooper showing off his find:-)

I guess he's pleased with the contents of that egg, huh?  Cheeseball:-)

Precious father son moment caught on camera...love this!

Group shot of 5 kids all hopped up on sugar...this is as good as we got:-) 

Grandma with her latest Great-grandchild (#7)
Blayne Jerome....Grandpa would have been so proud! 

The new parents with their little bundle:-)

Little Lady Paige

No gathering would be complete without the FOOD

Little Miss Cambelle

New Easter markers from the Kroenings were a BIG hit!
He's VERY concerned about the tiny bit of marker on his fingers.....

...but completely oblivious to the marks all over his face.
Luckily they are washable:-)

Sunday we were blessed to spend the day with the Friedt side of the family and had a blast as usual!  Addison and Josiah were treated to an Easter Egg hunt outside in the beautiful sunshine and were SO excited!  They ran around giggling and collecting eggs for quite a while and loved every second.  As luck would have it, I got my baby fix in for a second day in a row with baby Bennett snuggle time:-)  Is there anything in the world that smells better than a baby?  I think not!  We rounded out the day with a birthday celebration for Grammie Cindy.  She got a lot of help blowing out the candles from the kids who were excited to sing and sing again!

A little pre-egg hunt Elmo viewing party

Uncle Seth with baby Bennett

And they're off......

"Nother one?  Nother one egg?"

What to do if candy falls out of egg and onto the ground?
 Eat it off the ground of course!  A little dirt never hurt, right?:-)

Celebrating Grammie Cindy's birthday

We hope you all had a blessed and happy Easter also!  God Bless!