High Five 5 K

My friend Lauren is basically the best person ever and she decided to make her own 5 k on national high 5 day. Her and Lucy designed cute shirts and we all ran/walked/biked/meandered along the river road high 5ing each other and the strangers we met along the way. After the race there was hand sanitizer, donuts, coors light and a trip to Merlins Rest.

Our fearless leader giving us a pep talk.

Luke and his tunes-mobile.

Josh turns 35!

Josh's birthday is always before mine. That's a fact. This year his birthday fell on Record Store Day and we had another snow storm. Our main adventures were 1) having our family portrait painted by Lisa Luck and 2) finding out the rumors are true and getting into First Avenue for free with a free bottle of champagne for Transmission.

Life Lately

Josh and I have had lots of changes over the past 6 months. Most significantly we both took new jobs. These news jobs have meant different hours for both of us, a different daily schedule for Bowie, new insurance, changes to our finances and long term investments and, most notably, I don't work in a school any more so we need more help caring for Bowie on his days off. Josh loves his job at Studio On Fire and it seems like a perfect fit for him both personally and professionally. I'm adjusting to my new role at Cigna and despite some growing pains I feel it's been a positive change. I've enjoyed my new schedule because it allows me to avoid rush hour traffic and pick up Bowie and get to enjoy more of the evening. It's also provided more income, which we've enjoyed. Cube life is hard for me and the work itself is challenging. It's also led me to think a lot about my priorities in life. It would be great to find the perfect job that would support my perfect personal life but I'm not sure that's possible. It's been interesting to struggle with work and go home and feel more safe and relaxed than I ever have before. Since I took this job to allow me more freedom in my personal life it puts pressure on me to actually live my best life. I'm trying to focus on self care and building some fun into my work day. One effort to support self care is that I'm hoping to take advantage of working in front of screens all day by updating the blog more. It gets me in touch with the fun things I do in life and considering all that we've scheduled to look forward to this summer I think there should be a lot to blog about. The above picture of me in my cube accurately depicts my feelings about my work space. Anyways, I think it will be good for my brain to back off of social media and instead post here. More to come, including updates related to turning 35 in a couple of weeks which feels like a total adult milestone.

Baja

Baja was the best trip ever. The weather was beautiful and sunny every single day. Bowie was the world's best traveler and I loved getting alone time with him and sharing a bed and snuggling with him every night. We stayed with Jane and Dave at http://www.janeanddave-baja.com/. It was more beautiful than their website can capture. I'm so thankful to my dad and Sarah for planning and organizing this trip and to Jane and Dave for hosting us. I only wish Josh could have joined us but I think that means we have to go back with him another time.

We drove through the mountains in the night to arrive in El Sargento. Here is Bowie getting his first glimpse of the Sea of Caspian the second he woke up.

Here are the "Casas". Bowie and I stayed in the casa on the left. 

Jane and Dave's outdoor shower tile mural.

Dave collects driftwood to paint.

Here is my dad and some of the painted drift wood.

We went to beaches every day and usually had them to ourselves. 

Dave has THE BEST laugh.

We went out for paella in the town of El Triunfo. It's an old mining town that has been lovingly restored. It looks like a movie set and was so fun to explore.

The preparation of the paella

Here's Bowie at the hot spring beach

If you dug into the sand hot spring water would seep up into the pools.

Bowie is an excellent body surfer

Here is a darling little bay with warm clear water that never went above knee height. Bring your sunscreen here!

Dad did his best to fly fish. He got a couple needle fish.

Upscale lunch. This restaurant had a two tiered pool with a water slide connecting the pools. Needless to say this was Bowie's best restaurant ever. 

Nothing beats morning coffee with the best people.

Summer 2018

I'm officially back to work full time and even though summer "the season" isn't over it still feels like "real summer" has come to an end. I had the ultimate luxury of being home with Bowie from mid June to early August. Something like 7 weeks. He went to his Summer Wow program on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I had plenty of time to myself as well. On my own time I was able to spend time outside with friends, take myself to the movies, stroll through vintage sales and the farmers marker, go to some shows and read so many books. The funny thing is that it took me well over half of this time to fully relax and be present in summer. Getting work out of my body sure takes awhile and it has been a shock to come back to commuting and sitting inside at a computer.

