New York City!

We had a great time on our trip to NYC! We took so many photos and I've tried to pare them down for this post. There is a lot of other news too...(including Willow starting preschool and a new pet). I may have to save that for another post. This is what you get when you wait over a month between posts: feeling overwhelmed when it is time to update!

We went to NYC over Memorial Day weekend, a Friday through a Tuesday. We flew right out of Hancock, which was so worth the extra few hundred bucks over driving to Minneapolis or Green Bay or somewhere! The flights were uneventful, with the small exception of almost missing one connection and having to sprint through Chicago O'Hare. Oh well, it wouldn't be exciting without some sort of small glitch. We were very grateful for our fold-up stroller - it was the savior of the trip. We walked everywhere!

We stayed with my cousin Jen and her boyfriend Bruce. They live (lived, more on that later) right in Manhattan, near Harlem and the northwest corner of Central Park. They have a very nice 2-bedroom apartment, so we even had a bed to sleep in which was great. As of the date I am writing this post, they actually no longer live there. We visited them just in time: they moved to Australia last weekend. Bruce is an economics professor, and he got a job there, and Jen will be starting a 2-year residency in Pediatrics (she's a recent med school grad). Anyway, it was so great to see Jen again. She lived with us for a couple months out in Jackson Hole, and she is awesome. And Bruce is a great guy too, they were both very hospitable and great tour guides.

Overall, we were really impressed by New York. The last time we were there was 2001, and it seemed like it has gotten a lot cleaner and greener since then. Maybe it was just because we were hanging out in different neighborhoods than last time, or maybe it is really true. There was a noticeable lack of the garbage/urine smell we remembered from last time. Of course, the best part of going to any big city (especially when you are a sheltered Yooper), is the food! We ate large quantities of it with no regard to how much we were spending, and it was so fun. Willow was really adventurous too. She tried Peruvian...
















Japanese...
















An apple from a street vendor (we were just walking by and she yelled out "I want an apple!")...




















Pickle-on-a-stick....






















and, this is not New York-ish at all, but at Jen and Bruce's, she got hooked on vegemite toast. So after the trip we had to order some online and it's now a popular breakfast choice at home.
















Here are Jen and Bruce with some delicious-looking food at a seafood/Mexican place in Brooklyn. They were such great tour guides, I have to say it again. They brought us to all their favorite restaurants, and half the time ordered for us too. It was nice not to have to guess at what would be good. Every place we went to was just amazing....ah, I love food, in case you can't tell. Oh, at this place, Josh and I finally had oysters for the first time. Also at this restaurant, Willow pooped her pants, when we were about to leave. Luckily we didn't have this problem the majority of the trip (Willow did very well with staying clean and dry most of the time), but it can be hard to find a place to change a kid in NYC. Josh ended up changing her in a deserted corner of a sidewalk near a dumpster, ew.

















We did a lot of kiddie stuff, quite a contrast from our last NYC trip when we partied the whole time. Times change. We went to the Central Park zoo one day. Here's Willow and Jen near the ticket area.

















Here's a shot of us three by the sea lions. A good picture, if I do say so myself!

















Willow pointing at some sort of animal, not sure what it is.

















Also at the zoo, they had a short Dora movie that was "4-D". Meaning, it was 3-D but also had someother effects - like water spraying, seats vibrating, smells (basically, being sprayed in the face with an air freshener, yuck), bubbles and fake snow. Willow enjoyed it, of course. She loves Dora and Diego, I admit it.
















The three of us also went to the Manhattan Children's Museum. It was great, although very crowded, as was the zoo and everything else we did. I guess that is New York! Or maybe just...New York, at popular children' activities, on a holiday weekend.

I had to take a picture of Willow going into the intestines. Very appropriate, ha.




















I am not sure what we're doing here, but it looks like Willow is learning something.


















They put finger paint on a big wall, and the kids were supposed to make a mural of sorts. Instead, they just smeared it all around until all of the colors were mixed, and covering every space on the wall. Once that happened, the other kids got bored and left. Only Willow wanted to stay and keep smearing.


















We also hit up many playgrounds. Like I mentioned, we walked many miles every day with the trusty fold-up stroller, and every time we passed a playground Willow wanted to stop. There were playgrounds everywhere. There were kids everywhere too. We were amazed at how many little kids we saw everywhere. Every New York parent seemed to have an expensive-looking-yet-compact stroller with one or two kids in it, and a bag on the back filled with useful supplies. We even saw, on two occasions, a parent whip out a little potty, have their kids go in it, and in one case, the pee ended up on the ground (ew), and in another, into a plastic bag which the woman then tied up and ran over to a garbage can! I guess you have to learn to adapt in a city with few public bathrooms when you are potty-training someone!

































