Fiasco Fun For Everyone

On Sunday we had a bunch of fans for our morning defeat. Here are just a few of the smaller, much cuter fans!

Duck Soup Softball FIASCO

It's here once again and almost over...The Duck Soup Softball Fiasco! And what a Fiasco it was! Our teams did poorly as usual in the game play part of the tournament (We "won" a game because the team we played didn't have enough players, but lost all the rest of our games!), but we placed 5.5 and 6th in the costume contest.

Yes, I did mean 5.5! Our "Works of Art" themed team actually came in 5th in front of our "Injured Reserve" themed team, but the guy in charge forgot to count them when he added the totals. That's the kind of weekend it was...lots of chaos, but still fun. I personally think the Art team deserved higher by far. They ROCKED the costumes!

Here's our team shots and some action from the weekend. I posted the picture of Mandy batting because you can see the crazy baseline, and because it shows Mandy and Bean playing against us for a team who were new to the tourney and needed to borrow players!)

As always for big events, more pictures to come this week! Huge thanks to Jon, Ben, Alicia, Janelle, Julie, and Donna for playing for the first time ever this year (And maybe Breann, I can't remember if she has played before, but she has been there a few years now). Janelle (seen in red wearing the groucho glasses) was awarded our team's MVP T-shirt for stellar play at Short Stop (I think she picked that position out of the hat, she doesn't usually play short!) She even tried to tackle a guy off the base to make a play:)

TIGF

Although I know it means the end of summer, I'm excited for this time of year because I love the State Fair, Ren Fest and all the other later summer fun that's is coming up. I'm thankful that I get to participate in Duck Soup this weekend without having to be in charge of anything but managing our team (Come see us play, we will in in St. Louis Park all weekend!). I'm thankful that I think we finally have official plans to go to the fair next Wednesday and Ren Fest at the end of September. And September is a buy month for weddings, birthdays and anniversaries too!

Play Date with the Big Kids

Riley and I went to my friend Kim's house today for our play date week continued. Lexi and Riley play great together and Lexi's older sister had some friends over too. The big girls took Riley and Lexi out in the paddle boat a few times and they played on the swings and in the sandbox too...Then we had a pizza picnic in the back yard...Riley is SLEEPING! yeah for Lexi, she wore my kid out!

Last Wedding Pics

Grandma N. and Aunt Patty heatin up the floor, Missy and the kids, and Danny and cousin Kristine on air guitar!

Play Date Week

Most of Riley's friends are either going to pre-school this year or they have mom's who are teachers - so this week is cram as many play dates into a week as we can before all the big kids go back to school!

Today we started with my friend Jess and her little guy Noah. Jess is a teacher so we won't see a lot of her now until winter break. Tomorrow is Kim and Lexi, the later is the youngest of 5 siblings to start school. We will still see her from time to time, but it's going to involve juggling around pre-school schedule and her 3 older brothers' and her sister's activities. and Thursday is Jenny and Aimee and the kids. Ava starts preschool this year too and we will have to do some fancy planning for those play dates after this month...Ahhh, school! Riley can't wait...Mommy sure can!

Here's pics from the Mall Playground. The weather never seems to cooperate for our dates with Jess and we always seem to end up indoors. But It's nice to find close parking that I can take advantage of right now:)

First Dance

More of the Olson Wedding

Here's more from the wedding. Dinner was great, they even had special kids meals that included fruit plates instead of salad. Adrienne liked the honeydew:) Danny O. gave a great speech and the dance floor was hoppin!

Cornfest 2009

Our church festival was this weekend. The kids had a great time playing Dip the Duck, Fish Pond and Birds Nest and came home with lots of crayons, bubbles and other stuff that's already broken. Riley even got to draw the grand prize for the raffle...sadly, she didn't pick Mommy and Daddy to win the $5000 prize:( Oh well, I did win $7 at Bingo!

Our Little Jeffy, All Grown Up!

