More Vacation...Pictures with Captions :)

We were so blessed to have our friends join us for a few days in God's country--here is Miss Julie with one of her 4 boys (AKA "Big Tate", who "Little Tate" was named after)

Buck after one of his wakeboarding displays--joking around for his sister, but it was caught on camera. Sorry, buddy! It's going on the blog! :)

To which Max said--"Show off! Look at these muscles!"

To which Tate said, "NO, Look at THESE muscles!"

I love this picture of G-Funk--she was attempting to slalom ski after dropping one by the dock (yes, they let you do that up in Minnesoh-tah) but couldn't quite find the back of the ski for her dangling foot. So she just sort of barefoot-skied on that one side for awhile before letting go. It was pretty impressive!

The answer to the question of how many children can fit in the back of a Denali? 8! There are the 4 Larson boys (Sam is hiding behind Joey in the blue shirt there) and our 4. And yes, we drove a short distance that way...

ZoZo and G-Funk having some girl time

Charlie is displaying his finely built sand castle. No one knocked it down for fear of his wrath. Seriously I think it stayed up for 3 or 4 days until the rain knocked it down and then he forgot about it. Phew!

One of the 3 or 4 pictures where I am on this side of the camera. This marshmallow-roasting stuff is serious business. I have it down to a science.

This is what I am going to be doing when I am 65. Here is Buck's Aunt M skiing at the beautiful gorgeous age of 65--and she would have gone on one ski if we would have had the right kind of rope! She rocks!

Perfect, perfect night.

Yep, he's taken!

Yep he is definitely taken

Yep he is all mine :)

Wowsa! Lucky lucky me! :)

A quick up date from up north!

While I don't typically blog on vacation, I have a lovely quiet moment, enjoying the sounds of water coming into the shore, 4, yes 4 children sleeping and wanted to post a short but sweet update to our little blog! We are loving our week up here, but Mommy probably than anyone is ready to get back home and back into our regular old routine. While I am overwhelmingly grateful for these weeks of vacation and time away, I am a homebody through and through. :) The kiddos have been wonderful. Tate especially is a true "boat baby" and really is happiest tooling around the Lake on his daddy's lap "driving" the boat. I am also so proud of my Charlie...thought it may be another 10 years or so before I saw him attempt a try on the skis but he was full of confidence just last night and went for it! All 3 of the "big kids" are now ski-ers. Wow!! And Max is gaining more and more confidence on the wakeboard...I have no doubt we will see him doing more tricks than I am comfortable with even next year. Pics to come, I promise.

One of my most fun memories of our trip so far was last night after Charlie skied and the entire family (Buck's mom and dad, sister, aunt, me and all 4 little monkeys) were in the boat and Buck was wakeboarding with Journey's "Don't Stop Believin' " blaring from the boat's crazy big speakers. We watched Buck clear the wake and all the kiddos cheer for their daddy, so proud, as a gorgeous sunset took over the sky. It was pretty much a perfect Lake night. As Buck would say...we are livin' the dream. :) Love to you all...

Zoe's First Attempt At Soccer

OK, so this was so funny. The kids actually did a lot better than what I thought they would do for a 4-year-old soccer clinic. This city parks and rec department has it figured out. This was a very non-competitive, low threat way to introduce the kids to soccer while giving the parents some pretty solid entertainment as well. Enjoy the pics of Zoe and friends as well as some of the quotes overheard at 4-year-old soccer clinic (some may have come from me, but I would never admit to it...) :)

Check out the little one on the coach's lap--looks like she is LOVING having her picture taken!

Overheard: "Honey, PLEASE put your shirt down."

"Please stop crying and play soccer!"

"No, no, no, go the other way, the other way!"

"___, You need to get off your mom's lap and out onto the field please."

"_______, no more cartwheels, OK. We're going to play soccer now."

"There is no tackling in soccer!"

"Just because you want to hold onto the ball doesn't mean you can. We don't use our hands in soccer." (this said to one little guy who would nose dive onto the ball every time he was near the ball to "save" it. It was kind of cute actually).

Have a great weekend, everyone!

My rant about the pediatric dentist's office

Let me preface this by saying I have nothing against the pediatric dentist himself. He's just fine. Whatever. This whole shenanigan started about 6 months ago when the office would call me every couple of days and say "we've had a cancellation, would you like to schedule your children for a visit?" and I would politely decline because, you know, if I wanted to schedule a visit, I would, you know, call them myself. Whoever heard of a dentist's office calling you to schedule your appointment. So I figure they are trying to drum up business, which actually really irritates me. Because here's the deal.

We don't have dental insurance. By choice. And that's right there, plain and simple for them to read in our file.

So every year when I haul all three kids in for their annual cleanings (which by the way for a child is a hygienist with a toothbrush...trust me, it's nothing fancy!), we pay for that baby out of pocket. Which is almost $400. Now, when I do my best to take good care of my kids' teeth, teach them good oral hygiene, and not a one of them has even ever had a hint of a cavity, why in the world would I want to take them in more than once a year?