Did I mention it was HOT when we were there? About 85-90 every day. Every playground had a fountain of some sort that sprayed water for kids to play in. We were never fully prepared with swimsuit, etc., but Willow did participate little bit.

















One night we took a ferry ride along the river. We started in Brooklyn and we ended in the financial district in Manhattan. That was after a long day and Willow was out very late. She had a good time on the boat...

















...but soon after we got off the boat she was asleep, and stayed that way the whole walk/train ride back to Jen and Bruce's.





















Speaking of trains, we did, of course, use the subway a lot. Willow loved it and talked a lot about the "fast, fast, fast, FAST trains!" Here are Bruce, Willow and Josh on a train.


















One day we went to the Museum of Natural History. In hindsight it was probably not the best thing to do with a 3-year-old. We thought she'd be pumped to see the dinosaurs and stuff, but it was too adult-oriented and crowded for her to have much fun. Luckily, there was a big fountain out in the courtyard of the museum where all the kids were playing, and we sort of took turns watching Willow play and going in to try to catch some of the exhibits. Here's me and Willow by a big head (Mayan, maybe, Incan? I honestly didn't get to read many of the placards because I was too busy trying to entertain Willow).




















One part Willow liked was a butterfly garden. It was cool, but all she wanted to do was grab the butterflies, which of course was strictly prohibited. That was sort of hard and we ended up having to make a hasty exit before she had a fit. In this photo, you can see a butterfly on the leaf if you look closely.

















Here's Willow by some early humans. Even though the photo is a little blurry, I had to include it because that display resulted in the quote of the trip. Willow shouted out, really loudly, "Hey, those monkeys are naked!" Hahaha. Well, they were.

















And my last two photos were taken by a big fountain (not the one at the museum, but another one). The fountain was full of kids (and some adults) getting cool.




































It was a great trip, one we'll remember forever, for sure. I wonder if Willow will remember any of it...

Thanks again to Jen and Bruce for a wonderful time!

Josh's big news

We've been slacking on the blog...it's so hard to find the time!

The big news of this post is that Josh got a new job! He's going to be the Operations Manager at The Marketing Department , a marketing firm here in Houghton. In fact, its offices are downtown, just a few blocks from our house. He had applied for a different job there a year or two ago, and that didn't pan out. But a couple weeks ago on a random Wednesday night, the owner of the company called him and said they wanted to hire him for this manager job! He hadn't even applied for it or anything. So of course we are super excited. Although Josh appreciated his job at Halonen Lawn and Landscaping, it was definitely time to move on from the manual labor - and actually use his marketing degree, to boot! He starts mid-June.

The other good news of the post is that we think Willow's GI issues have been improving, just a little. I hate to even put it down on the blog in case I jinx it, but over the past month or so, her poop has become a little more normal, most of the time. Still not 100% normal, but better. So we've been dragging our feet on starting this new diet her doctor recommended, in hopes that maybe we won't have to do it. I don't know...there's obviously something not right in her gut, and I am sure the diet would help her, but it's so daunting. We may just implement parts of this diet...we'll see. In the meantime, I've been excited to get texts like the one Linda sent me yesterday at work: "It's a perfect poop day!"

We've had a lot of spring fun lately. Last weekend we went canoeing, for the first time since we've had Willow! She even went swimming in Lake Perrault. Unfortunately, I did not take any photos. But here are some other photos.

Two weekends ago, we went to Hastings to celebrate Josh's Grandma Eva's 90th birthday.For some reason we didn't get any photos of Willow and Eva. But we did get some of Willow and her other Great-Grandmma, Lois (or as she prefers to be called, "GG".

We went out to brunch at a nice restaurant with a bunch of the Ethen relatives. We had our own separate room away from the rest of the diners, which was great because the kids could play without disturbing anyone. Here's Willow with her second-cousins, Afton and Natalie.

And playing hopscotch with Natalie in Grandma Eva's back yard.

With auntie Janna:

And here she is in our yard last week.

In our hammock:

Helping with the yardwork. Great-Grandpa Zip made this wheelbarrow.