Last night was Jeff Olson's wedding. Many of you recognize the Olson name from when we lived on Edgemont. Jeff and his family were my second home growing up. We babysat there for many years and hung out there all the time. It's weird for my olson kids to be getting married. Missy got married to Shawny a few years ago. And Danny O. (seen in the pic with Angie's sister, not his GF) has also been seeing someone for a while now...ARGH...I'm old:) but we had a great time at the wedding and Riley made it until 10 p.m. on the dance floor until we made her go home. She crashed hard in the car before we were even a few blocks out of the parking lot! Thanks Jeff and Angie for a great party! More pics to come.

TIGF

Today I have lots to be thankful for! Tonight we are going to the wedding of my "little brother" Jeff and his soon-to-be-wife, Angie. I love Olson weddings because they are very much an extension of my own family. I can't wait to see the Ole kids and all the cousins, aunts uncles and Grandma N. and my second parents growing up, of course, Reed and Diane!

I'm also thankful for a hubby who worries about me when I'm pregnant. I have been having contraction-like pains for a couple of days (they seem to be gone today, another thing for which to be grateful!) But all he wanted me to do yesterday was relax. He even ran some errands for me with Riley so we could get home sooner and lay on the couch. And he put Riley to bed so I could stay in the bath a bit longer.

We had an ultrasound this week that seemed to go well, Josh tells me the scanner is working so I will have those posted this weekend if we have time...This weekend is Cornfest at our church. I hope we have time to spend there, I love bidding on silent auction baskets and hopefully we'll be a few thousand $$$ richer too! (Have to remember to turn in the raffle tix though!)

We also have the Duck Soup Costume Assembly Party tomorrow at our place...should be a fun weekend!

Oh, and one last thing. This week was the last golf week that we will watch the kiddos on Tuesdays. Next week they still have golf, but Katie's in-laws are in town so they will take over on kid duty for the real last week. Thanks Diane! Not that I don't LOVE seeing my kids every week, but I'm back to working Tuesday nights and when I'm pregnant, it can be a long day playing with the kiddos then going to work at night on my feet for 4 hours (I know, boo-who, a whole 4 hours! It doesn't bug me when I'm not preggers, I'm not complaining about my work schedule at all!), especially if Riley doesn't take a nap...so it just takes one thing off my plate for that day, I look forward to our monthly play dates with the kids coming soon though! Here's pics from our last play date. My camera died so you'll have to go to Meg's blog for more.

Ultrasound #1

I will try to upload ultrasound pics soon, but I'm not sure our scanner is in working order. Today we had our first of two planned ultrasounds. This one is an optional test they do as a pre-screening for Downs Syndrome. The last time I was pregnant this was a blood test, but they have now changed it to a finger prick and ultrasound combo test, which was cool because then we got a sneak peak at Baby #2. We won't get the results back for a week or so, but from my untrained eye, everything looked good. Spine, feet, head, hands all there..Baby likes to suck his/her thumb and wiggle a lot. Heat rate was right at middle of the road range (some people say you can tell if it's a boy or girl by the speed of the heart rate. No such luck. But that test will come sometime in October.

Randomness

More from the past week in review. Mostly just park shots when Daddy takes her and we went to feed the ducks this week too. They are getting more friendly as the summer goes on and they know when people have food with them! The silly face pictures is something of a regular face these days. Oh boy...what a clown!

Note: If anyone is waiting for a snapfish set from us soon, it may be a while. They changed their download software and right now there's a glitch for mac users. Apparently this will be worked out soon. Hang tight.

More from the Splash Park

We had a blast at the Splash Park. Here's more of the girls playing in the water and lounging around after. Dan and Sharis, if I know where you're moving to at all, this is right by you...if not, it's right up the street from Bear anyway. It's at the St. Louis Park Rec Center. FUN! When you're settled we should go there for a play date:) There are places even shallow enough for Colvin and Kiley!

TG Girls Nite

Monday night, we had a girls night with my TG friends. We try to get together once a month, but that doesn't happen as regularly as it should. It was good to see the girls and we enjoyed dinner at Osaka in Coon Rapids. Great chef and friendly bar tender who made good non-alcohol drinks:) A lot like Benihana, but the shrimp sauce is not quite the same!

Left to Right: Emily, Meg, Me, Vieve, and Fred (also Meg, but she's still Fred to me!)