Up north

After our return from Chicago we headed to northern Minnesota for a week with Stella's other grandparents and her aunts, uncles and cousins. As you can see we packed light. This is not a joke, we actually returned home with that much stuff.

As you might imagine, the week was action packed courtesy of Stella, Nolan, Maggie and Max. A highlight was the large inflatable bouncy thing pictured below that Phil and Linda brought for the kids. The sound of the giant blower being flipped on brought mixed emotions. On the one hand, it brought joy because the kids were entertained and able to burn off some steam. On the other hand, there was a bit of anxiety as the excitement typically ended in some sort of incident reminiscent of an All-Star wrestling match gone wrong. There were no mixed emotions from the kids though. They loved it.

There was also some fishing, boating, golf and of course the mandatory group bath for the kids in the big tub. All around a good trip. Pictures below.

One last thing - Stella chose the north woods to officially seal the deal on potty training. We nailed the pee thing about two weeks ago, but were struggling with pooping. She lacked patience on the toilet and constipation was looming. The ironic part of the whole thing is that Nolan was the one who finally got through to her and convinced her she needed to be patient and sit on the toilet for awhile. Nolan, you may remember, was the one who had mastered pooping in the toilet only to voluntarily abandon the practice and torture his mother with strategically released turds. I hope he doesn't have any more advice on the topic for Stella. At any rate, we are pretty much diaper free!