July 2014: Berry Pickin and Grass Rollin' (Summer Lovin')

We've had a beautiful Summer this summer and it has been so nice to have a yard and a garden and be able to be outside lots this summer due to the very nice (not too hot...not too humid - most of the time) summer! Here's just a few things that we have been up to this summer...

We've spent lots of time in our garden (more on this to come later)...

We went berry picking one day (on the hottest day of the summer, so unfortunately, we didn't last very long).

We've found some hills to roll down...

And We've spent many days enjoying the local parks...

And as we near the end of summer, I am thankful for the little things in life. The spending time together as a family moments. The summer weather. Living a crazy life and still finding time for these small things is what makes life great! Hope everyone has had a chance to enjoy the small [and great] things this summer too! 

July 2014: A June Recap...

Here's a sort of "photo-dump" as to what we've been up to during June. All I can say is we are LOVIN' this summer stuff...

Bonfires and being outside in our bug-free yard (thanks to mosquito squad!! Best investment/splurge ever!!)

Working lots...hanging out with teenagers...getting a twins game in here and there, and helping out at Feed My Starving Children too (day trip to the cities!!) - and I even got to invite my nephew to join us for the day...

My cousin Abbie Graduated!!! We had a great time celebrating her at her grad party...and the kids loved the candy bar!!! I can't believe she's done with high school, and am so excited for her to start her new adventures at Iowa State!

We snuck in a beach day with some great friends for a long over-due playdate with all our babies!! So fun to all be together and be going through this time of life together too!! (Shout-out to SueLynn & Aaron for their super cute baby Eliana and Maggie & Scott for their super cute baby Hailey!!)

On Wednesday nights, my church holds worship outside at our "Maria Chapel" which is a tiny little old church that we still own. It also happens to be located on a gorgeous lake with lots of property, so our church takes advantage of that and we have outdoor worship on Wednesdays around a campfire with a hot dog & brat roast after worship. My girls LOVE sitting on a blanket for worship, and I LOVE the casualness of the time I get to spend with my congregation people! 

And our girls still LOVE going to "school" (aka daycare). Every day, Adelyn asks if she gets to go and is very excited when the answer is yes. They are only in daycare 3 days a week, but we are so blessed to have found a great center for them to be a part of where the staff are incredible with kids' developmental needs, play needs, and creativity needs!! 

(ok, so we may not have accomplished the writing thing at 2 years old...but we are working on it! She at least recognizes her letters!)

The girls made these cards at "school" too, and they pretty much sum up the dad (aka Michael) that he is! Happy Fathers day to Michael this past June also!! We had a very chill, but good day celebrating him!

Both Michael and my schedules are very different from our schedules during the school year, and because of that, we are able to take some days off here and there and enjoy some extra days off with our kiddo's (and not pay for day care those days! Score!!). We are DEFINITELY lovin' this summer stuff....

Hope you had a great June too!! 

June 2014: A long-winded update

Here's a quick summary of things that have been going down in the Carmack house:

1. Adelyn is OBSESSED with dresses. Of course, her most fancy ones too...so she wears them to school, she wears them to bed, and she wants to wear them in the bath except I tell her that they will get wet and then she won't be able to wear them and then she will finally take off

2. We are in week 2 of potty training for Adelyn also. During the week it is awesome!! On the weekends, we have been going down to the cities, or to do things in Brainerd, and so we put her back in a pull-up...I don'[t know what else to do!! She falls asleep in the car and she would pee for sure if we didn't have a diaper on her...but overall, she's doing great and so far can decipher when she has "big girl underwear" on vs. a pull-up. 

3. Adelyn got a "big girl bed" this weekend and loves it...except she doesn't love to GO to bed in it by herself. All of a sudden, everything is "scary" (even though she never had a problem in her crib) and she just wants to continually get in and out of bed because...well...she can! So Michael and I have resorted to laying with her until she falls asleep which luckily has been about 7 minutes on average per night. I'll have to "wean" out of that eventually, but for now, it's what works for us. 

