Thanksgiving 2010

We spend the entire week of Thanksgiving in Minot with Kim (Kris' sister) and her wonderful family. It was a super week full of absolute laziness, wonderful food and some of the best people on earth.

I tried to do a super neat collage with the Thanksgiving pictures, but blogger made it really, really tiny. So, for the holiday in pictures, check out my photo blog: www.brittatrygstad.com

Dayson Dale

Can you believe that Kris and I are a (super duper) Great Uncle and Great Aunt? Our wonderful niece Dana gave birth to the darling Dayson this past summer. He is such a gem.

Congrats Dana and Dave! Love him. Can't wait to watch him grow!

Edie Explores the Seidler Sanctuary

The entire TrygKerz family are big, big fans of the Seidler farm. It's a super special place and this time around we've coined it the "Seidler Sanctuary."

Edie has been to the farm just once when she was a wee babe (all the way back at Christmas, during a blizzard), so it was really fun to watch her explore the place for the first time. She saw "doggie" (a cow) and a "doggie" (a horse) and a "doggie" (a dog) and a few "meow"s (kittens). She also (safely) rode a 4-wheeler for the first time and explored the hay bales. Pretty darn cool.

On a side note, expect Edie's 14 month report sometime within the week. It's been busy around here so sorry for the delay.

Tourists in a Familiar City

Along with the Engelhard Family (or part of it... Kim, Zach and Chelsey), the little TrygKerz family took a fun trip to the twin cities. We go to Mpls./St.Paul fairly often (well, not so often after the birth of Edie) but usually head right to St. Paul to visit our friends. This time, we took a different approach and did all the touristy things we never do.

We drove down Thursday and spent the day at Valley Fair. It was Kris' first time riding a roller coster. At first, I think he was a bit afraid (okay, really afraid). But, after the first ride on the Wild Thing, he was hooked. Valley Fair might become an annual tradition now. Unfortunately, their selection of rides for a 1-year-old isn't so awesome. We did ride the carousel and we have pictures (and video) that we will post very soon (in otherwords, they are stuck on our other camera).

On Thursday evening, we headed to Hastings to visit with the Richardson family. Chad is fellow wedding photojournalist/MSUM Advocate Almuni/Winter Thaw Participant and editor of the Hastings Star-Gazzette. We hung out, took some pictures (will post on the photo blog this week) and ate some amazing Puerto Rican Food (thank you Lisa!). Here are a few photos from Hastings:

(Photo by Chad)

(Photo also by Chad)

(Chad and Lisa's adorable and hilarious son Gabe)

Friday morning and afternoon was spent at the Mall of America where Chelsey found all sorts of fun stores and I finally bought something nice for myself. Kris, Kim, Chelsey and Zach went to a Twins game at Target Field on Friday night while Edie and I chilled in the hotel and took a fun trip to IKEA (of course!).

The whole purpose of the trip was to take some graduate photos of my niece Chelsey. I've been photographing Chelsey for a very, very, long time. She is so extremely photogenic, so, naturally, she is one of my favorite subjects. I decided we needed something new and different for her pictures, so we decided to take a trip to the twin cities to take her pictures. After numerous recommendations to visit the St. Anthony Main neighborhood, I knew it was the place to go. Too bad the GPS doesn't know where it is. We ended up at the Old Mill Ruins (also awesome) and eventually found our way to where we wanted to go.

Here is a pic from the St. Anthony Area of Chelsey:

And a few more of Edie, Kris and Zachary...

All in all, it was a super awesome trip.

Minot Visit

As noted in the previous post, we went out to Minot a couple weekends below to visit family and celebrate the upcoming arrival of baby D. Because of my lack of summer weekends due to my job, we do not visit our family in central North Dakota in the summer very often. So, it was quite a treat to see everybody in the summer (and made hanging out even better as we could do it outside!)

Here are just a few extra pics of our visit.

Edie with Chelsey & Aunt Kim

Matthew and Edie got along very, very well :)

Lots of discussions on pregnancy and parenthood...

Most importantly, Edie was able to meet her Great Uncle Dave and Great Aunt Jean!

A Shower for Dana and Baby D

Our wonderful niece Dana and her wonderful husband Dave are expecting a baby boy due in July. A couple weekends ago, the TrygKerz family traveled to Minot to visit family and celebrate the upcoming addition.

There is so much love and excitement over baby D and I can't wait to meet the little guy! Oh, and if you'd like to see just a few maternity portraits of Dana, go on over to my photo blog.

This is Dana from the back... yes, she is 8 months pregnant.

Games! Chelsey trying to figure out how round her sister is...

...and, of course, the infamous "what is in this diaper" game. I think Alicia got a kick out of trying to figure it out.

Future Grandma (for the third time) Laurie

Future Grandma Kim

Of course, little Miss Edie Pants was given all sorts of love by her cousins and Aunties!

Tuckered out on Aunt Karmie's shoulder...

Edie is one of ten girl cousins (just three boy cousins)... that's a lot of girls! Here she is with Chelsey, Dana, Alicia & Sami.