Lots to blog about!

I've got lots to blog about! It's been a busy few weeks!

The kid's had a BEAUTIFUL birthday party a couple weeks ago! I know I said earlier I'd share pictures, so of course I will! The weather was just gorgeous! The kids had a blast! Here are some favorite birthday shots:

We had a little photo shoot before the party:




Malichi was sick of me taking pictures:










And some from the party:













It was just a great day for all of us!

--------------------------------------

This past week/weekend, we went down to Owatonna for the fair, as always, and had lots of fun! The kids had wristbands for rides for the week. I was so surprised at how much Kinzie LOVED the rides! She went on the little roller coaster, and the crazy bus, and she would have gone on the tilt a whirl if she had been big enough! Crazy daring girl she is! And she was so funny too because she would throw her hands up in the air and scream when she was on the rides!

Here they are on the roller coaster:


And Mr. Malichi, well, he was "too cool" for most of the rides! He LOVED the tilt a whirl though! I let him ride it once, and that's all he's been talking about since. But when I wanted him to take his sister on the roller coaster, or on the motorcycles, he said he would, but he also said that HE didn't think "THOSE" rides were fun! Here was his "THAT was a BORING roller coaster" face:




We were rained out on saturday and sunday, so we chilled out inside most of the weekend. Actually some of southern minnesota got flooded, some of it in Owatonna.
There was a picture in the paper on sunday morning taken at the fair saturday of a kid standing in front of one of the food booths, and the water was up to his knees!Luckily we didn't get water in our basement again! We had to miss the Pow Wow too because of the weather here. Bummer.

As much as I love going to the fair with the kids,
I was totally ready to come home by sunday. I am FAIRED out!

I did get to see a few old friends too which was awesome!

a few more pics...











Oh yeah! Nate and Joan and I did a really funny video! I will upload it and share that later!

----------------------------------------------

An then on Wednesday...Aaron gave me a present! A Zune!!!!! I am soooo excited! I have been trying to talk him into buying me an ipod for a while, and wednesday night he came home, and said " I bought you a present" and handed me my new Zune! It's all cute and pink and stuff! I love it.

I haven't had a chance to play with it yet though:( Our internet is down, and I have to do some setup CD on my computer to get started with it, and well, of course before I could do the set up I had to have an update with windows, which is on the internet. GRR. (I am obviously on the internet now, so I will try to get that done in my 1 1/2 that I have on here! :)



Aaron if you are reading this, Thank you Babe! I love you! You were so sweet to surprise(<--well kind of a surprise) me with this! :)

----------------------------------------------

I swear, I am having the worst luck right now. 2 weeks ago I went on a boat cruise with mom's club one evening, (which was awesome!) and I lost the diamond to my wedding ring!!!!!!!!!! :( I had the boat crew, and all of the mom's club helping me look for the diamond on the boat, but we had no luck. SO, I called the jeweler we got it from, and the warranty doesn't cover lost diamonds apparenty. Nice. So then I called my homeowners insurance. Well it's covered but we have a $1000.00 deductible! And after I tell the agent about what happened, she proceeds to tell me that there is something in the policy that I can get for $35.00 a year that covers jewelry, cameras, and camcorders. And if everything totals under $5,000. there is no deductible! WHAT THE!? $35.00 a YEAR and NO deductible! I am SOOOO kicking myself for not having set that up a LONG time ago! Needless to say, I am getting that set up ASAP!

--------------------------------------------

So...last fall we had a few bats in the house, like in the living room of the house, and then last week we had TWO more! Saturday night Aaron and I were sitting in the living room watchin a movie and all the sudden there is a bat flying around about us. I flipped out screaming, and told Aaron to go take care of it, so here's Aaron running around the pool skimmer, and a big piece of cardboard trying to catch the damn thing! It was so funny! And I locked myself in the bathroom while he caught it!

