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??

A day at the zoo

Last week I took a day off work and Josiah and I headed north with Jayme and her girls, Kaidance, Madilyn, and Aubrey and Robin and her boys, Miles and Henry.  That's right, 3 adults and 6 kids...crazy you say?  Nah, we're seasoned pros by now:-)  Well, seasoned when it comes to handling the kids...not so much with the directions when there are detours:

Thankfully the neighborhood watch was lax that day so
no police officers were called to report 2 suspicious vehicles in the area

"Ok, we're here...we need to get here..."

So, after a slight delay and a stop at McDonald's for lunch we made it to Como Park Zoo and Conservatory!  If you are in the St. Paul area, you should definitely check it out!  We decided to start the day with the zoo portion and saw several animals.

Giraffes!

Polar bear...poor guy looked a little warm, probably
wondering where his ice and snow had gone!

The girls getting a good look at the polar bear

Our monkeys watching the monkeys.  Highlight of that exhibit?
When the monkey peed on the rock, the  kids thought it was hilarious!

What comes next in the day?  Snack of course!  Most of us enjoyed popcorn and ice cream treats.  All but Miles who somehow doesn't like either one (I know, we've had him checked out and the doctor says it's normal but we're still not sure) so he enjoyed an apple.  Yes, we should all have followed suit but the popcorn and frozen lemonade were deelish!

After snack it was time to hit Como Town.  If you've never been there, Como Town is like a fair midway for little ones and it is great!  We bought the oldest four armbands so they could ride as much as they wanted and they took full advantage!  First up were the swings which I was convinced was MUCH too dangerous for my two year old but after he cried to go on and Jayme assured me that Madi had been riding since she was 2, I caved and put him on.  I fully expected to have him freak out but was pleasantly surprised when he beamed from ear to ear and yelled from the ride "Wook at us Mommy, we way up in the 'kye"  He did cry when the ride broke down during their second time on it but not because he was scared, he didn't want it to stop:-)

You can't see him very well here but trust me, he was LOVING it!

We had a small melt down around 3:00 when the fact that Josiah had only napped for 30 minutes in the car caught up with him.  I earned my Mother-of-the-year award with this next shot:

Yes, he cried.  On the ride.  The whole time.

After a short ride in the stroller with his bookia and a return to rides more his speed, all was well again!

All in all, it was a FANTASTIC day and fun was had by all!!  Thank you to the Davidson girls and the Kroening boys for a very fun day!!  Let's do it again soon...but this time we'll check ahead for detours:-)  Here are a few more shots from the day:

Group shot!
Kaidance (7), Miles (3), Henry (1), MadiBelle (4), Aubrey (1), Josiah (2)

Henry and Aubrey became good buddies:-)

More from the Honkers

As I mentioned in my previous post, our family has taken quite a liking to the Honkers and once again, we were in attendance for their last home game (in the luxury box this time...again, thanks Dad!!!!).  In addition to some of the family, I was able to invite a few girlfriends to join us also and we had a blast!

Me - Jamie - Jess - Kristin

HennyBug got a new hat...thanks Papa!

Miles was chillin'...we were ahead by 9 runs
so he was confident in the win:-)

Don't know what's going on here but if I know Jamie, she's
scheduling something with Blair:-)

Like I've said before, no game is complete without the YMCA!

More YMCA fun!

After the Honkers game, we continued ladies night with a trip to Dooley's.  The hostess must have known we were there to chat and put us WAY back in a corner (conveniently next to the complimentary popcorn) and we chatted the evening away.  A few years ago I would have been relaying a story of waking up with a headache or possibly even the spins following a night of such fun but not now that I'm 34....I woke up in the middle of the night with heartburn.  Thanks God, I know I'm getting old but did you have to remind me at 3:00AM?  Awesome. 

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:-)

Lake front property

What happens when you get 2 inches of rain in 15 minutes?  You become lake front property owners!  I wonder if our property taxes will go up next year...

