Camping and Josh's Birthday

We went camping for Josh's birthday weekend, which was a month ago now. So I'm a little out of order here, but I got some really great photos that weekend so I wanted to get them on the blog. Seth was home from the island, and he and Beth came along too. It was such a fun weekend! I wish we could camp more often...it just seems like there is something going on every weekend in the summer.

We camped by the mouth of the Gratiot River, up on the west side of the Keweenaw. It was beautiful. The bugs didn't seem too bad, but Willow did get three big black fly bites right on her face. For about 2 weeks afterward it looked like she had the chickenpox or something.

Here's Willow getting up close and personal with some bushes.















Willow and Dada by the river.















Reading books in the tent.















The guys did some fishing, and I don't think they caught much. A fellow fisherman caught this fish and didn't want to keep it and couldn't toss it back because he hooked it in a bad way, so he gave it to us. Josh and Seth cooked it over the fire on a stick. It was pretty tasty, actually. Don't they look like rugged mountain men? Ha.















Willow with Seth and Beth:















Josh blowing out the candles on his birthday cake:















We had a beautiful sunset. Earlier in the day, there were quite a few daytrippers hanging out at the park, but by this point, we pretty much had the place to ourselves, and it was very peaceful.

















The next morning, we drove to a hiking trail I've never done before. It led to the mouth of another river, the Montreal River. There were some great waterfalls. The guys went upriver to fish and us girls hung out on the beach. Willow had a blast.

















After that, we all went to my parents' camp for dinner, the perfect end to an awesome weekend. Josh had another birthday pie, and Willow helped him blow out the candles.















I love this picture of Willow, Scout and and my dad.

Fourth of July

Hello,

We're on a little vacation this weekend, down in Hastings for Josh's cousin Amanda's wedding. It's a quiet, rainy day here, and Willow's napping, so I seized the chance to write a blog post.

I'll have to skip the camping post I wanted to write - those photos are all at home. The photos I have here are from the Fourth of July. We had a wonderful weekend with our good friends Mark and Amy and baby Ava.

They drove up to visit on Friday, July 1 and got to our house in the evening. On Saturday, the weather was just perfect - sunny and about 80, I think. The guys went biking, and me, Amy, Ava and Willow went on a hike. The hike sort of backfired, but I won't go into that. Then we all went back to our place and spent the afternoon lounging in the yard, playing a beanbag toss game, and drinking beer. It was really run and so relaxing!

















Willow's very first popcicle!















Here's Willow with baby Ava.
















Is she adorable or what!















The next day we went out to my parent's camp and had a beach day on the big lake. It was very hot out but the water was freezing! I'm no meteorologist, but it was something about the wind taking all the surface water out and leaving the freezing water underneath. (By the way, I am not in the video because I had already gone in) :)



After hitting up a barbecue at the Vendlinski's, we went to the Lake Linden park for the fireworks. Willow loved them and talked about them for days afterward. "Siawoks!" is how she said it.
















This was taken through the fireworks glasses.

















The park had a monkeybar where Willow tested her strength.

A Few Random Photos..

I have a whole bunch of pictures from our camping trip a couple weeks ago, but in trying to stay in chronological order, I really need to post these pics from Relay for Life first, along with a couple others. I am trying not to get behind on this blog!

So yeah, I'm pretty involved with "Relay" through work. The Aspirus Keweenaw team pretty much kicks every other team's butt. This year we raised over $13,000. Our employees get pretty into it too, which is I guess why I end up so involved as an HR person.

Two of my coworkers have daughters about Willow's age, and the three girls had a blast at Relay. For some reason the ice from a cooler was the best part. Here's Willow, Amelia (daughter of DaveO), and Cameron (daughter of Jess). They were so cute together!















Here's Willow riding the horsey (long story why we had a horsey there)















OK, and here are just a couple recent photos of Willow, both showing big girl stuff. First, pigtails! I pretty much just did this to see if I could; she doesn't wear them regularly. We have put in a ponytail a few times though. Her hair gets so fuzzy, sometimes a ponytail is necessary or it sort of gets like a little 'fro. Seriously! I think she must've got it from Josh; I had really fine hair when I was little.















And another potty photo. I can't resist. I can't say we've made much progess. Willow will go pee on the potty at least once a day, sometimes three or four times. But it's always incidental, I think. We (or Linda, usually) will put her on the potty, and she'll sit there, read, sing, play, and when we come back 15 minutes later, she has peed (or pooped, a couple times). But she has never once told us that she had to go to the potty. That seems to be the missing link. Well, hopefully it will come soon.




















Early On came on Thursday, and the lady was very impressed with Willow's development. She said we don't need Early On anymore. Hooray! Of all of the items on the 27-month questionnaire, the ones she didn't ace were mostly in the gross motor skills category. She can't jump yet, and she can't walk up stairs by herself. I think the stairs thing is just because she's so small. Not sure what's up with the jumping, but overall she did great. Her language is really good. Actually, I swear her vocabulary has doubled just in the last 2 weeks. She will pretty much repeat everything you say now. (Which can be dangerous - she picked up "oh, crap!" somewhere...)

Have a great July weekend everyone!

Bridgefest

Bridgefest was already two weeks ago! We had a barbecue/party that Saturday night. It was a lot of fun. Parties are a little different now that a lot of our friends have kids...but different in a good way. There were probably 15 adults there and 6 little kids running around. I didn't take very many photos, but here are a couple I got of Willow and her friends sitting at her patio set.

Willow and Carter:
















Willow, Cat and Lewis:
















After the barbecue, everyone left but the Vendlinski's, and we walked down to the water together to watch the fireworks over the canal. Both Willow annd Lewis were running fools and just wanted to zoom around. Here's Willow, RUNNING!!! down the bike path.