5 months 2 weeks

Sorry for taking so much time off the blog - but guess what? We now have internet at our new (to us) apartment! All the better for me to blog with. I apologize for the length of this post trying to catch up!

Yes, lots of things have happened since I've last updated. One of the best is that my dear friends had their baby girl! So excited to have her in the world. She is certainly a keeper :)

Other things that have happened included a trip to Vancouver for me, a trip to Rapid City over the 4th of July holiday for our little family, and we moved to a different apartment. Yes, all in two weeks. The trip to Vancouver was for an engineering educators conference. I learned a lot, but didn't give myself much time to see Vancouver, and took lots of time to video chat back home with my boys. Both Colin and Bob survived without me, and Colin didn't seem to skip a beat - going back to breastfeeding like I never left, though our stash is now severely depleted.

Our trip to Rapid City was wonderful. The car trip was bearable, we stopped about every 3 hours when Colin wanted to be fed. The only real difficulty was that the rest areas in MN are closed because the state government can't do their job and pass a state budget (currently going on day 13 of state shut down). But besides that, the trip was fairly uneventful. We had a lovely time while in Rapid - took a hike up Harney Peak with Colin, and my nephew (2 yrs) and niece (10 months), my two sisters and parents. We managed to get a jogging stroller about 2 miles up the trail before the boulders became impassable (quite impressive I think!) before El, my mom, and her kids turned back. The rest of us made it up the peak, took some photos, and headed back to the base. It was a perfect day for hiking, little windy at the top, but a gorgeous day.

Me, Kate, Mom, El, Sawyer, and Brig

Harney Peak outlook tower

 

Family pic in the Black Hills

We also took a ride on the 1880 train from Keystone to Hill City and back. Another gorgeous day in the Black Hills. We got on the train in Keystone and we managed to find seats together (very full train), but did end up sitting in the first car back from the engine. This was a very loud position considering the train whistle blows for every road crossing, of which there were about 15 during the hour ride. Colin did his best to sleep through the noise, but our ears were ringing, so sorry for the hearing loss buddy! We stopped in Hill City for lunch, ate some pizza, then headed back on the train - this time in the last car, much better position, though a little more sooty. Back in Keystone we stopped for some ice cream and a trip to the taffy shop before heading home.

Kate, Bob and Colin on the train

I also wanted to visit a cave while back home (I was a little nostalgic for a few things, if you can't tell). Not wanted to spend the day in the car, we visited crystal cave which is a nice little cave not too far from Rapid. My dad, bob, colin and I made our way up and down the plethora of stairs at the entrance to the cave, then explored a small side cave and took an impromptu nature walk around the cave grounds. Overall, very nice visit home :)

Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns

Now on to the new digs! We did live in a tri-level one-bedroom townhouse which had about 850 sq ft. Doable with just Bob and I, but quite tiny when you move a little baby in. So we made the decision to move - which never seems like a good decision in the middle of moving - but which we are happy with now :) We now live in a bi-level apartment which has around 1200 sq ft, a real balcony, two bedrooms, two baths, a larger kitchen, and a laundry room. We are 99.5% of the way moved in, just need to hang a few pictures and clean up some things and we are done! We even hung our tv on the wall above our fireplace last night - kinda cool!

Pile o' storage items

Alright, enough for now. Sorry for the novel. Hopefully i'll be better about keeping this up to date now that we are settled!