And then 2 nights later, I was sitting down on the couch with my laptop, and Aaron was sleeping. And all the sudden a bat flys right by my head! I screamed bloody murder, and grabbed the blanket to cover up with! I sat on the couch screaming for Aaron for what felt like forever, while the bat flies in circles around the room! Aaron, of course, is out cold and does NOT wake up to my screaming!!!!! So I finally got up the nerve to go up there and get him. I was almost in tears when I got to the room, I was so scared. Aaron thought it was pretty funny though. I wish I would have had all of this on video; it would have been pretty darn funny to watch! :)

I did take some pictures of Aaron trying to catch it though!


Needless to say, I called someone about our bat problem, first thing in the morning the next day. And $1200.00 later, I really hope the bats are gone!!!

----------------------


As I said earlier, our internet is down. I am at the pizza ranch having lunch, alone, and trying to catch up on some stuff. They have free wireless there now! :)

So we've been without internet for almost a week now. It is quite annoying! We have vonage phone service, so when the internet goes down, so does the phones! So that means I have no home phone! But I still had my cell..so it wasn't SO bad.

...until wednesday night when I dropped my phone in the bathtub while bathing the kids. Damn it! So then I was completely unreachable. Aaron cell doesn't work, mine didn't work anymore after getting wet, and neither did the home phones. I took my phone apart and let it dry out, and eventually it started working, some of the time!

But it just so happened that our contract with vonage eneded the NEXT day! Yay! We had been waiting for that for like a year! So over the weekend we went and picked up new PDA phones, and switched to sprint! I love the new phone! And hopefully we will actually have service in our own house and town now!

Oh and to go along with the wonderful luck I have been having, I tripped on the way into the Rennessaince festival, and twisted my ankle! OUCH! And at the wedding, I was in line for the buffet, and set my salad plate down on the buffet table to dish something up, and I somehow knocked the WHOLE plate on the ground, and Salad flew everywhere. I was so embarrassed! :(
I think Aaron jinxed me cause he told me on saturday morning that I was clumsy, and ever since then, I have been especially clumsy!! It's all his fault! :) Thanks babe!


The kids are at Aaron's parents right now, and have been since friday night. Aaron and I had a nice weekend together. We had a wedding to go to on Saturday, and then we went to the mall of america to buy our phones. And yesterday we went to the Rennessaince Festival! I love that place. We need to start going every year. We bought some cool christmas gifts for people too while we were there! I know.... christmas shopping ALREADY!???!!! Crazy!

Anywhoo...I have a doctor's appt. this afternoon, and then I get to go pick up my babies. I miss them! I can't wait to show them the new slide for their playset that Aaron and I picked up last night, and the little goodies we picked up at the Rennesiance Festival for them! :)

Sorry for the ginormous post!

GRAB BAG WEEKEND!

Grab Bag weekend is upon us again!!!!!!! Stop on by here!


It's 6:00 am here, and I am headed back to BED! Just wanted to pop in and let you about the Grab Bag!

$2.00 Wednesday!

OH MY! It's already Wednesday! This week is flying by! I almost forgot about putting $2.00 Wednsday item at My Digital Muse! Better late than never right???
Pick it up here.



I have been meaning to post some pictures from the birthday party, but I have been so busy! I will get some posted soon! The kids' party went great! It was so nice having all of the people they love over to enjoy the day with them! And the weather was gorgeous! We got lucky! I was so worried we'd be rained out like last year! And man....my kids might just be a little spoiled. They made quite the haul with presents! :) Anywhoo...pictures to come later!

Got a busy rest of the week ahead of me. Fair week in Owatonna, so we'll be there the remainder of the week, and then I still have to finish my grab bag stuff for friday! But I've got ideas flowing for what I want to do, now it's just finding the time do design it all. And then Sunday is the Pow Wow!

Gotta run!

Shan.

Today..

I'm spending much of today getting ready for the kid's big birthday bash this weekend! I spent most of the morning cleaning out the pool and starting to refill it. That thing got SO nasty while we were away on vacation, and the fact that we went a while without a cover didn't help much... It was green, and slimy, and had lots of leaves in it! BUT I got it all spic and span, and clean. It's white again on the bottom! Yay! Note to self: DO NOT LET THE POOL GO 2 WEEKS WITH NO CHEMICALS OR COVER!!!

