Minnesota, the early days

We absolutely love going on our trip to see our Northern Lindbergs every year. We learned early on that it isn't worth it to travel home for Christmas and Thanksgiving with little kids in tow, simply because it is so hard to juggle all the luggage and kid items through the airport when it is that busy... especially with the security the way it is in these post 9/11 days. So instead we go every year around September, when it is still warm enough up there to be out and about, but not too cold that the crops have been harvested already and the dreary weather has set in.

When we arrived this year the weather was still in the 80's, and it was sunny everyday. We always go see Grandma and Grandpa on the first day, and Grandpa always gets Savannah out to his garden to help pick the cherry tomatoes. Savannah loves the garden.... one day she will learn to only pick the red tomatoes and not the green ones that aren't quite ripe yet. The pole beans though are usually always ripe and yearning to be picked, so she is can't go wrong helping out with that harvest too. In fact, I am not sure if any of the pole beans made it back into the house for suppers cause she was to busy eating them right off the vine. It always brings a smile to Grandpa's face too, to see her enjoying the garden. I enjoy it so much too, that I hope the garden will always be there..... and think about how lucky Mike was to grow up with such a beautiful garden.

We spent the rest of the first weekend visiting with Uncle Clyde and Maryann (whose two guest rooms we took over) and the rest of the family. Since we came a week or two later this year than last year, Aunt Maggie was starting back to school (schools were just starting up as we came into town), and with Uncle Mike or Cousins Elysia and Laura work schedule, we realized that we were not going to get to see them as much as in previous years. So the whole family spent Memorial Day together. That was really nice. Zoe spent a good amount of time sleeping on Cousin Laura's lap, and Savannah thought it was a blast to try and wake her up. Zoe was so content though that it didn't matter. It was really good to see Laura and Elysia though, and it proved to be the only time we did get to spend with them.