Stuff

King Chewy:He's got a pretty good swing, and can also hit a ball that's pitched to him w/out the tee now!


Being silly with one of the baby hats I knitted:

Back to the beach:

Friday Night Live - Jazz Night

This week's theme was jazz! There was one really great band in particular that Alex loved too. The other big hit of the night (aside from blue ice cream with your buddies) was the jugglers.

Horsin' around

That is one of Alex's favorite Backyardigan episodes by the way, but also this thursday we went with some friends to a big horse show near by. There is a brand new facility just east of Traverse City that had their first show. They had been advertising it all over town so we took the kids to see some horses jumping......

Well, lets just say that the Equestrian type crowd there was not overly welcoming. I didn't take a lot of pictures because I didn't know if we were suppose to or not. It was hard to tell if we were even suppose to be watching from where we were watching and if it was ok to cheer or even talk. The kids liked it though!

After we felt we had probably out stayed our welcome we decided to go for a hike at Sand Lakes Quiet area because we were already pretty close by. Alex, Colin, Drew, Carter and Carter had a blast running thru the woods together and looking for bears and blueberries.

Potty learning

Alex has been doing a great job working on using the potty since we got home. We are really proud of him and he is really excited. I had brought up some extra rolls of tp from the downstairs bathroom but hadn't put it away in the upstairs bathroom yet one day and this is how we found Alex in his room. He said he needed some toilet paper.

(I blurred out anything private)

Our first fruits

Shortly after we got home from vacation we got to pick the first veggies out of our garden....zucchini! Alex was SO excited about our "first va-cchini".

And check out his new tie dye shirt courtesy of my friend Cindy! Alex calls it his "cool" shirt. :)

Back into the swing of things...

The week after we got home we started to get back into a regular routine of seeing friends and doing fun things around here. Our first outing back with friends was to the farm market on wednesday morning and then over to the park (it used to be a zoo which is now closed and they are slowly making it into a children's park.....or so it is rumored).

That first friday home was the start of Friday Night Live in downtown TC. They block off Front St. for several blocks every friday night until the end of August and have live music and booths and kids activities. Alex loves it, he loves to watch all the people, he really loves the music and he loves the fact that he can usually end up with blue ice cream before the night it thru. Each friday has a theme, this week was Harry Potter night in celebration of the book release at midnight. People dressed up as Harry Potter characters, Alex wanted to wear his fireman hat.

So there you have it.

Saturday we hit the road and drove all day. We got home around 6:30 eastern time. Vacation was fun but it's good to be home as well. The trip was pretty uneventful, that's a good thing! Now we are trying to get back into the swing of regular life.

Our last day

After the park on thursday we spent the afternoon visiting in Rhinelander again.

Friday after the park in the morning we packed a picnic lunch and went to Crystal Lake. Mom used to go there a lot as a kid and wanted to take Alex. We didn't bring swimming stuff because it wasn't an overly warm day - mid 60's and only sunny on and off. But there were tons of other kids swimming there and when the sun was out it actually felt fairly warm so of course Alex wanted right in the water!

Hydrology/geology lessons w/ Papa, recreating the Mississippi River delta.....





Friday night Grandma Ruth, my aunt Teri, her daughter Joanna and her granddaughter Katie (my cousin Dan and his wife Melissa's little girl, so Alex's 2nd cousin) came over for supper and then Lori and Mike stopped by later.

After putting Alex to bed, Ben and I went into town friday night to meet Bucky and Andy at Otto's. Bucky and Andy are friends of ours from when we lived in Houghton, we met them thru my cousin Jared and our families all know eachother as well. Andy's grandparents live in Minocqua and Bucky's family is nearby. We got a surprise when we got to Otto's, Andy's sister Sarah was up visiting too and Bucky's girlfriend Amanda stopped in later! It was great to see everyone again and catch up a little.

There was a band at Otto's...I had forgotten how great the people watching is in Minocqua during the summer. We used to go out there quite a bit during the summer when we first had moved to Houghton. You get quite a mix of people between the Milwaukee/Chicago tourist crowd (think high maintenance suburbian soccer moms and baby boomers gone wild), the "townies", and the international college students that come in the summer as camp counselors and restaurant/shop staff.

Torpy park pictures

Both thursday and friday mornings Ben and my dad rode their bikes into town (Alex rode in the bike trailer, town is about 5 miles) and took Alex to Torpy park to play. Friday mom and I drove in and met them there.

Lessons in physics with Dad and Papa:

Bike rides, park trips and visiting

The rest of the week was cool, some days downright cold depending on how strong the wind was. But perfect for walks, bike rides and trips to the park.

Riding on the Bearskin Trail:

Ok, Dad, I'm tired now, your turn:Dad having a little too much fun w/ Alex's bike:Hey wait Dad, that looks like fun, I want to do it!

Wednesday night Ben and I went out for a "date", a late anniversary dinner. We went to into town with the intention of walking around a bit before dinner but got caught in a down poor so we headed right for dinner at Norwood Pines just outside Minocqua.

One day out of 3 weeks isn't bad...

Tuesday we had a bit of a rough day. Alex slept very restlessly all night monday night and in the early morning kept asking Ben for more covers. That was our first clue, Alex hadn't been sleeping under the covers for weeks even on the cold nights. Then when we got up he threw up all over my lap on the couch. :(
He threw up all morning every 30 minutes like clock work and then started keeping some water down around lunch time and ate some crackers. Mom has a little tv/dvd player combo and all the movies from their house up at the cabin now for when she is up there by herself sewing so we took advantage of that and snuggled on the couch and watched some movies all morning. It was the first tv any of us had watched in over a month. (We decided as a family to have a TV free week back in the beginning of June and after the week was over, we just never started watching it again)
By afternoon Alex had perked back up and by mid-afternoon was raring to go! No one else got sick and he was fine after that so who knows what he had.

Back north

Monday morning we drove back up to Minocqua for the end of our vacation. That afternoon was great swimming weather and then it cooled down for the rest of the week. After the heat over the weekend it was a welcome change and we knew we could find plenty of cooler weather things to do.

Alex and I were sitting in the water a few docks down and were getting swarmed with baby bass and some sunfish. If you look closely you can see fish around us in some of these pictures.

Sunday July 8th

Sunday was just a miserably hot and humid day. Alex woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I didn't feel well because of the heat so we did our laundry and hid in my parents basement all morning. After lunch we all took a much needed and long nap!

We drove down to Neenah to have dinner with Ben's cousin Ray, his wife Kathy and their son Raymond. Alex and Raymond had a great time playing together!

We also scored some great toys that Raymond has grown out of!

Thanks so much guys! We got tons of comments about the Green Machine tied up on our bike rack for the rest of the trip!