Weekend Review

We had a very nice weekend. I went up to the lake with C and F. We had a really good time. It was kind of nice being alone with my parents because I felt like the boys got a lot of one-on-one attention from them and it was a pretty peaceful weekend. We got in some good skiing and some even better lounging. Susie stayed home to attend a self-defense class. There was a horrible attack and murder of a college aged girl a few years ago in our area. The killer has been caught, but it still left the community feeling vulnerable. The victim's father has a saying..."Benjamin (killer) picked a fight with Ali (his daughter) and I'm finishing it." The have a foundation and part of it is offering free self defense classes to women. What a great way to bring something good out of a horrible situation!!

A is still enjoying his time in Texas!! He has done loads of swimming, ridden a train, gone to a Star Wars exhibit and probably hasn't stopped talking since he arrived. We miss him terribly, but he is having the time of his life and doesn't miss us one bit (which we are very happy about!). Susie and the boys leave tomorrow to pick him up and stay for a week themselves. I really wish I could go, but poor me has to stay and work :( Let me pity party begin!! Since I haven't been snapping any photos this week, I will post the ones we were sent of A.

Quiet house

A headed to Texas this week to spend a fun filled 2 weeks with Susie's parents. Her mom flew up on Tuesday morning. We picked her up at the airport at 10:30, went out to lunch and dropped the two of them back off at the airport at 12:30. From what we hear, A is having a great time getting lots of one-on-one attention. It has been very quiet around here and it is amazing what a difference one child makes on the noise level. It is also funny because I remember when we only had A and C and life seemed pretty busy. Now that we are used to three kids, two kids seems like a vacation! C and F are definately missing their big brother. F keeps walking around the house saying A's name, hoping he will come around the corner. Susie is driving down to Texas on Monday with C and F and they will spend the week there and then drive back on Saturday. I will have lots of quiet time then (and lots of to-do items while Susie is gone I'm sure!).

More Canada pictures

I will add more later...

Canada Trip

We are back from our trip to the great North. We drove to Toronto to visit some friends who were transferred there earlier this year. We had a great time. The first day we drove to Indianapolis. We didn't get out of here until about 11:00, so with the time change we didn't get to Indianapolis until about 9:45. Just enough time to enjoy the pool for about an hour before it closed at 11:00. We got up the next morning and drove to Lansing, MI. On the way we stopped in Fort Wayne, IN and found the house Susie lived in when she was born. She had not been back to Fort Wayne since she left at age 2! It was a lot of fun to see the town. We finished the drive to Lansing and hung out at the pool while we waited for the other families (two other families went with us) to arrive. The next day was about a 5 hour drive to Toronto, so it wasn't too bad. We crossed into Canada at Port Huron, which is beautiful. Once we arrive at our friends house we just unpacked and swam. They had a wonderful dinner for us that night (actually every night!).

On Friday we went to Toronto Island. We got to ride the subway into the city and a ferry over to the island. The boys loved it! We spent the day walking around, watching a children's play, playing on the beach, walking on the pier and going through a maze. It was a lot of fun. On Saturday we went to Niagra Falls. This was beautiful and probably my favorite part of the trip. We rode on the Maid of the Mist and got a great view of the falls. We walked around a bit and had a great day. It started raining on our drive home so our departure timing was perfect. That night we walked around a little Irish festival that was happening around our friend's house and we did some shopping at a local Roots store. We spent Sunday lounging around the pool. The girls did some shopping at IKEA and the boys took the kids to the Irish festival and to a park.

We unfortunately had a leave Monday and said our goodbyes to our Canadian friends. We are so thankful to them for having us all crash and trash their house!! They are very brave! We left Toronto for Chicago which was predicted to us to be a 8.5-9 hour drive. Somehow it took us 12hrs!! We missed our turn in Port Huron and headed to Detroit on accident instead of Flint, MI. We stopped at a McD's in Ann Arbor and ran into our neighbors who had also missed the exit in Port Huron. Once in Chicago we just crashed after our long day of driving. On Tuesday we got up, had breakfast at our friend Cassie's house and headed to the Shedd aquarium. This was awesome. One of the best parts of the trip! The boys were mesmerized and we were at the aquarium for about 6.5 hours! That night we had some friends over for pizza and sat out on my cousin's rooftop deck and enjoyed the great view of the city. I haven't been to Chicago in so long, so it was great to be back!