While I did that, the kids' played in the yard with the neighbors. Malichi played football for the first time today with the neighbor boys. It was pretty cute !






And just for fun, some more vacation photos:







And these are for you Randy, since I know you read my blog! (your probably the only one in the fam that does!)

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Kinzie is 3 today! :)

She had a fun evening of cupcakes and presents, and playtime with Mommy, (or Shannon, as she calls me now), Daddy, and brother.




Happy Birthday Girl! I Love You!

And on another note; I thought I'd share some of my favorite photos from vacation last week.

Quickly...

I am super busy this week, but I just wanted to post quick to let you all know I am having a BIG sale at Shannon Lee Designs!!



I just got back from a week long vacation with my family on Sunday, and I am overwhelmed with all of the catching up I have to do! It was a fun, and much needed vacation though! Photos to come....

It's Grab Bag time again!

And I procrastinated until the last minute...again. It's almost 2 am and I just finished up my products and previews and got my grab bag loaded into the store! I always underestimate how long previews will take me! They take me forever! And I always get my products started the week of the grab bag, and always underestimate the amount of time it will take me to design my stuff! I swear, next month I will start WAY ahead of time so I am not up till 2 am the few nights before!
Anyway, if you want to pick it up...go here!
This month my grab bag sales are going to help pay for our family vacation coming up at the end of the month!!! So if you'd like to help such a worthy cause....go check it out!!

Well, I think I'll leave it at that, being that my last post probably took a month to read! And well, it's 2 am and I am butt tired! :)

Nighty night!

Shan.

Pine Ridge, SD 2007

Okay so I am just getting around to posting about my trip! :) I'm warning you...it's gonna be a LOOOOONG post- and I mean really long!

Friday-Day 1:

So we didn't start out the first day so well. I was on my way to drop the kids off at Grandma and Grandpa's and then I was heading to the church... and I got PULLED OVER! Oops. I was going 40 in 30. Tiff was in the passenger seat and realized as the cop comes up that she is not buckled. No time to do it before he gets there either. So the cop comes up:
"are you speeding for a reason"
"uh... well.... I am leaving for a church trip at 8...?"
"is she your daugther"?(pointing to my sister who people usually mistake as my OLDER sister)
"uh...no.. thats my sister"
"okay can I need both of your ID's"
We sit for a while, and I'm thinking, Crap he's giving me a ticket, otherwise he wouldn't be taking so long. So he comes back up to the car.
Looks at me and says:
"I'm giving you a warning. You need to slow down".
Looks at Tiff and Says:
"I'm giving you a ticket for not wearing your seat belt"

WHAT THE? The driver gets a warning and the passenger gets a ticket! SWEET.... I mean....sorry Tiff.
It must have been my clean record that made him decide to give me a warning... and the fact that Tiff has had 2 tickets in the past 6 months probably didn't help her out any!
Guess how much the ticket cost her? $103.00
So the moral of the story is... wear your seat belt even if you are only going across town! :)

Okay so onto the when the trip actually started.

We got to the church and headed out for our LONG drive. The day pretty much consisted of..
driving,
driving,
eating,
driving,
taking dorky pictures of ourselves:


and then some more driving and eating.
We arrived in Custer SD in the afternoon.
Set up camp at Custer Mountain Campground.
Then we had dinner at Pizza works in Custer and headed off to see the night lighting at Mount Rushmore. Gorgeous!





Saturday-Day 2:

We packed up our camp in the morning, and went into Custer for our Old Time Photo shoot.
Brunch in Custer
Then we went out to Lake Sylvan which was also gorgeous!



