Love my crazy Volk Family

After our little family got back from Colorado, we only had a few days at home to unpack and re-pack our bags for our trip to Minnesota for my cousin Justin's wedding. I love being busy busy like that, but my house does not like it, especially when it looks like this most of the week! How embarrassing is this picture!!

We flew out on Thursday afternoon after Cole's swim lessons and headed to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. We were a little nervous about these flights because typically we fly to Denver which is only a 1.5 hour flight, but to Minnesota it was almost 2.5. Plus, Cole is basically the size of a 2 year old who should have his own seat. Lets just say that after 2.5 hours of entertaining Cole with everything we had in purses, diaper bags, seat pockets....Nick and I were EXHAUSTED!! So, when Nick's dad picked us up from the airport, we were happy to hand Cole over to Granddad for awhile! :)
Later that evening, Nick and I got to enjoy a night out on the town with some crazy cousins. It was great getting out and staying out late and also catching up with family.
Friday, we headed down to meet up with the Volk clan for all the wedding festivities. We went to Valley Fair which is basically like Six Flags. It was such a fun day!!! Hardly anyone was there so we got to basically walk right on to all the rides. I was a little nervous to go on some of the roller coasters because ever since I've had Cole, my equilibrium has been a bit off. I definitely can't spin or go upside down, but I did find some fun rides to go on. My mom took Cole on some kiddie rides and they had a great time!

Later that evening, some of us went to the yummy restaurant.
Here is Cole showing Uncle Randy that he is sooooo big!

Saturday was the wedding day. Nick and I were wondering how long Cole would last through the ceremony before we had to take him out....ha! First off, isn't this such a cute outfit? Look at those cute loafers!
Ok, so he made it about 15 minutes before he started getting really loud and kept telling everyone around him, "no no"....ha!
Nick took him out to the lobby and he found a little friend named Lily to play with :)

Ok, something you must know....the Volk side of my family (my dad's side) is HUGE!! My dad is the oldest of 12 and I have about 40 cousins just on that side. So, when we all get together, it gets pretty crazy. This picture below shows all the musicians in the family. This was all who participated in the music portion of the wedding and it just amazes me that they all are very talented musicians/singers! I don't think this even shows all of them.

Here is our cute family after the ceremony

The reception was at a great golf course. We all had a great time with great food and great dancing.
Here is my cute cousin Abby.....love her! :)

Ok, probably half a year ago, I had this picture of my cousin Garett over Christmas. It seems that each time we see him he has some crazy hair/facial hair.
So again, this was over Christmas......

This is Garett now....a little scary huh :)
He was trying to be silly with Cole but I think he ended up just scaring him.

My sister-in-law Rachel with my niece Cameron

We all had a great time at the wedding, congratulations Justin and Renae!!

Sunday, a lot of the family decided to go to the horse races that were right across the street from our hotel. However, I opted out of going because can you imagine chasing around a 17 month old the whole afternoon?? Um, no thanks! Nick and I used to go to the horse races all the time, especially before we got married so I would have loved to have gone, but I knew I'd be doing a lot of chasing around.
So, Rachel my mom and I decided to hit up the Mall of America. We had a great time, especially doing some bow shopping for Miss Cameron.
I think she would fit in great in Texas with this size of bow!

We walked around for quite a few hours and the kiddos did great! Cole finally fell asleep, he was exhausted. Doesn't he look gigantic in this picture? He's got tree trunks for legs!

Nick, Cole and I flew back to DFW early Monday morning. Nick and I were so completely tired as we only got about 3-4 hours of sleep each night. So, we felt like zombies on the plane ride. LUCKILY, Cole surprised us and fell asleep watching a Baby Einstein video. Nick leans over to me once Cole fell asleep and says, "don't move". haha!! My rear end was pretty sore for most of the flight since he was sleeping on me, but it was so worth that hour of not having to entertain! :)
When we finally got home, we all took about a 2.5 hour nap and felt so great!
Later on in the evening, our smoke alarm kept going off, but it didn't sound like the normal smoke alarm would so we were kinda confused. Nick messed around with the alarms a bit but it kept going off. Next thing I know, Nick comes into the bedroom and says, "it's the CO2 alarm that is going off, I think you and Cole need to go over to Casey and Ryans". Yikes!
Nick ended up calling the Fire Dept just for precaution and this is what was outside our house.

The firemen went through our house with their detector but they didn't find anything. They told us that if it goes off again, to take it apart and blow out all the dust that sometimes if it gets dusty it can go off. Whew! We felt kinda silly having the fire trucks, ambulance and police car all show up at our house for a little dust, but we weren't going to take any chances!!! My grandparents had a CO2 leak in their house and it was bad! So, we thought better safe than sorry...especially since it was almost bedtime and we were going to sleep :)
All is well in the Seeman household and now we are getting back to our normal schedule of swim lessons, play gym and kindermusik. We will be in TX for a few weeks before we head out to Wisconsin for Nick's cousins wedding. Hopefully we will survive this TX heat! :)