Pink

Life in our humble St. Louis Park home continues to move forward at a rather frantic pace; it's hard to keep up sometimes. There's a lot going on for the Minnesota Deans. Time to catch you up...

Back in early May, we celebrated Karen's 34th birthday with an extra special event: a "cake reveal." We invited our Minnesota family over to our house to celebrate with some ice cream and some extra special cake. After our first ultrasound (16 weeks), we delivered a sealed envelope, containing the sex of our new baby, to bakers at the famous Oulette's Bakery and asked them to bake us a cake with either blue or pink cake inside, so we could share the excitement of finding our what "kind' of new baby we would be expecting in October. Here's how it went down...

You could cut the tension with a knife as we all waiting for the dramatic reveal.

Here we go...

It's PINK! Mommy and Daddy are excited. Lucas is confused.

Lucas finally reacts. It's delayed, but he is super psyched for his sister!

The Deans revel in the news while the family erupts with laughter and applause.

In October, this cake will be replaced with a real-life baby girl!

A few weeks later, we ventured up to Blaine for a BBQ to hang out with some of Karen's college friends and their kids over at Worm and Mike's house. Brian and Kristy had dinner plans that night, so they dropped off Ingrid (our niece, Lucas' cousin) so we could take her up to the party with us. It was an early taste of what it might be like to be a family of 4. A lot of work! The kids had a blast playing in the water and Lucas, especially, got nice and muddy. It definitely took all of the adults to corral the kids all afternoon, but we had a really good time and all went well. Luckily, we made it back inside before the hail storm.

Lucas with Taylor Gabrielli doing some mud bonding

How deep can my hand go?

I found my hand again!

Dinner time was a big production

One dry (Ingrid) and one wet (Lucas) cousin.

Here's Karen at 20 weeks. Looking good! Look at how nice our lawn looks, too!

Last but not least, we thought we'd share two of our new favorite videos. In the first one, Lucas is dancing to Jay's rendition of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" and Karen gets him to share some new words from his growing vocabulary. In the second, Lucas trains for the 2024 Olympics in backyard downhill cart racing. Enjoy.

Summer Comes Early

Spring has come early this season.  We've had so many sunny, warm days you'd think it should be August already and that we'd be preparing for fall.  I continue to smile everytime I realize it's only the beginning of May and that we will still get to enjoy more months of outdoor weather!

This week, it reached almost 80 degrees.  It seemed like the obvious choice to get the pool out and have the neighborhood boys over.  Everytime people ask us how our transition is going after almost a year away from California we always say it's hard and we miss so much of our life in SoCal.  We also always follow it up by saying, but our neighborhood is so awesome and we couldn't be luckier to have landed in a spot with so many young families and 2 year old boys! Lucas has made the best of friends and begs to play outside with them everytime I open the front door.

Lucas, Will, Charlie, and Hutton enjoying the summer fun!

Tell Us This is Just a Phase...

The many faces of Lucas Dean.

So, Lucas is now 27 months old and he's been running us through the ringer lately. On bad days, he pushes us away, pointing to the other end of the room and shouting, "Go!", but mysteriously clings onto us and won't go down for a nap in the afternoon or to sleep at night (unless we're laying down next to him). Does he want us to go away or does he always want us by his side? I thought teenagers were supposed to send these kinds of mixed messages. Not 2-year-olds. In the end, we have decided to relax and not stress out too much about this new "phase." Seems like we just need to pay him even more attention right now and dig a little deeper into our storage of patience. All I'll say, is he's lucky he's so cute.

The rainy weekend presented an opportunity to head to one of our favorite haunts, the Minnesota Children's Museum. We met up with Karen's friend Worm from college along with her family (husband Mike and their daughters Ryan and Taylor) and Brian, Kristy and Ingrid Rolig. Good times were had by all and we were in and out of there before it got too crowded to move.

Our little Picasso during his "Purple Phase."

Notice the kitty nose and whiskers on his face?

Playing in the "Tot Spot," a pool that has ping pong balls and a maze of plastic tubes. He loved it. To his right is his friend Taylor.

Last weekend, we all headed up to Alexandria to the Rolig cabin. Jay, Brain and Jack put in the dock just before the torrential downpour. It's exciting to think the cabin is open for business. We look forward to many days there this summer. Pretty sure if we're looking for Lucas, he'll be down on the beach digging in the sand.

Fireside at the cabin with cousin Ingrid. I think they're gonna be lifelong pals.

They can't get enough of each other.

"Happy, Happy, Happy..."

This week Jay celebrated his 37th birthday.  Lucas loves birthdays, probably because he continuously says, "happy, happy, happy," to the person we're celebrating and he gets to blow out candles that he confidently knows how to do ever since turning 2. We light, and re-light, candles so he can have the satisfaction of watching the flame go out every time he blows.

 I was a little nervous about Jay's mood on Saturday considering I scheduled him for a day of yard work with my dad.  Was that mean?  I kept reassuring him that he was going to feel so good about the progress and promised him a nice night out after a longs day's work.  Maybe there were little grumblings here and there, but Jay did great, and so did my dad, and our yard looks ready for spring.  They cut a few branches, planted a bush or two, dug up some overgrown plants, busted out the lawn mower, weed whipper, and leaf blower, and lay some rock around our shed.  Being new homeowners, this is progress! To ensure he had some of his greatest pleasures on the weekend of his birthday, we packed Lucas up and had muffins at Turtle Bread Co. and on Sunday morning, enjoyed a family morning out to Starbucks(maybe the highlight of the weekend...sad, but true...we are addicts!) So unfortunately, we didn't take pictures of the yard to post, but here are some cute ones...

Hoppin' Down the Bunny Trail...

Spring is definitely here and our Saint Louis Park neighborhood has been buzzing with excitement. Jay, with the help of Jack, has been doing a lot of yard work, and we've been hanging out a lot with our neighbors. On Easter Sunday, we participated in an Easter egg hunt and even met the REAL Easter Bunny! Later, we went to Jack and Bonnie's for some family time and food. A perfect weekend.

We're still recovering from our run-in with the actual Easter bunny!

Someone is not quite tired and ready for bed yet. Daddy is, though.

Jack and Jay eliminating some trees behind the shed in the back.

Thanks for looking at the camera, Max!

Happy Easter from the Deans!

Visit from the Deans of Mattapoisett

Come outside and play!

Jay's parents and his brother Greg visited the past 4 days and got some amazing weather and quality time with Sir Lucas. We visited the aquarium at the Mall of America (what would a trip to the Twin Cities be without a stop at the MOA?), the Children's Museum in St. Paul, went to cousin Ingrid's 2nd birthday party (a Malawian theme!), watched some March Madness (good season, Syracuse!), ate some good food, and spent a lot of time lounging around the house. Jay went on a bike ride to Lake Harriet with his Dad, Bunny's (the local sports bar) with Greg, and saw The Hunger Games with his Mom (cuz everyone else was!).

Lucas loved spending time with his grandparents and his uncle and will sorely miss all of the extra attention he got.

"Nana Dean" with Lucas and Karen on the front stoop.

Jack Dean helped sweep these annoying things that fell from our  trees.

Uncle Greg with Lucas on a big rig at the MOA.

Thanks to Kristy and Brian and Ingrid for an amazing Malawian birthday party today!