After that we headed out to finish our drive to the town of Pine Ridge.
We arrived at the Retreat Center in Pine Ridge and hour and a half later.
Karen, the intern that helps run the reatreat center, met us, and talked a little about what to expect while we were there.
Then we headed of to a Pow Wow at the Oglala Lakota College. The Pow Wow was amazing. The costumes (if that is what you call them?? I am not sure) were amazing!
We were told that we might be stared at, and that we would most likely be the only white people there, so I was a little nervous. But once we got there, I didn't feel like we were stared at all. One Native American woman, came up to us, and told us we were welcome there, and we could go find a seat in the crowd if we wanted to. How sweet. :)
I snapped a few cool shots at the Pow Wow:


Sunday-Day 3:

10:30 worship at the Makasan Presbetyrian Church. The service was and HOT and long! It was 100 degrees out that day and the service lasted an hour and half! But it was a good service, and the Pastor was great! He actually took time to have each person in the congregation introduce themselves! (which is why it was an 1 1/2 hours long!) Then we had lunch at the Church.
In the evening we met with Larry (he runs the Retreat center) and learned more about life on the reservation, and the culture. I learned a lot of new things today!

Some Random Facts we learned:

-It was talked about a lot that Alcoholism is prevalent on the reservation, as is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The reservation is a "dry" reservation, meaning there are no liquor stores on it. Where we stayed, we are just minutes from the Nebraka border, where there are liquor stores. People will walk there to get alcohol, or drive there, drink, and then drive home. There are these signs posted on the sides of the roads that say "think" and "why die", and each one of them represents one person that has died due to an alcohol related incident. We saw many signs. It was very sad to see.
-Diabetes is also prevelant due to lack of a good diet.
-Alot of men die by the age of 45 due to diabetes, alcohol, or heart problems.
-Women's cycles are sacred. The men leave during that time so the women can be together.
-a common food- Tripe soup, which is made of the stomach lining from a cow. Yum-O!
-Stray dogs roam around, sometimes in packs of 3 or 4. We saw a lot of that, which was kinda scary. I'm not talking cute dogs...they looked like wolves!
-There are not a lot of jobs on the reservation. Not much farming or industry. The biggest jobs are at the Hospital, school, and government/tribal counsel.
-The Public school on the reservation has boarding and dorms.
-Sometimes when there has been a tragic death in the family, men with cut off their ponytails, and women will cut their hair short.
-Many of the people are very spiritual.
-A person can take any last name, it does not have to be the one their mother or father has. They can decide it when they are older and make it legal then.
-Relatives and family memebers of the opposite sex do not call eachother by name. They use their relation (neice, uncle etc.).
-The average annual family income on the reservation is $3,000 to $5,000.
-8th year of a drought
-Alot of men and women join the military.
-In their culture the land doesn't belong to them, they belong to the land. They believe when they die, they go back to the land.
-30 to 35% speak the Lakota language.
-About 8 people die a week on the reservation
-The turtle stands for fertility and long life.


Monday-Day 4:

Hit the coffee shop in the morning before making out to the work site at 9:00 am. We worked on a retreat center they were building next to the Makasan Presbyterian church. We worked on leveling dirt for the basement, staining doors, and cutting wood. It was 104 degrees. Yuck.
Day one at the work site we see a prairie fire:

Larry says "there's a prairie fire, and I am a little concerned about it getting over to us"
Great.
Obviously, it didn't and we are fine! :)

After we finished up for the day at the work site, we toured Red Cloud Indian School just outside of Pine Ridge. Red Cloud is a private Catholic school on the reservation. We got a tour of the school, and learned some of the history in the church and school.

And then we went back to the Retreat center.

Meet Delaine:


Delaine is a man that lives on the reservation. He hangs around the retreat center alot and was there often while we were there. Delaine had a little crush on Kris. It was pretty cute! But after he found out she was married, he asked us to help him find a girl.
Red hair.
Tall.
Freckles.
Doesn't Drink.
Doesn't Smoke.
Get married, have 2 kids that don't drink or smoke.
That is what he's looking for.
Don't worry...we're workin on it Delaine!
Delaine was such a joy to be around! He would pinch your nose, and feel your forehead and ask "are you ok", EVERY time he saw you! He was just funny, and so sweet.
He said he is going to call me on my birthday.