We headed home on Wednesday (boohoo) and are now trying to recover from the trip. We had such a great time and have created some amazing memories!!

4th of July

Happy 4th of July!! We had a very busy, but relaxing day today. We started the day by sleeping in really late. Aidan woke me up at 8:00 and Susie, C and F did not get up until after 9:00. I think that sets a record for us! Unfortunately we had forgotten that our neighborhood has a Freedom Parade at 9:30 where all the kids ride their bikes etc from one end of the neighborhood to the other. Waiting for us at the end were all American refreshments of apple pie and vanilla ice cream. Our late start made for a rushed exit from the house, but we managed to make it in the parade just a few minutes late. The pie and ice cream then doubled as breakfast for C and F as we didn't have time to feed them when we raced out of the house. It was super humid this morning so we were a bit on the sweaty side, but it was still fun. We just really love our neighborhood and neighbors!


(I think this picture is so funny...C was posing all happy, when right as I snapped the picture he dropped his ice cream on the floor...you can see the devastation on his face. Poor guy, he quickly recovered!!)

During the parade some of our friends were telling us about a local pool that was having a big Independence Day celebration. They were going to pack a lunch and spend the day there, so we decided to do the same. We spread the word to a few other families and so we ended up spending the day at the pool with lots of friends. The kids are getting so good at swimming. If you ever saw A in a pool prior to this year, you would not recognize him. He is going completely under water and swimming at the same time. This may be a small task for other kids, but this is amazing for him. C is getting better too and he is pretty on track for his age. He didn't have quite the fear of the water that A had, which is nice. We gathered up our gear during the 3:00 adult swim and as we were walking to the car it started thundering and lightening. We timed that exit perfectly. After the pool we drove out to a country club one of my cousins belongs to. They were really talking it up to us, so we wanted to check it out. Unfortunately the office part was closed due to the holiday, but we were able to have a little look around. It is really nice. I love the fact that they have a noncompetitive swim team for kids that starts at 6 years old. And with the social membership kids are able to play golf. We would not get the golf membership for adults as I know that would be really expensive and quite frankly a waste of money on us! The only problem is that the club is about a 30minute drive from our house, so we would have to take that into consideration. I plan to go back and get some more information another week.

This evening we had every intention of going out to see some fireworks, but after our long day we were too tired. We saw a ton of fireworks last night at my uncle and aunts house so that will hold us over until this weekend. Up at the lake, they are having their show this Saturday night so that will be our official firework show. I hope you all had a great holiday!

Lake fun

We headed to the lake again this past weekend. A and C were in a soccer camp towards the end of the week. They both really loved it. A is pretty good. I think C is a bit too young to "love" it, but he seems to have fun. Anyway, after Thursday night's camp Susie and the boys headed up to the lake. Unfortunately the weather wasn't the best this weekend, but we still managed to get in the water. Bebe and Jim and their girls went up with us and my parents of course. We had a great time! The kids are really getting used to lake water. Previous summers A would not even get in the water. Now he not only gets in, but loves swimming around. C is still warming up to the idea, but he is getting there alot sooner than A ever did. F is too young to know better, so he of course loves it. Susie had to leave for work before the weather really started getting nice, so she didn't get to enjoy too much boating, but we are going back this coming weekend, so we will make up for it then.

Cast Off

Hooray....A got his cast off on Wednesday (okay it was last week, but we have been very busy doing cast-off activities that I didn't get around to posting about it!) Here is one last view of the cast on the day he got it taken off. He immediately went to swimming lessons from the doctor's office. I feel like we have been filling our days with water activities since. He is doing great with swimming and really making improvements. Unfortunately he is only going to get about 4 lessons before they are over, but that is better than nothing. We will spend lots of time at the lake and he is going to be in Texas for about 2 weeks at grandma's pool so that should be good.