Holly, Alex, and Henry came to visit us this past week. One thing we did while they were here was introduce them to the butter cow at the Iowa State Fair. Andrew, Mari, and Elliot had to have their cotton candy and this year they got to try out the giant slide.
Today we went to the Cincinnati Zoo for Mari’s birthday. We were joined by Jill, Elsie, Madelyn, Holly, and Henry. The kids always have a great time seeing the animals.
Today we headed in different directions – Mari went to a garden in Denver with Mar-Mar and B-Bob, Susan, Elliot, and Andrew hung out in Boulder with Jill, Holly, Elsie, and Henry, and I, Rob, went for a day-hike with Will and Alex.
We were up early this morning, got the campsite packed up, and hit the road. We stopped in nearby Alamosa to have our car looked at. The mechanic said that our radiator had a leak and we should dry Barr’s Stop Leak to see if we could plug it. We got the Barr’s in and started driving. We lost a little more fluid on the drive to Nederland, but all-in-all we did OK. We were thrilled when we made it to the house.
We arrived just after dinner time, got the car unloaded, and then waiting for Mar-Mar & B-Bob, Jill, Will, Elsie, Holly, Alex & Henry. The kids were excited to see their cousins.
The past few weeks have been pretty exciting, a little too exciting in fact for my lack of entries.
We just got back from an awesome trip to Chicago for our friends Sara & Clark’s wedding. I will have some pics up soon. We got to spend a lot of quality time with Susan’s friends from college, which doesn’t happen very often. It is also the first time that most of them got to meet Mari. We will see Susan’s high school friends in a couple weeks for her ten-year high school reunion.
We left Cincinnati around lunch time on Friday and the festivities started off with the rehearsal dinner on the lake Friday night. The wedding itself was great. Sara and Clark both just finished up their studies at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC), which is where the wedding was. The ceremony was full of beautiful ritual accented with some great personal touches. The reception was a blast also. There was plenty of dancing for everyone. For the second time in two weddings, Mari fell asleep on the dance floor, which is pretty funny. Andrew danced his heart out, until he was exhausted.
The week before the wedding our friend Stephanie (of Stephanie & Terry, also Julie’s sister) and her two kids, Terry and Julia, were staying with us. Stephanie and family moved to Cleveland a couple years ago so it was great to hang out.
My friend Nick, from college & St. Louis, also stopped by for a night last week. He is a Cardinals fan, but we fed him anyway.
This takes us back to our anniversary weekend, which you might think of as Memorial Day weekend. We started of the weekend with a barbecue at Eric’s parents’ house. Eric is a friend from college who is headed into life as a Jesuit. Saturday night we had our traditional anniversary dinner at the same location as our wedding reception. Then we headed of to a couple’s shower for Holly & Alex. Sunday we relaxed at home. Monday we tried to do something special in the morning for our anniversary, but Mari wasn’t cooperating, so we chilled at home until we went to another Holly & Alex shower/family party at my aunt & uncles.
The beginning of this week took me to Detroit for a great Pearl Jam concert. I see them again in a couple weeks with Holly in Cincinnati.
So, that is what has been going on. Here is what is going on now. We finally got our vegetable garden planted. Holly was nice enough to buy most of our plants for us, saving us the trouble. This year we have some garlic, onions, yellow tomatoes, red tomatoes, green peppers, and pickling cucumbers (from right to left). Should be fun.
Julie still lives in the basement.
Mari is crawling very well and pulling up on things. She often pulls up to stand up and then gets frustrated because she doesn’t know how to sit down. She still doesn’t know how to roll from her back to her stomach, so she ‘turtles’ a lot.
Andrew is Andrew. He is still really cute, except when he is tired, then he is just frustrated.
Soccer season is over. The World Cup is about to begin. This is where the chicken and the egg come to play. Do you think that the US needs to care more about soccer in order to win the World Cup, or do you think that people won’t care until we win the World Cup? I would love to win it, but I think the rest of the world would be pretty angry if we do, since most Americans don’t even care.
For a limited time, if you go to google.com and search for “Eddie Vedder” a picture of me and Eddie from 2003 comes up. My sister, Jill, discovered this and it is pretty cool. I am not sure how long this will be the case, so check it out now.
We have some friends, Jeff and Rebecca, who live in Washington (state) and both have pretty cool jobs. They keep a blog, which has some good entries. Even he is amazed at how cool his job is. I am not amazed at how cool my job is (though I do like it) but there are times when I just look at my family and think “Wow! Could it get any better?”