I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for...Olives?

Eleven years ago when I first met Erik, it did not take me long to learn about his love for black olives. After frequent visits to one of our favorite Italian restaurants, he began to try to replicate their olive oil, diced garlic, parmessan chesse bread dip. It didn't take long for Erik's version of the dip to include black olives. He likes to make this about once a week or so, so there always seems to be an open can of olives in our refrigerator. The other day Soren was signing eat and pounding on the refrigerator, and being the clever mom I am, I have come to learn that this is Soren's way of communicating, "I'm starving!" When I opened the refrigerator there was some string cheese next to the black olives. He pointed in that general direction, so I assumed, he most likely wanted the string cheese. Oh no, he knew that black juice in the little tupperware container meant OLIVES! And that is indeed what he wanted. Olivia also shares this love and we have actually had to make an olive limit at our house because we are beginning to go through a huge amount of olives. The limit is five per kid, which just so happens to be the same number of fingers, huh, coincendence? We will let you decided...just don't look at me funny the next time you see me shopping and the olives are on sale...doesn't every family buy 10 cans of olives at once?

Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo!

This year's Steam Engine Parade was a first for our family. My parents and brother's family have made this an annual event while we were out of the Midwest, so we looked forward to joining them this year on the mission to throw a Mister Freezie Popsicle to almost every spectator. My Dad restored my Grandpa's John Deere 630 a few years ago and he enjoys driving it among the hundreds of other restored tractors in the parade. If you are a farmer and remember the "good old days" this is the ultimate town festival for you. In order to get ready for the parade, Dad first had to rebuild the wagon that we all sit in. The floor had given out, so Dad replaced it with a new one, a floor that Erik screwed in about 400 screws. That floor is going no where. :-) My Dad also had a friend that built this tiny John Deere using a lawn mower engine. It was so small, my six year old nephew's legs even looked crammed as he drove it. He sure did give all the farmers something to admire chuckle at as he followed Grandpa's tractor. The Mr. Freezies went over well on the warm fall day. With our extra hands on deck for the first time, we actually got a bit ambitious and threw a few too many out in the beginning and didn't have much for the end. It was fun, but it was touch and go for our hands, frost bite almost got the best of us. Note to self for next year, bring gloves.

Grandpa's little helper...he worked so hard he couldn't make it through lunch.

The crew and Hayden's small tractor. (Click on images to enlarge.)

Peek-a-Boo!

Bringing in a New Decade!

Wow, 30, how did that happen? So, here we are, Erik and I have reached a new decade, the 30's. I had the pleasure of bringing in the new decade a whole whooping 20 days before Erik. Fortunately, neither one of us was too phased by the new number. We are thankful for our stage of life and where we are in our journey, so the big 3-0 didn't bring much stress, perhaps just wisdom. :-)

It took me awhile to discover who the sneaky person was who hung up this sign on our tree in our front yard and the birthday banner on our front porch.

Daddy's Birthday Waffle

Not sure which had more frosting on it, the cake or Olivia

There sure is a lot of candles there!

The First Day of Preschool!

Olivia has been excited for preschool all summer long, until we turned our calendar page to August and announced to Olivia that this was the month she would start preschool. Now that it was so close, she decided preschool could wait another year. She just became a bit unsure and nervous of what to expect. So, to help rekindle that excitement I decided to take her backpack shopping. As we enter the aisle I exclaimed, "Wow, look at all these cool backpacks. Do you see one that you like?" Thinking this would be a home run to fire up the excitement, I was quite surprised when she turned to me and said, "I don't need one. I am not going to preschool, I am staying with you." Oh, dear... keep trying...then I found it: the princess backpack! She wanted to smile and like it, but she was still hesitant, so I said, let's just try it on. Hallelujah! She loved it! Now, preschool was looking a little bit better. Then after the preschool open house, she was truly excited again. The night before her first day of preschool, she was so excited that it took her longer than normal to fall asleep. Fast forward a few hours..."Mommy, Mommy, is it time for preschool?" "What?" was all I could muster for a response as I rubbed my eyes and saw 3:24 peering back at me from the clock. Oh dear, I got her back to her bed and told her that she had to wait for the sun to come up. So, at 6:00 she came bouncing down to our room again. This time, I knew there was no getting her back to sleep. I made her a special breakfast pancakes that spelled her name. She thought that was pretty cool (as well as thinking that was going to be her breakfast for every preschool day.) Then we loaded up the wagon and walked to preschool. She was so excited! I think she aged a few years in our two block walk to school, how can my baby already be in school? She gave everyone hugs and kisses and then bee bopped right on in to her classroom. It was great to see her so comfortable and watch the nerves melt away. We turned to walk out the school as my eye caught that little purple backpack, thank you princesses, thank you.

