Tonight's dinner prayer.

Dear Jesus,

Thank you for...five...six food.

Amen.

Look at me....

I'm Chandler.

















Could I BE wearing any more clothes?








Totals:
4 shirts
2 shorts
1 pair of pants

Oh, the new things...

There have been so many new things in the last few weeks for this branch of the Mathiesen tree. Lots of new things, new colors and a new home (still the rental place of Tim's Granparents). The not new bummer is that there haven't been any bites on our house yet. grrr.
There's also another new "thing" in our new home. The screwdriver is comically pointing (totally by chance - I didn't notice it until I was writing this) to Ellie's diaper free toosh. It's been 3 days and we think she's got the hang of it already! Still an accident or two if she's playing hard but cold turkey is the way to go!
Here's her Elmo potty. Cute, right? NO. There's a button on the front that says things like, "You're growing up just like Elmo" and "Good Job" and "You used the potty." So the first day all she wanted to do was pushed the stupid button and I couldn't get her to even consider going potty. Now when she sits her leg holds it down and it repeats a saying until she moves her leg. OBNOXIOUS. Next time around NONE of our toys (including the potty) will have batteries. The next child will have silent toys.

Meeting Other Mathiesens

We went up to Tim's Uncle Rocky's house to have a Mathiesen family gathering. We were able to meet Tim's Aunt Deborah that we didn't even know he had until a few months ago! We got to see Tim's Auntie Gail too that he hasn't seen in 15 years!










Ellie and her cousin Summer played in the pool in just their diapers for quite a while.

Chicago!

My first stop was in Evanston, IL where my girlfriend Erinn lives. These bottles were out in the yard of the Art Building right out side of the lighthouse. There were tons of these bottles put together into the shape of a bottle and they all had messages inside. This particular one stuck out to me, because it says what I've been telling myself for awhile now.

This is the Bahai (there's a couple ' things in the name but I don't know where they go) temple for all of North America (one for every continent). It's a beautiful building...and the next pic is an illegal one I took from sitting directly below looking up to the dome in the prayer/meditation room.

After I left Evanston I caught up with Genessa in downtown Chicago. We bummed around for the day and then headed to her brother's house in Oak Park (western suburb). This Frank Lloyd Wright's house that's in Oak Park.

This is me stupidly wearing black in Millenium Park. I really wanted to dunk myself in the fountain...maybe grab some change on the way back out....

This was a sign that I found out on the Navy Pier that looks out onto Lake Michigan - I think it's just in case someone was confused on where they should be going....

Super cool Ferris Wheel on Navy Pier. This is Genessa by the way.

And this is Navy Pier.

This is an anchor that was used a Navy ship during WWII. Neato Frito if you ask me.

This is my picture for Mark. There were 7Elevens everywhere....so the last night we were there (we saw Wicked that night - GREAT SHOW) I passed by one and had to take a picture.

Here's 808

This is standing in the front entry looking in....

This is looking to the right from the entry into the dining room.
Then the next room to the right is the living room. The kitchen goes off to the left.

We're on our way!!

We will be official Fergus Falls residents tomorrow!
I think we have packed all we need, hopefully she won't bounce around too much.

Happy July 4th!

We went to the parade!


Ellie got her first sucker!
(I had NO IDEA how to teach her to suck on it!)


Then we celebrated Grandma's birthday!


THEN....the adults went to the fireworks. This is where it got interesting for Jenny. If you know about her paranoia of puking, then you'll understand how distracting it was to be looking at the sky and then noticing a little boy and his dad walking right under the sky where the fireworks were. 2.2 seconds after she noticed them, the kid violently throws up on the sidewalk.

She misssed the rest of the fireworks....cause she was watching to see if the kid would throw up again. It was tempting to go look at it, but Tim wouldn't let her.

Chipotle Bump

Pretty sure it's not much of a baby bump yet.
Mostly it's a 2 month Chipotle bump.
Ellie thinks she's having a baby too.

My New Buddy, Quin

Super cute little peanut....

















Me and my new friend.....

















I'm gonna get hurt for putting this up, but I'm jealous of her labor....25 minutes is insane.

INSANE!!!!!

She IS made of steel.







Go to the Kvenild page to see more pics.

Grandview 2008

She was a bit panicky at first about the water....so we looked at it for a while.

Grandpa's dirty feet was a fabulous distraction.

There was a great playground in front of our place.

Tadbit the frog was her best friend the whole week....
apparently 80 degrees wasn't warm enough for a frog.

I made her throw that one out. She gets a point for creativeness though.

Mini golf was a delight for her....many things to climb and many places to fall into the water.

Time outs were in the fireplace.

Ellie's first pontoon ride. She HATED the life jacket.
I think she said, "All done" about 23,897,538 times.

We ordered her a beef quesadilla, that she poured her milk on

and made a beef shake in her glass.

I'm not so sure it was her favorite meal of the week.

She actually went down the slide!!! Afterwards if you asked her if she went down, she'd say yes. If you asked her if she wanted to go again, she's turn to run and say NO at the same time.

The last day of our trip was Uncle Jeremy's birthday.
So they played together during our brunch.