LietzauFamily

Gabe and I went fishing last night at Jacquie and Carol’s.  We went for a canoe ride with Jacquie; I was in the front, Gabe sitting on a tackle box in the middle, and Jacquie in the back of the canoe.  We went to Hidden Lake rather then Sweeney Lake – Hidden doesn’t allow motorboats so it’s better fishing, at least at the time of day we went.  We caught so many fish!

Jacquie and Gabe’s poles were set up for crappie, and mine for blue gill and sunnies.  It turns out that’s where it’s at – as fast as I could cast I was pulling in fish!  So we switched over Gabe’s pole, and he was catching them too.  End of the night, Gabe caught the biggest crappie and sunny, while I caught the most fish, as well as the biggest fish – a nice small mouth bass.  Almost caught a wee little pike but he jumped off.  There is a nice variety of fish in Hidden and Sweeney Lake, and I look forward to fishing again!

This June we went to New Harmony, Indiana and stayed in the family cabins at Harmonie State Park.  It was hot – upper 90’s – and it was humid.  But it was fun to see everyone, and neat to share with Gabe things I did when I was a kid, so all and all a good trip for us.  We ended up with lots of pictures, between my camera, Katie & Tom’s camera, and some Grandpa Joe took at Grandma ‘Nita’s.  I want to give a big thank you to Tom for letting me have a copy of the pictures – he was the most on the ball of all of us to remember to actually USE a camera!  So a big chunk of the photos I’m going to share are ones he took.

The first group of pictures are ones that didn’t really fit into a category.  Shots from around the campground of things that caught our eyes, or cute kids, or what-not.  Lily ended up in a lot of pictures (cute little baby!), as well as snakes, for some reason!  Kelly, I”m surprised at how few shots everyone got of baby Shelby.  I did take some – but they ended up being little blurs as he ran by, bounced up and down, or was swung from our arms on a walk.  Very few turned out!  He just doesn’t hold still anymore.  Maybe next time.

On the second hottest day (nearly 100, full humidy, and super-sticky (what were we thinking?)), a few of us explored the town of New Harmony.  Grammy K, Katie, Tom, Lily and I walked all around town.  I’m happy to report that the Labyrinth is doing really well – thicker and nicer then ever.  The town itself is picturesque with great historical buildings and homes, lovely gardens, and quaint shops.  Definately a good town to walk around (but maybe not when it’s that hot (are you sensing a theme yet?)).

Either I’ve forgotten it, or we never went across it when I was a kid, but there is a GREAT old metal bridge.  It connects the town of New Harmony to Illinois, spanning over the Wabash River.  It’s amazing – so high, and old, and kind of rickety looking.  You have to pay a dollar to cross it – but it’s so worth it.

On the HOTTEST day of the trip we went to Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana.  Yep – Santa Claus is the name of the town.  It’s next to Christmas Lake, and every store and street has something to do with holidays.

It was a good day to go to Holiday World because it has a HUGE water park with the longest water ride and the highest water ride in America (so their signs say).  We didn’t go on either – but we played in a fun kiddie water park most of the time which helped us stay about as cool as we could.  We ended up with a hot sticky baby though, and had to head home early.  On the way out we saw the diving show – and they had somebody who set themselves on fire, and jumped 60 ft down into a tank of water.  It was actually pretty cool!

There you go – that’s about half the photos from the Indiana trip.  I’ll add the rest soon!

We are so antsy to get outside once the weather warms up in spring.  As soon as it does – out come the blankets – Yay!

Every chance we get to go outside, we take.  We drag out a blanket, lots of toys, and plop Lily down in the middle of the blanket.  She’s mobile now though, so every once and while you have to pull her back onto her blanket as she’s wiggled out into the grass.  She loves to scoot around – arching her back and kicking out with her feet, or rolling over onto her side and wiggling like a worm.  Silly girl!

Gabe has been enjoying the nice weather too.  He will play with Lily (he likes to blow bubbles or tell her a story – either one will thrill her to no end) and play exploring games in the backyard.

These are all the pictures I ended up taking when Katie and Tom were visiting the week before Easter.  Tom had business training in Minnesota and we were so glad we got to play host while they were both in state.  We had such a nice visit – we bought and installed a basket ball hoop, visited Stillwater and hit the antique stores, celebrated Tom’s birthday, hit the Mall of America and Underwater World, tackled the sorting out the garage, had a fire and roasted s’mores.  Such fun!

Lily really likes her thumb, and 9 times out of 10 it’s her left thumb (Is that a preference? Will I have a lefty?).  She soothes herself to sleep, or tries to eat it when she’s hungry.  It’s a nice little trick she’s learned.  I took a little video of her sucking her thumb in her swing – she’s pretty much asleep.  But it’s cute!

I also took another video of Gabe and Lily cuddling.  I was sitting with her on the couch and Gabe asked if he could hold and cuddle her (how cute!).  So I handed her to him and he talked to her and patted her head.  He really liked it.  I snapped a small video of it, but it’s a bit dark.  Also, it made me realize how squeaky both Gabe and I get when talking to babies!

