Happy New Year!

I have been such a procrastinator with my blog - i'm sorry!  I plan to put much more effort into it this year & have a feeling my blog will be full of all things baby (and puppy).  Here is a recap of some fun things that happened the past few months.

We went down to the Duluth hot air balloon festival.  Sadly, it was too windy to put up the balloons so this is the best picture I got.  The moon rising above the lake was well worth our trip down to the lake to a balloon festival with no balloons.  :)

Jill & Shawn have been busy brewing their own beer.  We made it down to the cities for Thursday night brew night.  It looked like a chemistry project going on in their kitchen. Fun!

 Baby Dane got baptized at camp!  We have a mini reunion of camp staff celebrating Dane's baptism together.  We had such a fun time catching up with everyone and meeting sweet baby Dane.

And we got to meet baby Gus - GUS HAS HAIR!  Seriously, does he just melt your heart?

 Every morning Kenai & I have coffee together.  It's just the best.  This was when I could still hold her… she is getting big so fast!

Robby & Duke released pheasants together on the farm.  They buy the pheasants from a farm, band them and then release them onto our farm.  It was really neat to watch.  Robby was so excited all he could do was hug uncle Duke!

Michelle is my new co-worker who also happens to be a NDSU alumni.  We celebrated one day by sporting out Bison gear at work.  It was fun - most people were like "Where is NDSU?"

Robby got to go elk hunting in Montana.  He was really excited to experience elk camp!

My two favorite Duluth girls came over for a hot chocolate party (with unlimited marshmallows)!

Alexis and I grew up together and are both having our 1st baby!  She is due two days after me.  It would be fun to have a baby on the same day!

 This is after our 1st crazy snow storm.  We got 34" of snow in one storm!!

I was so excited to put lights on my charlie brown tree… the snow kinda covered them up.

 Kenai LOVES the snow.  It's hard to get her to come inside.  Robby says she looked like a killer whale going through the snow.  She burrows all of the way under and then pops up.  It's pretty fun to watch her in her element.  Most of the time her head is buried in a snow pile.  When we are done playing and she burns off her energy she loves to cuddle!

35 weeks pregnant and still flipping lefse like a pro.

 The crazy Ohren/Balgaard/Hoff Chirstmas photo.  We are never really normal so why pretend?

We do a women's gift exchange at our party and FOUR out of the nine women gifted the new Pioneer Woman Cookbook.  I mean of all the things you can give as a gift… what are the odds?!?  It's a fabulous cookbook!

 Robby was in charge of our New Years Eve party.  A grain belt for my love… a sanpellegrino (best ever pregnancy drink) for preggers & sushi rolls for dinner.  I didn't get a picture of the best part though… KEY LIME PIE.  I could die on the couch eating key lime pie.

Two of my running buddies are also pregnant and none of us are finding out the gender!  When running became a pain we started walking together every Wednesday night.  Can't wait to get our strollers out for a good run together!

Natalie was due two days after me… and surprise she had her baby a week ago!  She had a boy and named him Jax… he is so sweet and so little!

Roberto, Kenai & I out for a walk.  The little puller got put on a gentle leader and our walks are much more enjoyable now.  Can't wait to teach this baby girl how to Skijorn.  She is a puller that's for sure!!

39 weeks pregnant!  This is my bosses wife and she is just an incredible person.  They don't live far from us so she will make a great adopted Duluth grandma!

Robby's work threw me a baby shower a couple weeks ago.  Everyone was so nice and it was a lot of fun!

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 You might be wondering what you do at a military baby shower.  Well they do pushups of course!  Why wouldn't they?  A pushup for every week.

And here I am 39 weeks pregnant!  ALMOST THERE!

Happy Halloween!

From one mummy mommy to the other :)

Meet Keen Keen!

Robby & I got a puppy!  Her name is Kenai and she is named after the Kenai river in Alaska where Robby did some mission work while in college.  After his trip he put it on his bucket list to get a husky and name her Kenai... ten years later he got to check it off his list!  She is seriously so sweet and we are incredibly lucky to get such a well behaved husky!  I know you are thinking "they are crazy to get a puppy before a baby" but really I think it has been good preparation for us!  She is a lot of work but well worth it.

