The Adventures of the Sullivans and Sorensens

The week after we got back from Stormy Lake, Matt started work and we also had our first 'non-relative' visitors come to see us. Jen Sullivan is one of my best friends from when we lived in Des Moines and we hadn't seen each other for over a year and a half. Now that we are in the cities, it's only a 3 hour trip for us to see each other and we were long overdue. Jen and Ryan and their kids Elle (6 weeks younger than Sadie) and Wheaton (4 mos. old) came to visit us for the weekend and we had quite the adventures!

Before you scan through the pictures, or in case you already have, I have to set up the story of their first night here. We had just finished dinner on Friday night and told the girls to go upstairs and play (we have a loft area set up as a play area). After sitting and talking for awhile, I asked Wyatt to go upstairs and just check on the girls to make sure they were doing ok. He came back downstairs, crying, and saying, "Mommy, they are playing with my preschool stuff." I wasn't sure exactly what they were doing, but realized that they had gotten into his backpack that we had just put all his school supplies in in preparation for him starting school. Once I calmed him down and told him we could get more school supplies, I was able to get him to tell us exactly what it was that they were into. And that is when Jen gasped and Matt walked upstairs, while I got the camera........

They had gotten out his markers and drawn all over their faces, hands, feet, and the walls. Poor Jen was mortified and immediately started saying, "I'll buy you new paint, new carpet, everything. I feel terrible" as we assumed it was Elle's idea to open the backpack since Sadie had seen it sitting there for weeks and hadn't touched it.

When I looked at Sadie and said, "You know we don't draw on walls."

She replied with, "I didn't Mommy"

To which Elle quickly piped in proudly, "I drew on the walls!"

I quickly took as many pictures as I could while Matt started cleaning. And I could see the panic setting in with him as he was scrubbing the carpet--until he went to wipe it off the walls and exclaimed, "This washable stuff is amazing!"

Exactly! The only stuff a mother buys and the reason I wasn't also panicked.

But as you can see from the pictures, they had drawn all over their feet and consequently it was all over the carpet. So it did take quite a bit of scrubbing, but it ALL came out of the floor and walls AND the girls....

We spend Saturday at the Minnesota State Fair--the weather was beautiful, the food delicious, and the company couldn't be beat.

We have decided that Elle and Sadie are destined to have a great friendship, just like their mothers.

(We are at the top of the Giant Slide--all the way on the right)

Elle had already been to the Iowa State Fair a few weeks prior, so this was old hat for her. But my kids were pretty amazed by the live animals--notice Sadie's face in response to the pig snorting!

One other quick story.......on Saturday night we put the kids to bed so we could enjoy some time talking. After about 15 minutes, Ryan went upstairs to check and make sure Elle was okay. He was up there for a bit and then came back downstairs with a half-eaten jar of children's vitamins, exclaiming, "Elle was sitting in her bed eating these. Do you know how full this was?"

To which I replied, "Well, I just bought it yesterday"

We emptied the bottle and counted how many were inside as well as the few that Ryan got out of her mouth before she ate them and determined that she probably only ended up eating about 10-15 of them. We looked over the ingredients and determined it wasn't harmful to her (despite the fact that I daily tell my kids they can only have one in the morning otherwise they'll get sick).

Jen asked if there was anything else upstairs that she could get into and I thought, "Yeah, I don't put anything up high! My kids just aren't that adventurous."

Jen made sure she couldn't get in to anything else and we spent the next hour laughing about what had just happened.

We had an amazing weekend with Jen and Ryan and their kids and can't wait for another 'adventure' when we go visit them in Des Moines.