Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of you! Here are a few highlights from our Christmas season.

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MN car trip 2012 part 4

I did get a few other pics at Clarks. Like the huge colony (?) of turkey vultures, of which I only got half:

And Ray stealing apples on the way out - he should have stolen more, they were AWESOME (thanks Brian and Tiff).


Then it was back in the car for the drive home, and some Americana.

MN car trip 2012 pt.. 3?

From Lessingers we went on to Clarks so that T had someone to socialize with.

Actually, we all had lots of fun at Clarks, but most of the pics I took inside can be summed up as "blurry three and five year old". So you'll get pics of our day out in Stillwater instead.

MN car trip 2012- Pics from Jen

As I said, Jen was kind enough to take some pics for us. I'm not linking the actual pics, but if you click you'll get Jen's site to get ahold of her if you'd like them!Email jen@jenlessingerphotography.com. We put Jen under some tight time/childcare/physical constraints, but I still love these. If you want to see previous sessions, click here.







That last shot is an ode to this, and I'm so happy to have one for each!:

MN car trip 2012 pt 1

Yes, we did it- one car, two kids, about 2000 miles (total). For my own recordkeeping, we left at 5 AM on Sept. 16, the day after our trip to Washington. I packed the car while everyone else was at our neighborhood block party. I reallly wasn't ready to hit an airport after two days of flying already that week. I'd stink at Ray's job, apparently.

Anyway...

An artistic view of driving into Nebraska. For some reason we had no 3G service until we left Nebraska, which is when our families saw this pic.


Fun at the rest stop. Not sure why we thought the poles were SO fun, but I think 200-odd miles had something to do with it.

Survival - just before the kid starts to whine, suggest a show.

Eamon learned to climb trees at a rest stop in Iowa.

Ok, not really, but that pair of pics cracks me up. We did have a good long stop to play frisbee and make E run in circles. Ray had the genius idea of bringing a cooler of food, and being able to grab food we wanted whenever really did make the stops more relaxed. E was a trooper in the car, and T did well - but had a 240 mile limit that was amazingly predictable. Case in point, on the way back Ray was putting T in the carseat and told him he had to wait until the west side of Lincoln for his next stop. I was driving and realized eastern Lincoln would be 240 miles, western lincoln would be more like 280. Guess where we should have stopped? Guess which town had a lot of construction and  closed exits...

Anyway, first actual stop: Lessingers.

These two get along so well. I also love how concerned T is about the situation.
However, T got in plenty of his own fun and relaxation.



Perhaps too much relaxation?


Ray and the twins played a lot of games of "melting", which was basically hide and seek for stuffed animals. I tried to get decent pics of the game, but three active 3yo= blurry. I did get these, though, and they don't show the game but I love them:
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Speaking of pics I love- Jen was kind enough to take a few pics while we were there. Next post!

Washington- First Plane Trip

Waiting for the plane.

First flight. Looked like this the whole time.

Entertaining himself waaaay too late at night in Spokane airport.

Enjoying his first hotel stay at Benny's Colville Inn, in Colville, WA..

Cousins and grandma.

Second and third plane flights on the way home.

Probably the only time E has ever been asleep coming off of the plane.

Our trip to Washington was for a sad reason - we lost Ray's grandmother, an amazing woman who really enjoyed life. I am glad, though, that we got all of Ray's family in one place and they got to see the boys, and the boys got to meet their new cousin a week earlier than planned - since the planned meeting was cancelled due to illness. It was a beautiful send off and a good honor to a life well lived. In a week to be thankful, I am thankful for the time we got.

Photobomb

I think it's pretty obvious that I'm generally the one behind the camera. This leads to me begging Ray to "get a decent picture of me."

Unfortunately for Ray, this is harder than it may sound (my brothers can just skip to the comment box now, but remember: I edit the comments. :) ) Consider that I hand him the high-end camera that I rarely let him play with and expect him to get decent shots. Then, consider the other obstacles:

One obstacle:

The photobomb of cuteness. (Even the camera is distracted by this one.)

Wood Park

Those of you from LJ will remember the big wood park that was near our house.

Sadly, it has suffered the fate of many a wooden playground.

It is now plastic. Smaller. Less original.

However, E and Ray still had fun.

First Visit

We made it to see my parents last weekend (sorry, the Minnesota trip is coming, but a lot more difficult this time around - see: two kids, me going back to work sooner, etc. - but it is coming).

Anyway, it was great to get T to see one set of grandparents.




He's very excited about it, as you can see.

Steamboat 2012

We finally made it to Steamboat last month for one of the last open days on Howelson Hill. It was sunny, nearing 50 degrees, and pretty darn comfy when the wind wasn't blowing. Nice corn. A perfect day for this.



Yeah, I'm going to get all picture indulgent on this one, so click for more...

A Vegas Wedding.. in Three Parts: Part 3: Dinner and Going Home

After the gorgeous wedding and a recovery nap, we were ready for dinner. We were also late for dinner, but apparently we hung out in the monorail station long enough for a fashion shoot. Which explains why we were really late for dinner..



We did eventually make it to dinner... click on through for more...

A Las Vegas Wedding... in Three Parts: Part 2: The Wedding

As I mentioned, we got to go to Vegas to see Ray's brother Steve get married.

After our tour on the Strip came the rehearsal dinner, but I have no pictures because E was strangely exhausted and twerplike. Huh.

Anyway, the next day we cleaned ourselves up (after a quick dip in the pool for E's sake) to watch the nuptials.
As clean as we get!

Actual wedding pictures if you click through to the full post....

A Vegas Wedding... in Three Parts. Part 1: The Strip.

I know I still have a lot of travels to get up on this site, but the Grunzinger family could use the smiles this week, so they win.

Ray's brother Steve got married in Vegas last month, which made for a great excuse for our first trip out there as well. So... I'll get to the wedding, but I have to start where we started... the Strip!

We stayed in the Las Vegas Hilton, which was on the monorail, so we took the train to the other end of the Strip and started with the MGM Grand (aka the MGM insanely huge).
E was suitably impressed by New York New York.

So many pictures I had to break this up.. click for more!

Father's Day

We spent part of Father's Day weekend camping in the Buffalo Creek Wilderness Area. For Father's Day E kept Ray up all night. But before that, we had a lot of fun hiking about....





...photobombing each other....


...learning to climb...
...and being tough in general.