It's been a year!!!

One year ago today we were in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China and Megan began part of our family. Some days it feels that long and other days not. It's certainly been an adventure! She is now 19 months old and quite the monkey. She climbs up her sister's bunkbed, moves chairs around to get what she wants and last week figured out how to get out of the house via the screen door. The below update is about 1 month old, so hopefully I can get another one on soon. Hi All, July 2011 We were able to spend Easter with my parents and my grandma Hofer. 3 weeks later my parents came up again for Miranda’s band concert and the girls’ ballet recital. Then for Memorial Day weekend, we went to Brian’s parents. Brookings has a new children’s museum that just opened last fall. It is in a renovated middle school. I’d have to say it was the best children’s museum we’ve been to. All the girls enjoyed it. Megan’s favorite part was the water works area. Good thing she had an apron on or she would have been soaked! Miranda and Mikayla had the most fun in the grocery store and post office. It’s definitely worth visiting if you get a chance. Of course we had to do a little geocaching too. Even though both Brian and I graduated from SDSU, we had never climbed to the top of the college landmark, the campanile. Well, now there is a geocache at the top of the campanile, so it was worth the climb. After getting a key from the police station, we climbed all 180 steps and signed the log. Back at grandma’s house, the girls had fun playing with their cousins. Thankfully the weather in SD was pretty cooperative. However, when we got back to Grand Forks Monday night, the weather went downhill. Shortly after we got everything unloaded and the kids in bed, there was a tornado warning. No damage here though. June was a busy month for activities. Actually, more busy than I would have liked. Both girls did a fun summer school class M-F from 10am-12pm. The bummer was that they were at different schools. Mikayla played golf through mid-July and Miranda played volleyball for 2 weeks in the afternoon in June. Miranda also goes to Sylvan for 4 hrs. per week. Mikayla was old enough to go to Bible camp at Crystal Springs this year, so both the girls went to that on separate weeks in July. We all went camping at Turtle River (about 20 miles from Grand Forks) the Friday before Father’s Day. It was an interesting time. First, a rain storm moved through. Thankfully Megan slept through the whole thing and the tent basically stayed dry. Megan was up at 5:45am. She doesn’t understand the definition of sleeping in!  Brian and the girls got up, but I stayed in the sleeping bag a little longer. Before I was up for the morning, Megan managed to fall into the corner of the fire pit. Off we went to the ER for Megan to get 3 stitches. Certainly was a memorable 1st camping trip with Megan. I think we finally have the boat fixed up, so we’ll probably try and take that out and go camping again. The last week in June, the girls and I went to Lincoln, NE to visit my sister. We were also able to visit some friends in Iowa who recently moved from Grand Forks. The highlight was spending a late afternoon at a water park with the cousins. It had a zero depth entry pool for the little ones and waterslides for the older ones. Megan had a blast and even went down one of the small slides. Megan continues to be a busy body. She loves being outside and is just thrilled when someone takes her. She is saying a few animal sounds, uh-oh, hi, mum, daddy, and bye. She also knows a few body parts. In June we took her to the petting zoo at the county fair and she loved it! She especially liked the goats because they would come out and nuzzle her. Other favorite things are wearing other people’s shoes and pushing around the toy vacuum. I accepted a half time preadmission/care coordinator position at the rehab in June. I’m not doing anything different than I have been, but now I’m part time instead of flex time. Because of this job change, I will not be going back to teaching clinicals at Northland in the fall. I will stay on to sub though if they occasionally need me. Brian is still busy with work at AE2S. The company moved into a much larger office building in May. It’s amazing how they all fit in the old building. Brian has more office space and a large window overlooking a small golf course (much better than just a sky light). Maybe we will finally get some decorations on his office walls. In early July, he was able to travel to Las Vegas for a professional engineer’s conference. The highlight of the trip was a tour of Hoover Dam.