Seeing this made me decide to get a little Flip.  I like our camcorder we have, but it’s as old as Gabe, and not as easy to take around and whip out at a moments notice.  It’s also quite the process to get the videos off it and “webify” them.  I tried using the built in movie camera bits with my regular still camera, but I wasn’t to happy with how the videos turned out.  So hopefully the Flip will work for us.  Stay tuned!

Today we had a very fun sledding and skating adventure!  We bought skates today (it took us 4 stores till we found some – most of the stores were out of kid skates this time of year!) and decided to test them out.  So we loaded up Lily in her little sled, grabbed the skates, and headed out to the park.

Lily was kind enough to let Gabe put his skates in the sled he didn’t have to carry them (plus she’s so small she still had lots of room in the sled).  Gabe was very excited to pull Lily to the park.

We had just barely enough snow on the roads to use the sled.  The last few days have been very warm so the roads have mostly melted off.  But there was just enough along the edges, except for crossing intersections (SCRAPE across the bottom – ah well!)  Lily is wearing the bunny snowsuit Angie got her for Christmas.  Between that, and the tiny sled, everyone we passed went, “Awwwwwww!”

Once at the park, I took over pulling Lily to the skating rink while Gabe took a few runs down the sledding hill on his sled.  By the time I’d walked to the rink, he was ready to go.  It went well – Gabe only fell down a couple of times.  I wiped out on the first step on my skates (the slush from the warming house to the rink was SLIPPERY).  After that, we both skated very nicely, Gabe shuffle skating, with me pulling Lily on her sled.  I didn’t get pictures of the skating on account of having my hands full (and trying not to fall down).  Next time!

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you had a wonderful holiday.  We had a  crazy-busy one.  Wednesday (23rd) we went to Indiana – we were planning on going down the 26th, but Snowmageddon came to town and the roads were suppose to be terrible Thursday-Sunday, so we left early.  We had good driving conditions until just after the Illinois line but before Portage, when everything go slick and snow was blowing mixed with sleet.

We saw snow blowing up in the median and thought it was a plow truck on the opposite bound lanes, but then realized it was a truck and trailer barrel rolling (side over side) through the median right towards us!  We slow downed carefully (not wanting to start spinning uncontrollably) and thank goodness the truck stopped about 20 feet from us.  Talk about heart pounding.  The truck landed right side up, and didn’t look damaged, so hopefully the person was okay, although pretty shaken up I bet.  A snow plow came up and stopped so I know they were going to help the driver.  So scary!

We made it in one peice, and after that it was a fun whirlwind of party after party – we had short ribs one night, beef tenderloin the next, then ham, then turkeys – with all the trimmings.  So much good food I think I came home 5-10lbs heavier.  Good visits with everyone.  Only thing I really regret is not being able to go and see Angie and Dad’s place (as they both live in the same housing development).  I really wish we could have done that.  Next time.

These are the only pictures I took while in Indiana:

Aren’t they cute?  That’s Elianna – my cousin Travis’ little girl who is 3.  It was nice she was there, because otherwise there isn’t anyone near Gabe’s age in my family.  On Mike’s side there are 5 cousins all pretty near his age, but usually when he goes to Indy – no kids!  Kelly’s little Shelby is just a year old, and that’s all the cousins right now.  Someday there will be more, but he’s going to be so much older then them.  Now I know how Travis must have felt with all his little cousins.

All in all it was a great visit.  The only downside is we all got sick!  Boo!  It was inevitable though – all the people, all the places, all the germs running around.  Poor Lily got her first cold:

Poor thing!  It just breaks your heart when itty bitty ones get sick.  They look so pitiful!  Get better soon (and the rest of us too)!

I want to hear your best Timberwolves howl, and let’s howl at the moon:

That’s the moon at the Target Center where we saw a Timberwolves game.  SO MUCH FUN!  Gabe and Mike had gone earlier as a father/son evening when our neighbors gave us tickets (they had a recital to go to instead, so they gave them to us – how cool are our neighbors?).  They had so much fun, we decided to go again, and when Gabe got a free ticket through school, and reduced tickets for adults, we just had to go!

We had a blast – we had excellent seats (they upgraded us to really good seats for free, even though we already had reduced tickets – such a nice ticket agent).  Gabe loves all the atmosphere and drama.  When the game starts, all the lights go off, and the moon lights up, then everyone starts howling (very neat) and then the announcer introduces the players.  Once the game starts, there is also a howl-o-meter, which comes up whenever the opposing team shoots a free-throw.  So we all howl like mad, I guess to throw them off their shot, but even if we don’t, it’s pretty hilarious.  Gabe gets so into it – I’m surprised his voice isn’t hoarse by the end of the night.

The Timberwolves won too, and they won the last time Gabe went – but have lost pretty much every other game this year.  So if they want to win more – maybe they should give Gabe tickets to the games – he seems to be pretty lucky!  Gabe knows most of the starting players, but at this age, his favorite “person” is Crunch – the mascot.  He got to sit on “Christmas” Crunch’s lap and Mike snapped a picture, but unfortunately it didn’t turn out:

Too bad it’s blurry – it’s a funny photo.  The Timberwolves Dancers would hop out of the photos when little kids posed with Crunch, and hop back in for the adults and teens.  I guess they thought Gabe was big enough because they stayed in his photo – hah!

Such a great night – and thank you to Jacquie and Carol who were nice enough to watch Lily!