fun week full of family...

At the beginning of July, we moved our office to the guest room, and planned to move our guest room down to the basement bedroom (NOT as scary as it sounds - it is really nice! Please, still come and visit us!). This required cleaning out the basement bedroom (used as a catch all before) and there was a lot of work to do, but we weren't getting guests until the end of them month so thought we had plenty of time. But, being procrastinators and all, we were of course working on it last minute. The evening before S asked if we could give my folks $60 and send them to a hotel. =) Later that night when we had more finished and all that needed to be done was move the bed, he asked if we could give my dad a hammer and my mom the sheets and tell them to move it themselves. =) But we finished the next morning, just in time!

husking sweetcorn with Boppa

Our week of R's started on our anniversary. My mom and dad drove all the way up to watch the kids (thank you!!!!) so S and I could have an anniversary date. We went out the day after our anniversary, and had a lovely time! We ate at a great steakhouse called Pittsburgh Blue, then strolled through the fancy shopping area, and ended the evening buying many bottles of wine at Trader Joe's (all things that we would NOT do with our children along!). Dad also installed a garage door opener for us while they were here (thank you!!!!) and Mom and Grace and I got out for a little shopping too. They left Saturday afternoon.


Sunday evening our second wave of R's arrived. My brother M and his lovely wife A came to spend a week with us! Monday and Tuesday we had a great time hanging out, playing with the kids, eating pizza, going to IKEA, and seeing some awesome double full rainbows (sorry no pics!).

My brother M is as big a Twins fan as S and I are, but unfortunately the Twins were on the road while they were here. So we did the next best thing - took a tour of the new Twins stadium on Wednesday morning. And now for a bajillion pictures of the fun!

family photo on Gold Glove statue out on the plaza while we waited for the tour to start

The stadium is fantastic and built with as many MN materials as possible so it is not just a baseball stadium, but a tribute to MN as well (and love that skyline!).

The stadium is also part Twins history museum as there are artifacts and photos and areas dedicated to all the great Twins' hall of fame players and also great moments in Twins' history. Many of these we would not have been able to see if we would have not taken the tour though, as there are a lot hung in areas you have to have big $$ tickets to be in.

Of course there were a lot of photo op's for M & A (including one of A by a picture of Safeco field - home to the Mariner's, her favorite team)...

...and us!

The kids were troopers, but by the end of the tour, their expressions in this picture say it all: "are we done yet?"

After one last picture in the Twins' dugout, we look on the field to see...

...Justin Morneau! He was hurt so not on the road with the Twins, but at home rehabbing. G had a good time telling Boppa and everyone else who we saw (even if she didn't really understand why it was a big deal =).

When the tour was finally done, we went into the Twins' store, squished a penny, and hugged the big stuffed bear to return smiles to the faces of the kids before we went home.

We drove around downtown for a bit, visiting the area where M lived for a summer, and then went home for naps for all. Wednesday evening our friends, M&A, watched the kids so that we could go out for supper (thank you!!!!) with just us big kids. I told S if he wasn't careful, I was going to start to get used to this going out to eat without the children thing (it does not happen very often)!

We found a great pub with awesome food and it was a beautiful night for sitting outside, too.

Thursday was a day for hanging out, playing Carcassone, hanging art, reading books to the kids, grilling brats and eating the fresh sweet corn and beans M&A brought with them, more Carcassone and ice cream. And staying up WAY too late talking!

M&A left on Friday morning. We made sure to get a few more photos in before they left. We had a great week with them (thank you!!!!)!

Oh, but the R fun didn't stop there! Friday evening we drove to the south side of the cities to visit my brother L and his fiancee J! Cargill, where L works, bussed the whole plant up to the cities for the weekend where they got to go to a Twins game and stay in a nice hotel. We of course took the opportunity to go and see them.

L & J were recently engaged, and we are so excited for the both of them (don't they look so happy?!!)! Even though it was a short visit, we had a good time and the kids especially enjoyed jumping all over their hotel room and Uncle L!