Pictures, vacation and sandboxes

Sorry for our absence from the blog world, I should have let you know that we were going to be on vacation this past week. So let me fill you in on what we have been up to! Last Friday we headed up to Alexandria for the weekend with Sara's family, kind of a last weekend hurrah with Sara's sister Lauri and her family soon to be moving to New Jersey. There was fishing, watching Olympics, Rook (of course) and family pictures! Gotta love family pictures, especially with small children. All of the adults have to remain motionless with smiles pasted on their faces while the photographer tries his hardest to get the kids to look at the camera and then smile, or kind of smile, or at least have a pleasant expression on their face. Not the easiest job. When I get the proofs, I'll post a couple so you can see the results. Here are a few pics of the weekend.

Ava got to go fishing a couple of times. The first night she out fished Daddy!

Luke got to help mow the lawn, and loved it!

On Monday we headed to Camp Shamineau (the EFCA camp in MN) for a few days of R&R. We had the place to ourselves! It was great. We spent a lot of time at the beach, got to see horses, played on the play ground and relaxed. The beach was a huge hit with Ava as there were snail shells everywhere (or sea shells as she called them)! Luke was a big fan or being on the dock and trying to dip his toes in the water, and giving me heart attacks every few minutes when he would almost fall in. One of us was always right there, just in case, and Andy did jump in once to pull him out. But of course it did nothing to make him more careful.
Andy had taken this whole week off, so we had planned for a couple days at home to get some things done around the house that we had been putting off all summer. I finished up a landscaping project, Andy fixed a few things that needed attention, and we built a sandbox. Luke is a big fan of digging, and loves the sandbox at Aunt Lauri's, so we thought he should have one of his own. Andy bought lumber and I scored free sand on craiglist (gotta love it!). The result: one very happy boy who has gotten into a lot of trouble for throwing sand, dumping sand out of the sandbox, and flinging sand at his sister. And he is loving every minute. Andy and I are regretting our decision (a little)!

So there is the O'Rourke week in review. Watch out for flying sand!