Lake Superior

Chadd surprised me last weekend with a romantic getaway on the motorcycle to beautiful Ashland, Wisconsin. We stayed at the classy Chequamegon Hotel on Lake Superior.

The view was gorgeous!

The hotel was grand! It was old fashioned. Even the lobby desk was built to look like an old fashioned desk. And the sitting room with couches next to the lobby was called the parlor and it had beautiful old furniture.

Here's Chadd relaxing in back of the hotel. Above where Chadd is we dined and enjoyed the view until the mosquitoes got too bad, then we had to move inside!

Thank you, Chadd, for a great bike ride and more!

2nd Haircut

Christopher is looking more and more like a handsome little man! No more baby! Last time I took Ashly to the dentist we heard that Christopher has an admirer at daycare. The assistant to Ashly's orthodontist whose daughter is 4 and goes to the same daycare as Christopher, told her mom that he had a boyfriend at daycare. When she asked who it was she said his name was Christopher! And she told her mom that he came from the baby room, but now he's bigger!!!

Pickling Season

The pickling season is finished and Chadd's first year at it was very successful!

He ended up with roughly 57 quarts in the picture above. And we probably have opened 4 jars or so already.

Great job Chadd!!!

Shaving

This was so ridiculously cute one day, Christopher found Chadd's electric razor in the bathroom and he grabbed it, turned it on and started "shaving." The funniest part of the whole deal was he mimicked Chadd perfectly. He has watched Chadd shave many times and he copied him perfectly. It was a laugh-out-loud moment. This is an example of the joys of children!

18 Month Checkup

Remember this pudgy little baby? Can you believe he is already 18 months old!!!

Today Christopher had his 18 month well child visit. I did not have any concerns other than his eczema is still pretty bad, but there isn't anything much to do about that so I don't worry about it. He has a prescription for 2.5% hydrocortisone to treat it. I have noticed he is trying to talk more, for example, he will say "hot" when I give him warm food and when I ask him what a duck says, he says "quack, quack" (most the time!). We are also working on names of body part with the help of the song "head, shoulders, knees and toes!"

He hasn't gained any weight since his 15 month appointment, but he's a good eater so no worries there! All his running around and nonstop moving is burning those calories!

His stats:

Weight: 25 lbs 5 oz. (40 Percentile)
Height: 32.9 inches (64 Percentile)
Head circumference: 18.5 inches (26 Percentile)

Next appointment is a two year checkup, other than going in for a flu shot in the fall. I wish him, us and all of you a healthy fall and winter. Kinda nervous about what he'll catch, but we'll take it as it comes.

So Dak: Day 4

On Saturday we were greeted by a goat as we entered the Badlands Loop.

It was just beautiful. I think the vastness can be compared to the Grand Canyon, just a thought since I've yet to see the canyon.

Here's Ashly in her bright new Sturgis shirt!

Me and my wonderful husband!!!!

This is only a small snippet of time when he was quietly sleeping. Most of the trip was too hot and too much off normal routine which caused lots of melt downs and whining. I don't blame him for acting that way because he just doesn't understand yet, but let's just say we only made it through because there was three of us against one!

Beautiful!

There were a couple tee pees by the visitor center.

Here we are in 1880s Town. I was pretty excited to see this place and thought it would be a great stop to break up the trip homeward. It turns out that it was so hot that Christopher didn't want to run around, he wanted to be held. Chadd is the only one out of us three that can successfully carrying him around for any length of time now that he is so big! We ended up cutting this part of the trip short.

Here's props from the movie "Dances with Wolves"

The town was neat and there was even carriage rides. It was too bad we couldn't get the full experience.

This is shelves at the "store"

Jail cell

Post Office

This is our official last stop before spending the night in Sioux Falls and heading home on Sunday. This is the inside of the corn palace in Mitchell, SD.

Outside of the corn palace. I thought the outside was really spectacular, but I thought there would be more to see inside.

Chadd was eating his licorice pipe. He remembered eating these as a kid.

Ashly is eating her caramel corn on the cob from the corn palace.

Ok...here it is....presenting Chadd's South Dakota souvenirs. And I'm the nice wife that let him have them!!!! These are steer horns we now have above our front door. He really fell in love with Texas Longhorns, but they were just too long to fit in the car so he had to settle on these.

And...a buffalo head skull thing. What can I say? Chadd loves it!