Andie's Growing Up Fast

Our little girl is now mobile! She started crawling about a week and a half ago or so now, and just like Daniel, her favorite place to go is straight for the cold air returns grates on the wall. She likes to strum them like a guitar. Daniel used to cut his fingers on those things, so we're doing our best to keep her away from them. Here is a video of her last week. She has sped up significantly since.

When Daniel first got his bike for his 3rd birthday, he fell a couple of times while turning corners a little too fast. Ever since, he's been very scared to ride, and we've just lately been able to get him back on it as long as we were holding onto him. The last two nights he's wanted to get out riding again, and he's been flying down the sidewalk all by himself. Last night Daniel, Nate, and Andie stopped by his friend Gracie's house down the street and she came for a little ride with us. For some reason they wanted to switch bikes, so Daniel was cruising around on a little pink bike while Grace was riding Daniel's lightning bike. It was pretty cute.

And a picture from the ride...

5 Year Anniversary Trip

On Friday, July 16th, Jen and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. We knew we wanted to take a trip somewhere, and up until about two weeks before, we had no idea where we wanted to go. We decided on Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We found a deal on a travel website at this all inclusive resort called the "Riu Palace", and just went for it. We met Jen's mom in Wisconsin Thursday afternoon, handed over the kids, and stayed the night at Nate's parent's. Nate's mom dropped us off at the airport early Friday morning, and we were on our way. Smooth travels; a quick layover in Dallas/Ft. Worth airport, and on to Cabo. We were there in time for a swim, dinner and a few drinks.

When we arrived at the Cabo "airport" (airstrip?) we were greeted by a bunch of commission hungry locals trying to sell you activities, such as para-sailing, horseback riding, boat cruises, ect. This one guy said he was representing our travel agency and conned us into scheduling a "tour" of another hotel that they work with, and for doing that, they would give us vouchers for three different activities during our stay. Sounded OK since we hadn't been there before and wanted to see what some of the other hotels were like anyway. Well, that tour turned into a two and a half hour high-pressure one-on-one timeshare presentation (with an American sales guy), which basically wasted the first half of one of our limited number of days. Stay away from "tours" at the Playa Grande resort!!!! (unless of course you want to "buy a condo" there).

This first picture is from the balcony in our room at the Riu Palace. It's technically an "ocean view" room, even though you have to lean out over the railing a bit to really see the ocean.
This is our resort from down the beach about 100 yards.

There is a rope fence about 30 yards out from the hotel, that the local "vendors" are supposed to stay behind. Many locals set up their little stands and harass you to buy their stuff as soon as you walk onto the beach. On more than one occasion did we get offered drugs to smoke or snort, after politely declining their legitimate products.

They had two pools at the resort. One was an activity pool with a volleyball net, and water aerobics classes. The other pool (which we hung out at) was reserved for "quiet". Both of the pools were identical in size and shape and had an "endless" wall overlooking the ocean.

The pools also had a number of these built-in lounge chairs. We soaked in a few rays on these things.
Aside from the near 24/7 buffet food access, you could make reservations to one of their four specialty restaurants for dinner. We were able to get into the "Steakhouse" restaurant, and the Japanese restaurant called Mikasi. The picture below is our sushi-tizer at the Japanese restaurant.
This is a picture from the patio overlooking the ocean at one of the other restaurants, which also had a lunch buffet.

Nate checking out the waves... The conditions in Cabo are not very swimmer friendly. Every once in a while you'd see a guy or two test their luck, only to get pummeled and flipped upside down inside a crashing wave. We stayed out of the ocean for the most part.

Jen with the famous Cabo rock formations in the back ground

On our last day, we took a water taxi over the the rocks and famous arch. The water was pretty rough, but our taxi driver Leo got in there pretty close. There was also a couple of giant sea lions hanging out on one of the rocks.
All in all it was a nice trip, however we both got sick. Nate got the brunt of it with respiratory cold/flu symptoms (Swine flu?) to go along with the typical Mexican gut-rot, but Jen wasn't able to hide from the gut-rot herself. All of this started around our last day, and made for a less-than pleasant travel experience home. We both enjoyed ourselves, but would definitely try someplace else before we head back to Cabo.

Thanks again to Grandma and Grandpa Fedie for watching Daniel and Andrea while we were gone. They had a blast, and Daniel keeps asking to go back to the Farm. And thanks again to Lynette and Katie for helping us with logistics.

4th of July Weekend

We spent the 4th of July weekend at the Fedie cabin in Chetek, WI again this year. The weather was marginal, and Mom got sick Sunday night during the firework show, and was pretty under the weather all day Monday. It rained most of the day Sunday the 4th, but it managed to quit in the evening which offered a break for the fireworks.

This first picture is a picture of the kids at the top of our stairs at home as we're getting ready to head out for the cabin Saturday morning. They were both very excited.

Daniel and Daddy got out for a little tubing behind the boat. Daniel wanted to go really fast this time. We even fell of a couple of times.
Grandpa Fedie babysitting Andrea...... HEY, what is she drinking?

Daniel helped mommy work on a little crafting project. Daniel ended up getting more paint on himself than the project I think.
He even managed to get a tattoo of a heart on his arm

Lastly, Grandpa was blowing bubbles with the kids. Andie especially loved watching Daniel chase after them.