Enjoying some real ice cream. We stopped the dairy-free diet; can't remember if I mentioned that before.

Happy 10th birthday to Scouty!

April 22, 2012

I don't have any news but decided to just post a few photos.

On Easter, Anna, Antti and Maisa came out to my parents' camp. The weather was terrible - really, really windy and cold, but we had an Easter egg hunt on the beach anyway. Here are Willow and Maisa with their eggs.

Jenga is one of Willow's favorite games these days. Her and Daddy play it after dinner while I clean up. She is pretty good at it. They just pull the blocks out and don't re-stack them on top. She likes to search for the loose ones.

And finally, here she is building a "tall tall tower".

I had to lift her up to add the very top ones. She was so proud that she used all the blocks.

April 8, 2012

Couldn't think of a good title for this post, so I just used the date...

Two weeks ago, I decided to take a stay-cation from work. A couple vacation ideas for the spring didn't really pan out, and suddenly I found myself bumping up against my PTO ceiling (200 hours!) at work. Well, I never wanted to be one of those people who don't use their vacation days. So I took a week off. It was great. I really have not had many opportunities to be alone with Willow for 8-9 hours at a time (it's true, but sort of sad too). It was challenging, but also very fun. The weather wasn't great, but we did some exploring in the woods behind out house, played a lot, and went to storytime, the treehouse and KidFit at BHK (a first for us). Good times! In the meantime, I finally had the time to plan a real vacation - we're going to NYC over Memorial Day weeked to visit cousin Jen. We're super excited!

Here are a few photos of winter's last stand in our yard. These are from a few weeks ago now - Mid March.

I love this one of Scout, enjoying one of the last snow patches in our yard. That dog has always loved snow.

Here are a couple of Willow. I had to include the one that shows off her Elmo undies.

Speaking of undies, I will admit on this blog that Willow isn't potty-trained yet. I never thought I'd be saying that at age 3. We started training her so early, I totally thought we'd have it by now. My excuse is the chronic runny poo, though not sure if I can really use that or not. See, if Willow is bare-bum, she will always go on the potty, poop or pee. By herself with no prompting. So it's not like she can't hold in the poop. But if you put a diaper or undies on her, for some reason she feels that cloth on her bum and thinks it's OK to just go. Even if you ask her if she has to go, or try to just put her on the potty, she resists heartily with kicking and screaming. It's not socially acceptable for a kid to leave the house with no pants on, so she still goes in her diaper anytime we are not at home. If anyone has any tips, please let me know. I am so sick of potty training!

Here's a family member who doesn't make the blog very often. When we got Daria from the pound, her little bio said "Daria loves to watch the birds outside the window". She still does. If you look closely you can see there's a little pinesiskin in the feeder.

The weekend after my staycation, Grandma Jean and Aunt Jill came for a visit. Here is a cute photo of the two of them having a tea party with Willow.

Last weekend Seth, Beth and our friends Scott and Sharon came over for sushi. Scott and Sharon also have two kids, and Sharon brought some eggs and stuff for the girls to decorate them. They have chickens so these eggs were super fresh. They're also brown, which made the coloring a little difficult, but they still turned out awesome. These crack me up.

I didn't get a decent photo of the girls with their eggs, so here is the best one I got that night (which is still not that good). Towards the end of the night we put the kids in front of a video to prolong the fun (for the adults). Here are Garrison (2), Aspen (4) and Willow.

Willow played with her eggs some more the next morning.

Also last weekend, we had a lot of outside fun. We went for a hike on the Chassell ski trails. We brought the baby carrier, but ended up not using it - we let Willow walk the whole time, and we went at her pace. So we only ended up going about a mile, but it was pretty cool to just let her lead the way. She had a blast.

A beetle that Willow befriended.

Later that day, my mom watched Willow and Josh and I went biking! It was so great to get out there again. I am very out of shape though, whew!

We're still on the dairy-free diet here...we just stopped the probiotics to see if just going dairy free alone would make any difference. It's all about experimentation, I guess. On the plus side, we brought Willow in for a check-up and she was up to 24 pounds. She's tiny, but is following a curve so we try not to worry. Her doctor's new theory is that Willow's gut flora got all screwed up from all the antibiotics that she was given when she was in the NICU. It actually seems like a pretty plausible theory. I'm currently reading a book about a diet the doctor recommended that helps heal the gut flora. Not sure yet if we'll actually go through with it or not.

Happy Easter / Happy Spring to everyone!