Bowie grew leaps and bounds this summer. He got super jazzed about swimming under water and is getting more brave and coordinated on his scooter and bicycle. I was lucky that he wanted to keep taking naps every afternoon (because that meant I got a nap every afternoon) but between naps he was game for any adventure. I wanted to make sure to expose him to lots of cool things in our community and also check out some new places that I haven't had a chance to explore. Overall we did almost everything on our bucket list except for Franconia, a pizza farm, the World's Largest Candy Store and seeing a live show. There's still plenty of summer for us to get to those things, however.

While I will share some of our adventures here, it is also true that Bowie was just content to stay home with me and play with his hot wheels inside and watch PBS and netflix. I think his little body was happy for a break from the grind as well. He didn't want to do too much with other people and if I gave him a choice to stay home or go out and do something he chose stay at home 100% of the time. This was great because it forced me to slow down more, too. And yeah, the following is a snippit of my "slowed down" summer with Bowie :)

We continue to love going to the MN Zoo and checking out the bird show in particular but this year we figured out how to feed the kangaroos breakfast and it was a total summer highlight. My mom joined us on the day of our "kangaroo feed". Despite being about 100 degrees we still had a memorable day and saw everything and ate the messiest, drippiest ice cream of all time

Bowie and I have a tradition of going to the MIA, which has a great coffee shop and playroom filled with cool toys and books. This year Bowie was old enough to take in some of the art and share with me his opinions on the various art. He mostly liked seeing the naked statues, thought the impressionists were just fine and hates modern art (barring the Picasso statue that was made with a toy car- that one was acceptable). 

We continued our tour de museum at the Children's Museum with dad.

And finally got to the new Bell Museum, which was both of our favorite activities of the summer. We saw a planetarium show and got to see the Wooley Mammoth.

It's a summer tradition for us to visit the Wild Rumpus Bookstore and choose a book.

I don't know why it took us so long to discover Wood Lake Nature Preserve, which is about 5 minutes from our house. We know one of the naturalists there and it quickly became our favorite summer activity. Besides walking the trails that extend onto docks over the wetlands we got to help feed and hold the animals inside the center, which include Bowie's favorite the blandings turtle, a variety of snakes and the leopard gecko. Bowie may have a future as a naturalist.

We got to visit our buddy Cynthia who gifted Bowie with his first big boy bike, a vintage Schwinn Pixie. He's still learning but I predict he'll be a pro by next summer. 

We spared no expense on summer treats. Besides some breakfasts and lunches out at places like Hot Plate, Tiny Diner, and Colossal Cafe we also made it out for donuts at Glam Doll, Lucky Oven and Bakers Wife and had our fill of ice cream at Grand Ole Creamery and (our personal favorite) Waffle Bar. 

One of the best parts of summer is that Bowie's birthday is in July, which means his birthday is basically all summer long. We had multiple birthday parties with various family members and on his "actual" birthday we were spoiled by out neighbor Hakan at his coffee shop, Common Grounds and then played at Nokomis park at Bowie's request. 

We stayed with my mom's side of the family in Aitkin for a special weekend and Bowie "won the fishing competition" with his new Lightning McQueen fishing pole. You can tell in this photo that he was starting to get annoyed with all the pictures I've been taking of him.

We spent A LOT of time swimming. We went to both the Hiawatha and Wabun splashpads as well as Lake Nokomis and Elm Creek beaches. We also spent a lot of time in the water during our cabin weekend with my Dad and Sarah. It was too cold to swim in the lake while we were in Aitkin but he got to jump in the hot tub with Josh and I, which made him feel like a total "big boy". 

This is just the smallest snapshot of all the fun we had. If I had to pick one thing from this summer I'm most grateful for, it was my mornings with Bowie. He would wake up super early and I would still be blurry eyed and we would pull blankets and pillows onto the couch and snuggle and watch movies until about 8 am when I would force myself to make coffee and start the day. I know he won't want to snuggle with me forever and I feel so blessed for all the special time I got with my boy. I'm especially grateful for this summer because our family is about to start some new adventures. Josh was laid off and it was the push we needed to do what he's been thinking about for awhile, which is go back to school and have a big career do-over. While I'm excited, I'm also nervous because I don't know what changes are in store and it's a good reminder that you can't take moments like these for granted because you never know what's going to happen next.