Look at that smile!

She loves her locker!

Me love Cookies!

Neighbors can be such blessings and this is definitely the case with one of our neighbor girls, Jasmine. She is in the 6th grade and takes the time to come over and play with our kids periodically and make them feel special. When I see that bright smile ring our doorbell, I know that I too am getting blessed with a good hour to clean up, cook dinner, or do anything without the kids under my feet. So, we wanted to celebrate this special friend before her school year started, which experience tells us, we will be seeing less of her...sniff, sniff. Olivia decided to celebrate her with a batch of chocolate chip cookie, her favorite. I let her, and consequently our little "monkey see, monkey do" boy, make the cookies pretty independently. I read the recipe, gave instruction, and broke the eggs, other than that, they pretty much did it themselves. Olivia was so proud! We were so caught up in the moment, I was taking their pictures, they were stirring, and then we had our finally product and I took one finally picture, click! I then had to face the proof that a 3 and 1 year old had just made cookies, a sticky flour mess covered our kitchen. Hmm... I wonder if Cookie Monster's kitchen looks like this.

The lick, caught in the action!

They waited and waited for those cookies to come out.

Soren's patience came to an end, he wanted one right NOW!

Below is a video of some of the stirring:

Waiting for Cookies to cool is so hard!

Singing in the Rain

Splash! Giggle, giggle, giggle...these were the sounds this afternoon as Olivia and Soren enjoyed today's rain shower.

SPLASH!

TA-DA!

Ouimette Family Time!

Summer family get togethers are the best! That is why I was so happy when Erik's family decided that they would make the journey to our house this summer. We had ten amazing days of relaxing, talking, laughing, watching Olympics, playing, dancing, drinking coffee, more Olympics, trips to my family, hikes, Field of Dreams, and even more Olympics! Wow, what a great time! As our family grows and continues to spread out we appreciate this time together so much more.

The Nelson Family Reunion

This summer we had a great opportunity to get together with my Dad's family for the first time in a long time. It was fun to see all my cousins, as well as their spouses and children. We had such a great set up. We had 3 cabins that were all connected and shared a front porch. Each of my Dad's sisters and then us had our own cabin. We overlooked a grassy hill where the kids could run and play, a swing set, a sand volleyball pit, a horse shoe pit, and the river. We filled our three days with tubing, kayaking, bike riding, and much talking and laughing. What a fun time!

40 years ago there were 5...

Now we've expanded to 26!

Cinderella, Cinderella, Night and Day It's Cinderella

Olivia has just recently developed the attention span to sit and follow a full length movie. We had some movies passed down to us and the only one that Olivia really enjoyed and actually watched was Cinderella. So, imagine her excitement when she found out the YOOH in Spring Grove was going to be performing Cinderella. She talked about the performance for weeks before hand. She even wanted to wear her princess dress, and conveniently get a free popcorn for doing so. It came time for the big night and as we settled into our seats Olivia's face was filled with excitement. Let the show begin and it did! Olivia was captivated. She was in her own world, she was concentrating so hard on the show that she didn't even realize she was moving her arms similar to the actors. Very cute. FLASH! BOOM! And just like that 15 minutes into the show, the lightening, thunder, and down pouring rains put an end to the performance. We went up stage to meet Cinderella and Olivia was speechless. She really thought she was THE Cinderella, not an actor. I wanted a picture of her with Cinderella, but Olivia kept saying, "No pictures Mom." So, enjoy the picture of Olivia with the program instead.

Happy 4th of July!

We decided to head up to Spring Grove to celebrate the 4th of July with Grandpa and Grandma. After the kids' naps we went to Harmony to take in the 4th of July parade. Following the parade, Olivia wanted to try her hand at all the fun games at the kid's carnival. We went back to my parents house for supper and then got ready for the fireworks. Soren got too tuckered out and ended up falling asleep. We didn't have the heart to wake him up, so Erik offered to stay home with him while we went to the fireworks. Olivia was SOOOO excited about getting to stay up late to go and watch the "magic in the sky." We got to Eitzen and found a great parking spot and set up our lawn chairs and got the soda and popcorn ready, now all we needed was the show to begin. I think Olivia was more into the popcorn, soda, and idea of staying up late than she was of watching the fireworks. But she soon caught on the the idea of oohing and aahing at each one. I think we sang the Happy Birthday song about 3 times during the show...Happy Birthday America!

I'm not so sure about this thing on my head Mom.

Ummph! Ding, Ding, Ding!

One little excited girl on America's birthday!