Big girls

(getting ready to head out the door)

(Mia's locker!)

(Ana's locker...with her sidekick, Kale)

It's official, the twin towers are now grade schoolers!! They started 1st grade this morning without any hesitation at all...there was probably more from Kale and I than anyone!! The girls were up bright and early to get themselves ready for school. It helped us a lot that we had the opportunity to go in to the school last night to meet their teacher, get their lockers, and find their desks. They made sure to point out to their teacher their lost teeth, tell her all about their American Girl dolls, and many other things that they thought the teacher should know!!! It's still just so hard to believe that they're this big already.

I decided to celebrate with Kale that it was "our" time again by taking him to McNally's bakery here in town and we've spent all morning cuddling and watching cartoons - I felt I needed to celebrate with him to let him know he's important too!!! Kale and I plan to take the girls to Dairy Queen for ice cream when we pick them up at 1:00!!!

Minneapolis

What a great short long weekend we had!!! Sounds so funny to say it that way, but we enjoyed ourselves so much, it just went too quickly. Unlike here at home, it rained at some point almost every day we were gone!! My tomato plants reflected just how badly we needed back here when we arrived home!!

The kids and I took off early on Thursday and headed to Medford to do some shopping for school clothes. Chad drove up with his parents after work. We didn't arrive in Minneapolis until late and it became even later when we couldn't find our hotel!!! Who knew there could be 4 Hilton hotels in a 5 mile radius!!!??? We stopped at every single one of them!! It was a good laugh for that late at night!!! We enjoyed time at the Mall of America and IKEA the next day because it was raining. The girls were super excited when they were surprised with the opportunity to pick out the bigger American Girl doll (which they had been begging for for their birthday this November) and chose the dolls that looked like them!!!! So Emma, Ana's doll, and Melissa, Mia's doll, have now joined our family. I don't think they have hardly put them down since they got them! Kale, being the simple boy he is, got a big bucket of legos from Lego Land and is in heaven with those!!! ME, I was excited to find the handles that I really wanted for my kitchen cupboards at IKEA for HALF the price of Menards...and for Chad - the pure excitement of getting to put them all up for me!! HA HA For some reason, I highly doubt he is as excited about it as I am!!!

The rest of our time was spent at the Como Zoo, Underwater Adventures at the Mall of America, and the pool. It's always nice to get home, but it always seems to take me the whole next week to get everything put away, laundry done, etc.

Good times...

What a great weekend...the kids and I enjoyed having lunch with Grandma Luedtke on Friday and then we headed to the Algona pool and spent about 2 1/2 hrs!! Kale had a hard time understanding (15 minutes after we got in to the water) that we had to get out of the water for 10 minutes for break, but what's a little crying and screaming at the pool, right?!? I had promised the kids snacks when we left the pool and we weren't even out of Algona and Kale had fallen asleep...pretty rare to see him fall asleep during a bag of skittles!!

Saturday was spent at Arnolds Park for the Kerber Milling employee appreciation day. The kids had SO much fun, and great strides were made on the fears of both Mia and Kale. Mia had promised before we even went that if we bought her some cotton candy, she would try all of the rides...and she held true to her promise, as did we!! Before we knew it, I was riding every single ride 3-4 times in a row with the girls while Chad watched Kale. Needless to say, we were ALL exhausted by the time we got home. But the trip was topped off with a quick stop at Mrs. Lady's for supper!!!! There is nothing that makes me happier than their cheese and jalapeno nachos!!

It was a great family weekend!!! Now we're ready for a great family vacation!!!

Good weekend

(Carla with Grandma (Kerber) Langan)

(my brother, Mark, Grandma, myself, and sister, Angela)

What a nice weekend we had this past weekend...my brother and sister and their families stayed with us - it was a great big slumber party!!!, we celebrated my Dad and Ruth's 25th wedding anniversary, and my Grandma and Aunt and Uncle from Arkansas were here to celebrate too!!! We're always so excited to spend time with them since we only see them once, possibly twice, a year so it was definitely a wonderful treat.

