100 Pictures

A brief morning storm is best followed up with a party in the driveway.

Don't forget your rain boots.

If it starts to rain again head for shelter.

I am playing a massive game of catch up here. Summer is pretty much just slipping through my fingers.

I never get tired of it. Summer.

We went to Chicago and stopped along the way so that Nuala could ride a pony. She is obsessed with horses right now. We talked about it for days and laid it on really thick on the drive down. As it turns out, you should probably call ahead...

A kind lady let us at least walk around to the back pasture and feed the ponies some grass through the fence.

When the sobbing continued as soon as we were back in the car we pulled out some Cheese Castle cheese bread but that girl really had her heart set on a pony ride. Lesson learned.

Hello Field Museum.

Nuala finally got to ride her pony.

She was adamant that one ride was simply not enough.

Brendan surprised me with a flash for my camera, a Speedlite 430, yippeeeee. Now I just have to figure out how to use the darn thing.

Discovery World. Last time we went Oscar got "lost" for 10 minutes. Security found him in the aquarium, turns out he really really wanted to see the fish. This time we had a nice chat beforehand about staying with the group and we also made sure to get him to the aquarium in a timely fashion.

The lake.

Yet another aspect of summer that I will never get tired of.

As we were leaving the lake we spotted 3 cranes along the side if the road and of course I was fumbling for my camera and trying to get a decent shot out of the window and totally holding up traffic in the process.

I never did get a good shot, but it was still exciting for a city girl like me.

Most importantly.....

The kids came home from their trip out east.

Of course Maija left about an hour after that, but it was still nice to have all 8 of them under one roof again!

Michaele and Nico left for France yesterday, heading home after their nice long visit. When they come again next summer the kids will get to meet their new cousin. We are so excited about this.

Speaking of cousins....

My grandma Kate's side of the family had a nice big reunion picnic this past weekend.

So there you have it, I think we're all caught up now and it only took 100 or so pictures......

The Good Life

Our trip to the lake was quite possibly my favorite day of summer so far, and I'm not big on playing favorites (yeah right, I'm always asking the kids what their favorite anything is~ice cream flavor, moment of the day, book chapter, you get the idea) but the summer has been going by so fast and I want to try and enjoy it all so much that it would be nearly impossible to pick a favorite adventure out of the mix. So I won't.

But if I had to, then this day trip to the lake would be in close competition for taking the cake. I'm not sure what it was, or what happened to make this day in particular so special, but I know by now that it's best not to argue or second guess these things. It was just one of those days. One of those shiny good life days when everything is especially sparkly and you wind up hitching a ride on cloud nine all day. No need to argue, just hop on the darn cloud and enjoy the floating.

It turns out that the lake is about 1000 times cooler than the pool. It didn't have sprinklers or twisty slides or diving boards, but the kids were still thrilled. Turns out the lake has something even better~Fish.

And Miss Thrill Seeker herself was very intent upon catching and keeping close watch over them along the sandy shoreline.

Even the ones who no longer required such close supervision.

I tried, I really did. There were lots of little talks about maybe not getting too friendly with her half fish body buddy. Reminders. Knowing looks. Maybe even a scolding growl or two (half heartedly of course).

She was just too fascinated though and in the end her curiosity won.

Curiosity and hand sanitizer go really well together.

It was a beautiful day for our sandy adventure and I think we all needed a bit of what the beach was offering up that day, a calming sense of peace that smoothed over the rough bits and left us all feeling rather refreshed.

Even the cool teenager who spent a lot of the day in the sun with a book and an iPod agreed that it was a wonderful day.

And what better way to follow up an amazing day at the beach than getting dolled up for a dinner date with the Mr.....

Dinner was delicious.

But the pie, oh the pistachio pie.....Yes. It was a very good day in this good life of ours.

A few days later I got a chance to sneak away with Maija and Micah to brave the rides at Six Flags.

It was everything I knew it would be and maybe even a little bit more.

I didn't bring along the big camera, just my teeny tiny point and shoot but we still took lots of pictures.

These water rides are SCARY. I went on this one and nearly broke my elbow (I'm getting too old for this type of fun) but Micah loved this slide and didn't mind going alone.

By the end of the day we were seriously tired out but in a good way of course. Good and goofy.

Oh and it turns out that the Cheese Castle is now an actual castle. I was sort of sad about this and felt nostalgic for the days when it was just a shed attached to another shed with yet another shed out back.

We're going back to the lake tomorrow and more importantly Finn, Sidhe and Ruari are coming home! They've been gone for 3 weeks now and it's beginning to feel like forever, we're all excited to welcome them back into the fold. It's nice to have a vacation, but it's also nice to get back to normal and "normal" around here means having all 10 of us together under one roof.