We have a tooth!

On Friday afternoon Anja finally got her first tooth. While it is not all the way in yet, it is definitely there! So far Anja has been handling it well and it doesn't seem to be bothering her too much. It will be interesting to see if she gets any more in the next couple of days as a number of her teeth seem to be just below the surface. Although, I think we'd do well to take that with a grain of salt as we thought she was teething four months ago! If she does get a few teeth back to back, it will be perfect timing for our road trip out west ;-)


Here are a few pictures from the past week. Anja is really starting to move and laugh! It has been great fun to tickle her, chase her around, and play peek-a-boo with her! The outdoor pictures are from the Osceola landing. Anja was exploring the grass, twigs, and anything else she could get her hands on. The picture of her inside was taken this morning during a game of peek-a-boo with her mom. I really like the photo because of the subtle expression on her face. I'll let you try and decide what she's thinking.

Tomorrow we're off to adventures out west. We're going to try and post along the way so check back now and again to see where our adventures have taken us.

A Dip in Golden Lake

A couple of days ago, we took Anja to a nearby lake for the first time. It seemed to us that she enjoyed herself--no trepidation or tears, just lots of curiosity. With all of this hot weather we're experiencing, we hope to get her back in the next couple of days before we head out west.








In preparation for our trip out west, we put Anja in this winter's snow suit. We plan to do a few nights of camping in Montana and Yellowstone, so she'll need to stay warm. She can stand to grow a few more inches, but we think it'll do the trick!


We hope to publish a few posts while we're on the road, so stay tuned!

Jay Cooke

Ever since I began posting about topics other than Anja (see some of my posts in June about Mark in China, Hannah's rugby game, hail at the lake, etc.), Shana has been giving me grief about losing sight of the obvious focus of this blog. Recently, classmates of mine echoed these concerns and after Shana gave me even more grief over my last 3 posts, none of which focused on Anja, I bent to the pressure. While I still intend to post about random topics, here are a number of photos highlighting Anja and our trip to Jay Cooke. The photo above is a personal favorite of mine. It is always wonderful to come home to those bright blue eyes.
The kids pack is truly a great invention and Anja really seems to enjoy the ride. We hiked for over an hour before she started to get the slightest bit fussy. We definitely have an active child and she was keen to do a bit of exploring for herself. It's great fun to watch her facial expressions as she feels things for the first time. The pine needles and pine cones were some of her favorites at our lunch stop.Anja has also becoming much more expressive and is giving us some great big smiles. Still no teeth, but we can see a number of them right below the surface of her gums. Here she is truly enjoying the ride!

In a bizarre coincidence, a trail marathon was in progress as we hiked along. The 26.2 mile event was actually a warm-up to the 50 mile trail marathon to be held later this summer. We cheered the runners as we hiked along and even ran into Tim Stoddart, one of the many brave souls to tackle the event. I worked for the Stoddarts during a summer in college - what a small world. Who knows, perhaps we'll be running in that marathon next summer!

Here's a link to the half (26.2 mile) event: http://mvtu.slovis.com/
Here's a link to the full (50 mile) event: http://www.voyageurtrailrun.com/

A Trip in the Kelty Kids Pack

Last Saturday, we traveled to Jay Cooke State Park. It was the perfect day for a hike and picnic.

Anja's Return to the Blog

Anja a little tuckered out on her way to Dave & Diana's post-wedding open house. Congrats you two!

It has been a hectic couple of weeks . . . my Mom and Dad are now official residents of MN, we hosted our niece and nephew during the move, traveled to ND and CO and back again and are finally settling back home for a few weeks. Here are some shots from all of the events.

For our loyal "Anja-watchers," you'll be happy to see that there are several shots of her. For the record, I've given Erik some grief about too many posts that don't even mention her!

Our nephew Antonio with Anja. He wanted to put foot rattles on her feet. He was great with her, singing to her whenever she was fussy and using Grandpa's old cell phone to play music for her as well.
Antonio and our niece, Nina at the start of our trip. As you can see, we talked Grandma into purchasing a portable DVD player for the trip. Can we watch "The Incredibles" one more time?!

