Mall store and Christmas Pictures

Gavin is now a huge Wii fan. He loves the Wii fit games and his new Scooby Doo game.

Christmas Day! Gavin was a little spoiled this year!

Gavin and Kale :)

Gavin had fun decorating Christmas Cookies on Cookie Day.

Some of our cookies from Cookie day.

Cookie Day!

Here is Max in our Scrubs Direct store in Maplewood Mall.

Gavin was excited to help get the store ready before we brought the scrubs in.

Here is our Maplewood mall store before we opened.

Scrubs Direct has a new location!

November has been a busy month for us. We decided that since we are not running the mobile store during the winter months, that we would try out running a retail store at the mall. So....it all happened very quickly. Max did the research and about a week later, we signed a lease at the Maplewood Mall in Maplewood Mn. So Scrubs Direct now has a new location. We really have high hopes that this store will do well. We would like to run the retail store as well as the mobile store in the spring, so pray for us that this works out.

Halloween 09

Gavin was Dracula for Halloween this year. He loved the fake vampire teeth and has been wearing them around the house all month. This year we stayed in Hudson for Halloween. We went to our church pumpkin carving on Friday night and did "trunk or treating" for the first time. It was fun, but would have been better if it wasn't raining! yuck.
On Saturday (Halloween) we went to the Hudson Rotary costume contest. We had never been there before, so wanted to try it. It was freeeeeezing, but we did the parade and left. It would be a fun event with better weather. Then at night, we went trick or treating, of course. Gavin had a great time. He kept saying, "one more house"!







Here is Gavin trying to wash off all of the make-up and hair dye. The water was black! I was just glad that it all washed off. I was worried that he was going to have black hair for a while.

Gavin

I just wanted to write a bit about what Gavin is doing these days. He is just growing and changing so quickly and I want to make sure that I write some of these things down.
He is enjoying kindergarten and is learning a lot. He is finding patterns around the house, learning about reading and taught me the difference between fiction and non-fiction tonight during book time. Right now he is really looking forward to Halloween. He loves dressing up and is going to be a vampire for Halloween.
We usually carve a pumpkin with Grandma and Grandpa Ericson before Halloween, but Gav and I were ill this weekend, so we carved it last night.



Here is Gavin scooping out the pumpkin.






Gavin drew the face on the pumpkin and then I carved it out for him.



Here is Gavin with his Jack-O-Lantern (making spooky faces).




Here is Gavin with his Vampire teeth for his Halloween costume.


Some of Gavin's favorite things to do these days :



Cast his fishing pole in the house with various items tied to the end of the line....
His favorite has been a kitchen towel since it casts nicely and he doesn't get in trouble when he hits stuff in the house with it. Also tied to the line at one time: bicycle horn, vampire teeth, small blankets, paper airplanes, other various toys....

Making Paper airplanes.....
Lots of paper airplanes! There are paper airplanes everywhere in this house. Gavin turns every scrap of paper he can find into an airplane. Don't leave any important papers out in the open because odds are, it may be flying across the room soon.

Gavin also loves:

Taking Pictures

Making Books

Cooking

Scooby Doo

Playdoh

Chinese Food

Kale (although the feeling may not be mutual)

Going "Up North"

Art projects

Mom's 50th Birthday Party

On October 1st, Mom turned 50! Sarah and I planned a surprise 50th Birthday Party for her on Oct 3rd. I think that she was surprised. We had lots of wonderful friends and family come to wish mom a happy birthday. We also had some yummy cakes, music, dancing, and Karaoke. I think a fun time was had by all.

Mom's Birthday cakes......
almond poppy seed, black forrest cake, and strawberry vanilla.
Way to not go overboard Sarah :)


Mom with brother and sisters.
Tracie, Kathy, Denise, Mom, Tom, Jody


Kris, Mom, and Sarah

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM, WE LOVE YOU.

First Day of Kindergarten

First day of Kindergarten. 9/2/09

Gavin and mom waiting for the bus.

Gavin getting on the school bus for the first time.

Gavin after his first day of Kindergarten.

Gavin started Kindergarten on 9/2/09. He was very excited to start and to ride the bus all by himself. He said that he had a good day at school. He likes his teacher and his favorite parts of the day were recess and snack and of course, riding the bus. I am very excited for this year for Gavin. I think it is going to be a big year for him.

Canada

On August 9th, Max and I took a trip to Canada along with Sarah and Chris. We drove up making many stops along the way for the various items that we forgot and stayed the night in International Falls, Mn. We got up bright and early Sunday morning and headed across the border to Canada. Across the border, we saw saw a wolf and then a bear, which was a sign of what was yet to come on this trip. We drove to Hyatt's Manion Lake Resort where we got checked in and loaded up the boat with all of our gear to head to the cabin. We had to drive the boat across the lake where we then had to load it onto a trailer and portage it over to the next lake. My rain gear served a double purpose as we were waiting to portage both boats over to the other lake because it was not only raining, we were also being swarmed by bird-sized mosquitos.
We got both boats onto Petitt late safely and got to the cabin. We unloaded pretty quickly and the guys went out fishing. We spent most of the week fishing, eating, or reading. On the warmest day, we headed out to Sand Beach. We brought our supplies for a shore lunch and spent the day there. We fished, climbed to the top of a mini water fall stream, and picked lots of blueberries on Sand Beach. There were an amazing amount of blueberries on the beach. You could look back into the forrest and they seemed to go on forever. So we ate a ton of them and also brought back a bunch to eat in the morning for blueberry pancakes. At lunch time, we took our fish and supplies and went to Hyatt's cabin that was on Sand Beach. There is a beautiful cabin there that looks like it is sitting on a huge rock. We cooked up our shore lunch, ate, and then fished our way back to the other lake and back to the cabin. We were all tired and had gotten a lot of sun that day.

The next day Sarah and I decided just to relax at the cabin while the guys left to hike over to another lake. I wasn't feeling the best and decided that I didn't really want to hike into another lake to fish. Sarah and I stayed at the cabin and read our books. It was getting nice out so we went down on the beach and read for a while. It was a little windy and the waves were crashing against the shore very loudly. It sounded like ocean waves crashing and was starting to put me to sleep. I decided to go into the cabin to take a nap and Sarah went out to lay on the dock and read her book. She was there for quite a while reading in the warm sunlight with the waves crashing. She said that it felt like she was sitting on the beach in Mexico when she rolled over and looked toward the cabin and suddenly it WASN'T like Mexico AT ALL. Standing near the cabin was a Black Bear. Sarah sat a minute but decided she probably shouldnt sit there so she waited until the bear turned toward the woods and ran into the cabin. She woke me up and we went and looked out the window. In a few minutes, we saw the bear again. We thought that we would wait a while before going outside again since we were alone at the cabin. We played some cards and blasted the radio hoping we wouldn't see the bear again. But after about an hour I saw the bear just wondering around outside the cabin even though the radio was blasting pointed out the window. So we decided not to go outside for the rest of the day even though it was gorgeous out.
The guys got back from fishing and we told them about the bear and we were getting ready to go over to our friend Dan's cabin when I noticed that I was very sunburned on my ears from the day before. I got a little too upset about it and passed out and scared Sarah. Sorry Sarah. When I was feeling a little better, we went over to Dan's for a while, but ended up coming back because I still wasn't feeling good. Bummer of an ending to our trip, but overall an Ok trip. Probably not the vacation that I would choose for myself in the future. Next year....something tropical and closer to civilization.