4. Both girls are in a sleep transition stage that we call, "damned if you do...damned if you don't". Adelyn is on the verge of giving up naps all together but still gets extremly crabby during the early evening when she doesn't nap. However, if she DOES nap, then she has a heck of a time falling asleep at night when we put her down (we can put her down at 8pm and she will be up in her room singing and talking until 10:30-11pm!!!). Damned if you do...damned if you don't.

Olivya is transitioning from 2 naps a day to one nap a day. When she has 2 naps a day, she won't go down until 9:30-10pm or so (when her bedtime is typically 7:30/8pm). When she has just 1 nap a day, she will go down right at 7, but from 5:30-7pm, it's melt-down central. One or two? I never know...damned if you do, damned if you don't. 

5. I never EVER thought I could be so darned busy in my life. Don't get me wrong, I love my job as a pastor to Children, Youth and Families, but in my setting I also do all the other pastoral duties (hospital visits, funerals, weddings, baptisms, home visits, preaching and leading worship, attend a bazillion meetings, etc.) and good gosh! I seriously never thought this job would ever be so busy. Basically I'm a youth director, children's minister, AND a pastor all at the same time. Im never caught up and could work 100 hours a week (I currently work 60-70 on average) and still never be totally caught up. Props to all those pastors that I had growing up whom I thought only worked on Sundays!!  Plus, having a spouse in ministry and trying to juggle our night and weekend schedules with also being parents and coordinating the girls' daycare and "school" schedules is just plain cray cray (that's crazy for those of you who don't hang out with teenagers day in and day out). Not that I'm making excuses, but that's why I (for the life of me!) can't keep up with this blog like I used to! Oh yeah - that and two very active and demanding children running around that need something every. minute. of the day!! (Luckily, they are pretty great kids that I love...)

6. I got in a pool day on one of my days off!!! yayyyy!!!

7. My nephew Brady graduated from 6th grade this week!!! He's off to Jr. High next year (whaaaatttttt? Crazy talk)

8. Misquitos have been crazy in our yard...so much so that we hired a professional company to come out and spray our yard all throughout the summer so that we can actually enjoy being outside (since our days to be outside in this state are very sacred!!). This is the first summer since having kids that we have actually had a descent yard to play in and man are we loving it!!! We are outside almost all day, every day and we can even leave the patio door open to the deck and the girls can go in and out when they want and we can see them out the window and sliding door of the kitchen (another small town perk to be able to let our kids play outside on their own if we have to run inside to switch laundry, etc....we just call out to whatever neighbor is outside at the time, "Can you keep an eye? I'm running inside" and the neighbors love it!).

And that, my friends....if life these days. 

January 2013: This & That...

Here's a real-life, inside scoop of what our life is REALLY like!! I mean, sure...we try to make the best out of every situation and keep positive and have fun in life, but let's get real...sometimes life just takes over and we do everything in our might to just keep on swimming. So, without further delay, here's a glimpse of what January at the Carmack household was REALLY like...

First of all, Olivya didn't sleep for a month. That's 4 weeks people! Not a single night. Since the first week in December (we were in Texas when it started), Olivya has woken up every FREAKIN hour and cries until I pick her up, or give her a bottle, or give her a pacifier, or swaddle her in a blanket. But of course, I never knew which one she wanted, and she would never settle for the one she didn't want, so sometimes it took a half hour to get her back to sleep, only to be woken up an hour later again. It was a horrible 4 weeks and I have thanked God 10 times/day for the past 4 days because she has started sleeping through the night again!! Halleluijah!!

Did I mention it was awful? Like worse than when she was a newborn. She was a mess. I was a mess. (And of course Michael and Adelyn slept through it all except when I would get so fed up and kick Michael to get out of bed because I just couldn't bring myself to get up one more time. And he was more than willing to get up with her (don't get me wrong)...but he has the natural ability to sleep through her screaming, so I got the joy of waking up to it every time.

Not good people...not good. Yep, it sucked.

And not that I would have had the energy anyway, but it's been ungodly cold here for the past few weeks! Just make sure to read the "Feels like" temperature below the actual temperature. It's brutal, which (in my opinion) makes me twice as crabby at the world.