Anja driving with Grandpa at the Rolfsrud Reunion in Watford City, ND. This was during the driving tour of the area. Our van didn't have 4-wheel drive so we opted out of the drive through the hills (yes, there are hills in western ND!).
The view from Don & Karen Kirmis' (Karen is my Mom's cousin) back yard in western ND near Watford City. We stayed at their beautiful cabin for two nights. They were wonderful hosts!
Nina playing with Anja somewhere in western SD. Anja was a great little traveler. We made several stops to parks and picnic areas to give her a break from her car seat.
After checking out Mount Rushmore, we headed down to Fort Collins to drop Nina and Antonio off. Here's a picture of my sister, Alyssa with Anja.
L to R: Antonio, Corey (my brother-in-law), Nina, Memmo, Alyssa and Emillio. Emillio had an appendicitis a few weeks ago, but only had three small battle wounds to show.
Anja at a park somewhere along I-80 in Nebraska. Grandma and Grandpa were doing "corpse pose" nearby. (It was a long trip!)
And last but not least, my Mom and Dad picking up their new Prius. It's a pretty sweet car, loaded with a in-dash touch screen computer and the works. My Mom, who isn't shy to tell people she's not the best with technology, plans to spend the first few months of retirement figuring out how to use it. Good luck!

Thor at the Tour

Thor Hushovd won stage 4 of the Tour de France today. If you remember from last year's tour, Erik and Thor are good friends ;-) Be sure to check out some Tour de France sites to get a stage recap. Here's a link for todays stage report http://www.versus.com/tdf -- note that might change depending on the day.

A Snapshot of Karl's World

Karl is my brother. He's a great guy who's currently teaching English in Japan. I think I've received all of 3 e-mails from him in the past 6 months, so I know he's doing just fine. Two of those were really directed towards Shana and were about sending him a pair of sun glasses he had ordered. I was lucky enough to finally get one today and here is what it consisted of.

Ps--- Super weekend fun ahead.. have a look
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/wp200704.html
= big f-'in waves

Okay, to put it in context had just sent another 2 liner thanking Shana for sending his new shades.

Karl has always been the type of guy who works hard and plays hard. A perfect day for him in Japan involves the "trifecta" of surfing, skateboarding, and fly fishing. Luckily for him, the island he lives on provides abundant playgrounds for all of these. In fact, it has the best surfing in all of Japan.
Here's the picture from the link he sent which shows a typhoon being tracked. The island Karl is on is farther North and it does not look like it will be directly hit. In any case and as he so elegantly put it, this means there will be crazy big waves. Have fun bro and don't try and stick around if your island gets evacuated! (for the record, he has been evacuated a few times due to typhoons)

The Wonders of Google

While back at class this week, a classmate of mine introduced me to iGoogle. Basically it allows you to create a customizable home page with all sorts of gadgets. This can range from news feeds about a wide range of topics, to a virtual fish bowl, to calendars, to gas price maps, to random quote generators. My personal favorites thus far include the Chuck Norris fact generator and the Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey generator. Ok, so both of those are terribly trivial, but they're worth a good laugh. You can also add these to web pages. Notice our fish bowl on the right side of the page - feed them if you like.

To keep up to date on all the wonders of Google they even have a blog. I've linked the Google Blog from our page. Also, here is a link to iGoogle.

Another very interesting program I found through the TED website is Trendalyzer. Hans Rosling and the folks at Gapminder (an organization that works to promote awareness and development of the third world, especially in Africa) demos this software and you can see it in action here. Google bought the software and is working on making it accessible to millions (or at least that's what I hear). In any case, you can check out a beta version here. It's certainly an interesting way to look at statistics about the world. If you want another eye opener of world living conditions, check out the program dollar street.

I hope everyone has a great 4th!

Erik