My first little rant is about dental insurance. My husband and I have crunched the numbers. Several times. He works for a small company that doesn't offer a group plan. I am, well. Retired, you know. :) Currently unemployed, shall we say. So we have to purchase our own health, dental, vision, life, you name it...insurance. And dental was one that just did not add up. When you add up the cost of monthly premiums to the cost of co-pays for visits plus the cost of any procedures that might need to be done, you are out MORE money than if you just pay for annual visits out of pocket, even if it is $400. Seriously. That's crazy, isn't it? So it isn't that we can't afford it, it is that we choose not to spend our money this way. And that is what I felt like saying to the nasty lovely receptionist when I called to make the kids' annual appointment last week.

Phone conversation with meany super-nice receptionist:

Me: Hi, I'm calling to make an apppointment for my 3 kids. Yes, we've been there before.

Her: Last name?

Me: Olsen. O-L-S-E-N (I just spell it automatically. It's like my last name is OlsenO-L-S-E-N).

Her: E-N?

Me: Yep, E-N.

Her: Hmmmm. I'm not finding any Olsen with an E-N. Are you sure you've been here before?

Me: Yes, we were there last year. (Oh, and somewhere in here I am pretty sure she asked me if I was sure my last name was spelled with an E-N. Seriously???!!!)

Her: Oh (surprised!) It's been over a year?

Me: Well, probably right about a year. I think it was last July.

Her: (Big sigh). Well. If it's been over a year, your account is inactivated. We try to see our patients twice a year.

Me: (Blood rising to my face) Well, because we have to pay out of pocket, we choose to only come once a year. Is that a problem?

Her: Well, no, but I have to re-activate your account now. After a certain number of calls are made, we inactivate the account, like I said.

Me: If it's too much trouble...

Her: No, no, no, it's OK.
Etc, etc., etc.

Now, if you were me, what would you have done? I always leave those situations thinking I should have done something differently and am not thinking clearly at the time enough to do it! And as a health care provider myself, trust me, these people should be glad they are getting people in the door for preventative exams, not berating them for their lack of frequency. To me this conversation is yet another example of the barriers that people face every day in gaining access to healthcare or dental care or whatever. If someone is given this much grief just over the phone for crying out loud, how willing am I going to be to call back and make another appointment? I like this dentist, and am willing to give this office the benefit of the doubt--for this one appointment, mind you--but trust me, they better be on their good behavior! :) I shall keep you posted about our upcoming appointments on Thursday. Max has been brushing like a crazy man, for some reason he is terrified of a cavity. Fear can work wonders on oral hygiene! Enough of my rant...thanks for "listening" and happy Wednesday...

Max and The Playhouse

We try in the summer to take advantage of some of the fun stuff that is available to kids here, while balancing just being home. I want to do things for the kids that they truly want to do, not just run around, staying busy just for the sake of being busy. I hate that. But one of the top thing on our list during the summer is a Playhouse Day Camp. Max and Charlie have both gone for a couple of years now, and as the kids get older, they have more choices about what kind of camp they get to do at the Playhouse. The Playhouse is a local theater that has so much to offer--really well-done plays and musicals, along with the classes for adults and kids that aren't too over-the-top. This year Max chose to to "My First Commercial". The kids got to learn about different types of commercials: endorsements, product commercials, movie trailers, and demonstration commercials, and then they got to act them all out, even taping them to show us on the last day. It was so cool!!



They acted out the demonstration commercial live for us but we got to see the final, edited, perfected version of their endorsement/product commercial at their "show". Max was pretty pumped because he was the "endorser", getting to play Twins baseball player Joe Mauer, endorsing a stuffed dog. :) Too fun. I love stuff that is educational, takes the kids out of their comfort zone a little bit but isn't competitive or scary. The Playhouse fits that bill to a T. Charlie is doing the "Popcorn Players" half-day camp in August and is super excited about it. Here are just a few more pictures. Enjoy!

Max with his teacher, Miss Chelsea, one of the Playhouse's college interns.


Max getting ready to go onstage for the movie trailer commercial. He is "holding" the little guy in green who is playing a bean, as in "Jack and the Beanstalk." Maybe you had to be there. :)

Product demonstration commercial. They made up their product and I still don't know exactly what it was but I was super proud of him because he was super proud of it. :) Love that kid!

Much of my life is spent doing this...

This is a picture of our family's approximately 3 days' worth of laundry. Yes, folks, 3 days. And this is a "clean" pile. As of right now, we have an entire bedroom dedicated to the sorting and folding of laundry but that won't last long since we are in the process of redecorating and moving children around. It is pretty pathetic that we actually need a whole bedroom dedicated to laundry. Eventually, the laundry starts looking like this:

And that is a good day! Buck said I needed to post this as a deterrent for other people who have ever considered having more children. This is what a family of 6's laundry looks like. It is ridiculous. When Tate was born, the laundry multiplied exponentially; it seriously didn't matter that he had teeny tiny little clothes. Just so you know. And have now seen physical proof of the insane amount of laundry that a large family has--you cannot say you weren't warned. I can't believe I'm posting this for other people to see. At least you know I have nothing to hide. :) And maybe this makes you feel better about your own laundry.