The only saving grace during our cold weeks was my cousin Sarah (well, technically my cousin's daughter...but we don't get technical in this family) came and spent an entire week with us and hung out and even watched the girls every day when Michael and I had to work. The girls LOVED having their cousin Sarah here!! We loved it too...we even got some good games of cards in after the girls went down at night...(Thanks Sarah for hanging out with us all week!)

But don't let that make you forget how cold it's been here...

We also experienced our first "winter" electric bill that included all of our electric heat to heat our house in this insanely cold weather. Let's just say, Michael and I both had a slight heart attack when we opened that bill. Almost immediately, Michael went around to all the thermostats that control our electric heat and turned them all down to 55. Yep, 55 degrees. (Since then I've convinced him to turn them up to 60 so that we at least don't see our breath in our house). So, to stay warm, we resorted to building forts and sitting in them all night. You think I'm kidding, but all 4 of us literally sat in this fort for a majority of the night for at least 4 days last week. It was that cold. 

Everyone always asks us how we are liking small town living, and the truth is that we really like it. We just wish that the small town could be closer to a bigger city (the twin cities would be ideal!), but I guess that would be counter productive. So we've decided to embrace it just the way it comes. And that includes looking forward to our weekly trip to Brainerd on Fridays (our day off) to run errands, go to Costco, and grocery shop (and get Caribou Coffee!! My favorite part!). I can't decide if it is sad or cute that Adelyn is so excited every time we pull into Costco and Target (She literally squeals with delight as she says the store's name over and over again). 

And of course, we make it back to the twin cities a fair amount too! Last weekend we headed back as I got to throw my friend Maggie a baby shower with my friend SueLynn and another friend of Maggie's. We chose the theme "You are my Sunshine", as we needed a gender neutral theme (they aren't finding out the sex of the baby) and so of course, we had to have all yellow food. It was a great day celebrating Maggie and Baby Waterman. I can't wait to meet this little one in just a few short weeks:) 

And so there you have it, oh faithful blog readers. There's some of the in's and out's...the joys and challenges...the crazies and normals...that we call our life. Oh - and we love it all....most of the time. 

October 2013: Visitors to "Home"

This past weekend was the first time that we traveled back "home" (aka the cities) since we moved up here to Aitkin. On one hand, it didn't feel like we were visitors, but on the other hand, it was weird to be guests in another home (thanks mom and dad!) and not have a place that is ours in a town that we have come to know as "home".

We were only home for 2 short nights, but we sure did pack things in while we were home. The main reason we headed back to the cities for the weekend was to celebrate Katie's (my bff since Kindergarten!!) graduation of earning her doctorate degree!!! That's right folks...my bff is a freakin' doctor!!!!! She has worked her a** off for this degree, and I couldn't be more proud of her!! She officially is a doctor of psychology and is absolutely amazing at what she does. I could go on and on about her because I am just so darn proud, but I'm also kicking myself right now because somehow I managed to forget to take a single picture of her celebration!!! WHAT was I thinking?? There are very few times in life when I forget to take pictures and regret it, and this would be one of those life moments that I really wish I would have gotten a picture or two of us (or at least her!). Well, anyway, she had a great celebration of this incredible achievement at the Lake Elmo Inn with great company, and amazing food and drinks! If you happen to run into her sometime, throw her a big huge congrats!

So while we were back in the cities to celebrate Katie, we also packed quite a few other things into our weekend....here's some of the things that we did...

We went to one of Brady's Football games...

We met our friends' Suelynn & Aaron's new baby girl Eliana! (Absolutely precious!)

We had a play date and then a lunch date at Panera with cousin Claire (And we got to see Jen & Doug too!)

We also did lots and lots of shopping that we can't do up north anymore (gap, old navy, dicks, babiesRus, etc.) and stocked up on some much needed much wanted items. Of course we hit up chipotle too (one of my most missed food places), and I took advantage of being in the cities and got a much needed pedicure.

We sure did pack a lot of stuff into one weekend, and when we got back up to Aitkin on Saturday night, we were welcomed by this...

Yep, it was good to be home, and even better to remember that God is good and has blessed us with a great community to be a part of where we feel welcomed and our girls are VERY well cared for by many people;) It's our home away from the home as we have always known, and we are blessed.