Now we're gearing up for our vacation to the big city of Minneapolis!!! HA!! No, we're really looking forward to going and doing a few new things that we haven't done in the past with the kids and honestly, the kids and I are just REALLY ready to get away from the Fank acreage for a while!!! The girls are especially excited about the possibility of going to the American Girl Doll store and are trying REALLY HARD to convince daddy that it's important to go to Chuck E Cheese!!! Grandma and Grandpa Fank are going with us as well, so it will be a welcomed treat for the kids to get a little spoiling too.

My poor kids have had NO pool time this summer - always just content to play on the slip and slide, so I'm surprising them tomorrow (Friday) and taking them to Algona to have lunch with Grandma Luedtke (which we haven't seen in far too long) and then we're heading to Algona's big water complex they have. I'm sure I'll have LOTS of pictures to share. Our time is running out for doing all these fun things that I've promised since summer began!

One year down

It's official - yesterday marked 1 year since Ana's seizures began. Again, we are so very blessed that her med's continue to work so well for her and that she has been seizure free since the start of them. Congratulations Anabelle - I look forward to many more days of your craziness, feistiness, courage, and love without any seizures!!!!

"I'm just looking at it mommy"

So, the other day I decided I would bake a cake for the kids since they had been begging me to make one. I waited until Kale went down for his nap to do it so it had plenty of time to cool down before I let the kids frost it. As soon as he got up from his nap, I wanted to get the toys picked up first but Kale was intrigued by the smell and refused to help me. I could hear him scooting one of the stools so I asked him what he was doing to which he replied "I'm just looking at it mommy". I told him not to touch it and continued on with my picking up. When I came to the kitchen, this is what I found...

So much for NOT TOUCHING IT!!! Little stinker.

July 19th marks one year since Ana began having her seizures. We are SO thankful that the medicine continues to work and that we've had absolutely NO seizures since starting the medication. We will go meet with the pediatric neurologist again to check her progress. I really hope she tells us we can start weaning her off the med's, but I figure Dr. Wirrell will keep her on them for one more year as she planned we would probably do. I think back to when it all began and thank God every day for giving her the strength to go through all of the blood draws, MRI's, sleep tests, etc. She's such a tough cookie.

The girls finished up soccer camp on the 10th and were sad to see it end. Their coach was really great with the kids and I see this being a continuous summer activity. Before we know it, Fall soccer will be starting!! It's so depressing to be doing school shopping already!

4th and family!!

What a wonderful 4th of July we had. We were ALL OVER the place that weekend, but it was a wonderful weekend and we got to spend time with family. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if we would have gotten to see even more family and the weather had been a little sunnier. The pictures above are some from the past couple of weeks. Kale is holding a pea in one picture, which came from our field!!!

The weekend started with rehearsal on Friday night and a wedding on Saturday in which I sang for. I hadn't sung for a wedding in quite some time, I was actually a little nervous!!! After, we headed to the reception for a bit, then headed home to change clothes and go back to town to watch the fireworks. We enjoyed spending the evening with Grandma and Grandpa Kerber, Uncle Mark and Aunt Roberta, and cousins, Katelynn and Matthew, on Grandma and Grandpa's boat. I'm not quite sure if there were actually any children still awake once the fireworks started!!! On Sunday, we went out to Grandma and Grandpa Fank's and spent time with them and Aunt Nikki and Uncle Ryan, and cousins, Hailey and Addisson. Upon returning home that evening, we had received a phone call to go out on the boat again with Grandma and Grandpa Kerber...so we enjoyed some lazy/fun time on the boat once again!!! So much fun!

Now the girls are enjoying soccer camp this week. It's hard to believe that summer is already half over! I can't imagine the kids heading back to school...we still have so many things yet that we want to do this summer!! I guess we better get on the bandwagon!!! I hope you all are enjoying your summer...until next time!!