Life in the S L O W lane? yes please...

Well I wrote this post below this past Monday and have only been able to post it with pictures today, Saturday morning - i guess its symbolic of our lives at this point! However I might be able to do some cost-co size posting today, we'll see...

Yesterday, after only being back in az for less than a week, i realized how fast life was passing by. So in an attempt to slow my life down a tad (and recover some sleep) i just laid in bed and listened to music for awhile. I was just there in my thoughts for a couple of hours thinking about our past summer and future months. It feels like we are constantly in the HOV lane and have been given a pass to go 20 mph over the speed limit. So i've been wanting to dig my heels in to attempt a slow down. Not sure that it will work for quite some time, but its always worth a shot...

So seeing that my last post was about the squirrel man here is my final update on him -- i saw him a total of three times during my duration in MN. Twice he was with squirrel in tow (one alive, one dead - perhaps the same squirrel? but doubtful). I'm excited to try and observe him when we are back in october but we'll see if i'm THAT lucky.

Here are some of my pic's from the lovely trip:

Squirrel man maybe you can see if you click and zoom - not sure.

hanging out with the GOOFY nieces

I got to see many old friends and family
At the zoo after school - can you tell what kind of school jewel goes to? :) Two wonderful things: coffee and lindsay
and frog hunting. well really i got to do/see a lot of my favorite things on this trip - it was muchos fun!

two days in a row

okay a quick update - i saw the squirrel man again today. Today he was sans squirrel though but he still obviously is intriguing to me. Maybe he lives back in the woods...

yeaw you betch'a

It's really no joke. There are varying levels of minnesota talk but its quite entertaining and I realize this probably only from living away from here. I enjoy going to stores and talking to the cashiers because its fun to hear them say oh hi! how are you tOday? and re-live all the little sayings. one of my favorites from a best friend's mom: OOh but fun! Here are some more: OOh suure, OOh yeaw, well ya knOw. As i write this i find that its maybe too hard to pass on the sounds of these words to make this worthwhile...

So I'll move on to one of my favorite sights since i've been back:

• Today I saw a man with a flannel shirt on, walking down the road carrying a metal cage. I was approaching him as I was driving being very curious. As I drive by I see a grey squirrel pacing back and forth in the cage. WHAT?! was my reaction. I was so shocked and amused that I hurried back to my parents house (the direction the man was walking) to park the car, get out and hoped to get a picture. I got one - but unfortunately he entered the woods across from the house and the tall grasses hid the cage with the squirrel. So i have a pic from far away of the man but no squirrel in the cage. I am a bit saddened. What do you suppose the squirrel was - a pet or dinner?
  

precious times

I'm back in Minnesota this week for my best friend, andrea's wedding which is on Saturday. I've been having so much fun and been able to see so many friends. It has been a full year since i was back last time for gabe and my wedding. It hasn't seemed like a year- until I saw my nieces. Jewel and Anika have grown up so much in a year, its amazing how fast we grow when we are young. We have had a blast playing many games: hopscotch, teeter toter, swinging, going to the zoo, hanging upside down on the jungle gym...

Dad and I went fishing yesterday and got many bites but unfortunately we didn't get any fresh fish to fry that night. It was great to be out on the lake again though. We saw 5 bald eagles and a juvenile loon that was eying our large bait.

I love fall in minnesota. It is absolutely beautiful and allows you to enjoy hot coffee, which has been awhile for me to do. One thing i've observed from living in arizona is that i feel like it has made me "packing dumb". I never pack enough warm clothes for up here, or it may be that i no longer own warm enough clothes. In arizona it's always sunny and warm - not so much the case else where in the states and especially in the fall of minnesota. So lucky for me my parents allow me to store warm old clothes here and i'm using those more than i always think i would.

I' have fun pictures I'll post once i'm back in arizona, so check back.

joyfully laborous labor day weekend

I must say this "update" comes late because i've been knocked out for the past 4 days painfully with what I now believe was the flu. I'm happy to see that we have some people that look for these updates though...thank you joey :) As life gets busier these next few months, I will do my best to update...


Our plans for the long weekend consisted of relaxing and doing whatever we wanted really. This was mostly based on the fact that in the next 3 months we have 3 weekends with nothing planned. So we gleefully did things with our hands this weekend. Gabe and Chris built some REALLY fun games and of course we tested them out. I baked banana bread, honey whole wheat bread, and made potato salad all from scratch. It was quite enjoyable.

Gabe hung a "double" clothesline for us, I love it!

The MEN are building happily
The banana bread and whole wheat honey bread
The potato salad