Later we went back to the retreat center to do kids club. This was my favorite part of the whole trip; getting to spend time with the kids on the reservation. They do Kids club every day monday through saturday year round at the retreat center. It is such a good thing for the kids to do, and have a place they can go because a lot of the kids that come, have a tough home life.
We tye dyed shirts with the kids on Monday, and they were just so thrilled to make the shirts and actually get to take them home! We had fun!

After dinner, we had a speaker lined up to talk with us. His name was Mike Her Many Horses. We had quite the crazy ride out to his house with Joan getting us lost and taking us off-roadin' in a 13 passenger van! I pretty much had a panick attack in the back seat!

Mike spoke about what it was like going to the Red Cloud Indian School when he was young, and he also told us a story about meeting Senator Robert Kennedy in 1966 when he came and visited their school. Mike said he saw a blue ora around Kennedy, and so he went home and told his Mom. His Mom told him to pray for the senator because he would be leaving the earth soon. In their culture a blue or a yellow ora means death is coming soon. One month later Robert Kennedy was assassinated.
He talked about some of the rituals such as Sundance, as well as the different dance styles used in Pow Wow's.
One of the biggest Pow Wow's in the nation is in Shakopee MN, the 2nd weekend in August. Mike goes to it every year. We are going to try to get our whole Pine Ridge group back together to go to it with him.

Wouldn't that be fun?!

Tuesday-Day 5

We spent the morning working at the work site, putting up walls and staining more doors.
For Lunch we went to the Su Anne Big Crow Boys and Girls club. Su Anne was a teenager in Pine Ridge. She was a really good athlete and an exceptional basketball player. She was also a leader. She wanted to curb alcoholism on the reservation. She talked about the teens having nothing to do, and no place to go after school or in the summer where they would have a healthy environment that would help keep them away from drugs and alcohol. At 17 years old (1992) Su Anne died in a car crash. The boys and girls club was built in honor of her after her death.
Inside the club they have a 50's themed restaurant where we enjoyed some massive foot long hot dogs:


Then again at 3, we had kids club at the retreat center. Today we made suncatchers and played games with the kids.

After dinner we had another speaker, Will Peters, come to the retreat center. Will was amazing. He had a really great message about women, and repecting ourselves, and others. And expecting respect from men. My favorite quote from him "It is the women's power that makes the men shine". Will has a CD coming out in July, and a book called "Spiritual Justice" coming out next year sometime. I would love to get them both.
Will rocked.

Wednesday-Day 6.

Today was the hardest day at the work site! We had to move these big 50ft boards for the floor/ceiling of the retreat center. It may not look that heavy but it WAS. We are some buff girls:




After working we went out to the Pine Ridge School, and then out to the Wounded Knee Massacre site.

For Kids club today we made frames with the kids, and gave them each a picture we took of them.
After Kids club we had a worship service and dinner with the kids.
We also got a little beat boxing lesson from 2 college guys from Custer that were there to help with the kid's worship. Rachel had a little crush :)

That evening we went out to Poker Joes for a buffalo feeding! And that was..well...interesting. They were HUGE! Watch:




from shannon carlson and Vimeo.

And a sweet photo of Joan from the Buffalo Feeding:

Lookin' good girl!

Thursday-Day 7:

One last picture of our group:


We said goodbye to Larry, Karen and Delaine, and headed out for our 10 hour drive back home.

And boy was it good to be home. It was so good to see my babies and to see my hubby! :)

I am hoping to go back on this trip again next year, and hopefully can talk Aaron into going with me. I learned so much about the Culture of Native Americans, and about their history, and it was all so intruquing. We met some pretty amazing people, that were willing to open up and share with us about their life, and their culture which was pretty awesome. And those kids, they were just a joy to work with.


so...you still here? I told you.. It was gonna be long! It only took me like 3 hours to write this whole post! :) Well if you made it this far..feel free to leave me a comment! :) :)