These pictures are from the first few days we got her... she is 8 weeks here.

This is her mom, dad & her with her siblings

This is a picture of her this week!  She has grown so much already!  Oh about the weird toy - she found this in our back woods and it's her all time favorite toy.  Mary did some research and it's a chicken and her name is Henrietta.  Oh Henrietta... you're a little creepy.

Here is a cute video of her playing with a carrot!

From this day forward

In the beauty of the rugged 320 ranch nestled in the mountains...

A beautiful couple made a vow in front of God, our family & friends...

To love, honor, cherish, share, laugh & build a life together...

This picture demonstrates exactly how much fun our family had:

Wait a minute.... there it is!

We had such an amazing trip to Montana for Jill & Shawn's wedding!  The 320 ranch was so beautiful, quaint and the definition of western hospitality.  They had the most amazing continental breakfast where our entire family/friends gathered each morning for breakfast (one of my favorite parts!!).  The wedding could not have been more beautiful... outside with the mountains as the backdrop and crisp breeze.  As pastor Carol put it "more beautiful than any Cathedral man could build."  It was perfect!

After the wedding festivities wrapped up we headed to Yellowstone National Park where the deer and the antelope lark (as Alli would say).  We enjoyed some extremely beautiful scenery touring around in Base Camp.  We camped out in the middle of the woods and thank God for the security of Base Camp I could sleep sound without any worry of grizzly bears!

BISON PRIDE! 

  

We had a fabulous trip!!

Congratulations Jill & Swan!! We love you!

A very special visit!

We welcomed a bunch of tourists over Labor Day weekend this year!  Mom, Dad, Gary & Barbie came up for a visit.  It was a very special visit because this was (according to Barbie) Barbie & Gary's first vacation together since Justin was a sophomore in high school (Justin is a year older than me!).  Robby & I pretended to be tourists with them all weekend and we had a blast!  I never get tired of the tourist attractions in Duluth.  We even took advantage of having a of couple handy men staying with us - they took a rotting tree down,  took and ugly tree down, removed an old stump, saved my tomato plant and did a bunch of other handy things around the house.  So now we've made a new requirement to be a guest at our house: you must remove a dead tree from our yard while you're here.  Bring your chain saw!

We did so much in two days when they left if felt like we did a week's worth of sight seeing.  We drove up the highway, ate at Emily's, enjoyed a treat at the Candy Kitchen, spent some time at the beach, enjoyed drinks on a patio, shopped in canal park, watched TWO ships go through the canal, enjoyed breakfast on the patio of Amazing Grace, and shopped a little more... and I'm forgetting some things I know!  I think this might have been Base Camp's first shopping trip!

A family tradition

When I was little, my Grandpa Alfred's pride & joy was his raspberry & strawberry garden.  We would always sneak in there when the berries were ripe and grandpa would chase us out a few minutes later because I'm sure we could have wiped out his berries pretty fast.  Every summer our families would get together for raspberry malts.  I still crave a raspberry malt in the summer... but you can't use store bought raspberries.... heavens NO!  It just is not the same.  Robby & I found a patch a few miles out of town and went pickin'.  We couldn't get home fast enough to make a malt.  It brings me back to being a kid every time... simply the best taste ever!

Regan & Bretty

We had a short but sweet visit from our Kansas City friends.  Regan & Brett have been dating for two years and we finally got to meet him.  He is a perfect match for Regan... plus he is a skier so he earned major bonus points from me before I even met him ;)  Skiers unite.

We had the best time enjoying Northern Waters Smokehaus (best sandwich in Duluth by far), trying beers (and root beers) at the brewhouse, hanging out in canal enjoying a beautiful day in duluth!

I had to post this picture because I think it's hilarious.  We definitely asked the wrong person to take our picture!  Haha, sorry Robby.

Group picture take two!

Regan transfered from the Duluth Ferguson branch down to Kansas City about two years ago.  Our boss Joe loved Regan, I'm pretty sure he thinks of her as a second daughter.  He put on a big party at his house on Saturday night.  We had SO much fun eating amazing food, playing games and sitting outside around the campfire.  

Regan, please move back to MN... we miss you too much!!  Brett, you are welcome here too ;)