February 2015: Extravaganza & Charlye's First Trip

Charlye's first traveling experience happened back in January when she traveled with me to a work conference in Detroit. This is an annual conference for those who work with and in Youth Ministry in the ELCA, as I do. Since I am still nursing Charlye, it would have been hard/impossible to leave her home for 5 days so we brought her with...she was a champ! Her first plane ride was pretty uneventful...hurray for another good flyer!

 

 

And Charlye even had her friend Lucy to enjoy the extravaganza with! (My friend Sarah's baby girl).

 

 

Yep, Charlye was a champ all weekend! She got to learn about the book of Mark from a great story teller (and one of Michael's old professors from TLU)...

 

 

And she got to hang out with Michael from Lost and Found, which is a music group that I thoroughly enjoy (they sadly are retiring after this year! Nooooo!!!).

 

She got changed right in the middle of the conference...(hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go...and the Hyatt Detroit isn't so great about having changing tables in their public bathrooms).

 

She got to endure the daily Starbucks trip...

 

 

She got to hear Bishop Eaton speak (the current presiding bishop of the ELCA)

 

And she got to hang out with lots of friends and co-workers!

 

 

While Detroit wasn't my favorite place that this conference has been held, it was good to go and see where we would be bringing youth this summer for the ELCA's National Youth Gathering. Charlye approved.

 

Next year's conference is back in Anaheim, CA (one of my favorite places that it's held)...and this baby will be staying with Gramma:)

 

 

Fall 2014: This and That...

Now that snow if officially on the ground here in Aitkin (mark the date...it's November 5th, 2014), I thought I would share some of our fall photos. It was a short fall here in the North, but as always, we tried our hardest to make the most of it all!

We were fortunate enough to get some time to play in the leaves...

(Olivya dictated her style this day. Note the pajama pants, 3 pig-tails, a bib over the jacket, and I'm pretty sure she is wearing 2 different shoes too). 

More leaves...and a nice fall day for an attempted photo shoot (though the girls were too crazy, so these are literally the only 3 shots that we got). Props to my very talented husband for these pictures and many pictures that you find on this blog. 

We spent a fun day at Afton Apple Orchard with Gramma, Papa & Brady picking apples and enjoying a great fall day! 

We spent our 2nd year in a row at a waterpark hotel for MEA break weekend. Both Adelyn & Olivya LOVED it! 

And on the work side of things, this is always a very busy but very fun time of the year as we prepare to confirm our confirmation students! I had the privilege of confirming 19 students this year and it is such a fun group of kids! (They were impressed that their pastor was so good at taking "selfies"!) 

And I completed my last project of food from my garden! Thanks to my cousin Holly who walked me through this process step by step one night, I was able to make 8 jars of homemade salsa from the tomatoes from my garden that I had previously frozen. 

Yes, it has been a great fall! Michael also took his students on a mission trip to Jamaica for a week, we had a couple of 70 degree days during the fall that we got to enjoy, and Adelyn & Olivya constantly keep us on our toes (some minutes they play GREAT together, and other minutes it's a constant battle/test of parenting)!

Fall has come and gone. We are now bracing for what the winter months may bring;) 

Sept 2014: A few last Summer Camping Trips

We got out camping about 4 times this year...not quite as many as I would have hoped, but more than we have in the past few summers, so I'll take it! There's just something so great about camping...being entertained by the great outdoors, a slower pace of life, making lots of memories, and just living in a more simple way for a few nights.

One of our last camping trips brought us to McCarthy State Park just for a night, where we camped with my cousins (the Ericksons!!!) while they were partaking in their annual church camping weekend. It was a beautiful weekend, and the beach was to die for if you have toddlers as we do...I think we spent a majority of our days at the beach, while taking a few breaks here and there for the occasional ice cream treat, a quick hike, and enjoying the church campfire, and of course to eat and cook some great food over the fire!

And two weeks later, we took a longer camping trip (4 days this time) to Camp Vanasek, where I successfully planned and lead a family camping trip for my church (1st Annual, as I deemed it...). We had a great time. Another great beach...fun getting to know families from my church on a different level...lots of kids to play with each other, and even some early morning crafts that I planned (check out the bed-head! Love it!)

Overall, it's a great way to end our summer, as we were already feeling the pressures of fall hitting us.  It was so great to have one last long weekend of camping and getting away from it all (even though I was leading this camping trip...I kept it pretty casual with only a few planned activities). 

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.