View from our driveway

That little orange speck in the upper right hand
 portion of the picture is a fire hydrant

We made the news!!  Well, our street did, Josiah and I opted to save our
TV debut for a day when we were more prepared (a.k.a. not in PJs)

Better late than never??

I've been pretty pathetic at keeping up with blogging lately, I apologize to my scores of followers (all 3 of you:-)).  Here is a long overdue post from when Josiah and I joined Robin, Miles, Henry and my mom on a road trip to the cities to see the one and only RACHEL COLEMAN of Signing Time fame.  You have probably heard me talk about this wonderful set of DVDs that teach little ones sign language, our whole family is enamored with them!  Not only are they cute and have lots of fun songs and graphics, they truly work!  Not just to teach signs but they encourage language skills in general.  Anyone who has spent 5 minutes with Josiah (or watched one of his videos) knows that this boy is certainly not lacking in the talk department and I credit Rachel with some that! We had VIP tickets (a BIG thank you to auntie Robin for our tickets that were an early birthday gift for Josiah) so that meant we got to meet Rachel, Leah and Hopkins before the show.  The boys were SO excited...Josiah kept saying "Dat Rachel mommy, dat Rachel wight der!"  Priceless.  While he really likes Rachel, Leah and Alex, his favorite "person" on the DVDs is Hopkins.  I was curious as to how he'd react to a life sized Hopkins because on TV, Hopkins is a small animated frog but in real life he was adult sized.  Surprisingly, Josiah wasn't afraid, he just stared at him and then started doing the 'Pokins top' which means the 'Hopkin's Hop':-)  The poor lady in the Hopkins suit seemed less than enthusiastic to perform the Hop but begrudgingly did so after Josiah asked nicely:-) Again, priceless.  It was a fun time had by all, here are some shots from the evening:

Rachel signed his VIP badge...can you say scrapbook worthy??

Not too sure about being SO up close and personal

Loving Hopkins!

I love this one...Nana and I are smiling straight at the camera while all 3 boys
seem to be looking around for the nearest escape route:-)

GLEE LIVE!!! Momma's night out:-)

My sister-in-law Blair, one of our besties Kristin, and I went to see Glee Live courtesy of our FABULOUS husbands who surprised us with tickets!!!  We got them a couple of months ago and have been impatiently waiting since then to go to the show.  For those of you who don't watch (you should!) it's a sarcastic comedic story of a high school glee club.  For more info, click here.  We decided to make it mommy's night out and started with a cocktail at a fancy establishment called The Bank:

Blair's fancy drink "Blue Dolphin on the Rocks"
AKA  water with ice.  Thanks for DD'ing Blair!!

My fancy drink: Blueberry Mojito

Kristin's fancy drink:  Mai Tai

Do we look like tourists??  Yeah, we thought so 

Next up, it was over to Huberts where we were treated like royalty thanks to Abbie Snell, Intern Extraordinaire!  On the way, we saw the tour buses:

Surprisingly, the cast did not rush out to meet us when we
knocked on the bus windows, they must not have recognized us.  Weird.

On to Huberts for dinner!

There we go, a true "fancy" drink for Blair...Shirley Temple

Me and Abber Dabs....LOVE this girl!!!

Momma's Night Out!!

Huberts is conveniently IN the Target Center where the show was so we simply had to walk a few feet through some glass doors and voila, we were there!  Since it was "act like a teenager" night for us, we hit up the souvenir stand first:

Clearly, we weren't the only ones who NEEDED Glee paraphernalia

Cute. Cute. Cute.

Then it was SHOWTIME!!  We had uh-MAZ-ing seats:

It was a really great night, thanks Seth, Brian and Karl for sending your grateful wives on such a fun adventure!!!  And thank you to my girls Blair and Kristin for making the night SOOO much fun!!!  Here is a video "mash-up" of the evening's concert....it's a bit long but if you are a Glee and/or music fan, you'll enjoy it:-)