I’m not quite sure how this happened but she was cute. 🙂
Category Archives: Tom
Letting me get a belly tickle in.
Just for daddy!
Michigan State played their first game tonight, so the kids and I snuck upstairs after dinner and put on our MSU gear to surprise daddy!
Back to School Night
We were the first family in Owen’s classroom so he wasn’t too shy…and agreed to a picture with his new teacher, Mrs. Talley.
I took advantage of the empty room by taking a few room photos.
As more and more people arrived, he got more and more shy…and was eventually glued to my side. There are six kids total from his Kindergarten class (24 students total) so it’s nice that they start with friends. He also knows a neighbor girl (from our street) and a boy we met through t-ball (the older brother of a teammate) so he’s happy!
The teacher had a brief presentation and it was much less chaotic than the Kindergarten one last year! When I got home, I found this picture on the school’s Facebook page—you can see Tom and Katie at the very right edge and I’m sitting in front of them.
What might have been the best part of the event, though, was talking to the preschool director about getting Katie in the Peer Modeling program (it was recommended by a friend). The actual pre-school program is for high-risk or special needs-type students, but they have preschool-aged peers come into the class to model behaviors and skills. And it doesn’t cost anything! (I just have to provide transportation and lunch/snack. I can do that!) I filled out the paperwork and now just have to wait—they typically invite kids to the classroom for a trial period and see how it goes or where the best fit would be. I’m practically jumping for joy to think about her being in preschool for three days a week! And she’d be in the same hallway as Owen!
So the night was a success!
Our first overnight sous vide!
Trying sous vide boneless pork ribs overnight! Tom retrofitted the top so we don’t lose water from evaporation!
P.S. They were cooking for about 20 hours and turned out amazing!
Sunday morning walk!
Katie and daddy hiding from us!
Surprise!
Daddy and Katie running up the hill!
We learned the trail takes an hour if Katie is walking. If she rides most of the time on daddy’s shoulders it only takes us 47 minutes. 🙂
Our first metro ride!
We were headed into the city to have lunch with friends…and since it was semi close to a subway stop, we decided to make a fun trip out of it! We had to drive north about 15 minutes to catch the metro where it starts.
The kids were super excited about riding a train!
At the restaurant, Kabob Palace.
We wan into a bit of a snafu on the way home—long story short we weren’t paying attention and ended up on the wrong train (headed north instead of south) so we had a 20-minute wait for the next (correct) train.
And the car was a bit more crowded than our first trip so the boys had to stand for one stop.
They both loved it and wanted to do it again immediately. 🙂 I’m sure we’ll go somewhere again, but I’m also sure it won’t be a regular thing because this simple, short trip cost us about $22 in fares (it’s about $3.50pp each direction)!
It’s just about perfect.
We bought a string of big lights from Costco and Tom hung them from the tree! I love it! I can’t wait to have people over to enjoy it!
Owen and Tom were in a hurricane!
Owen saw this Hurricane machine while he was at his activity camp last week…and begged me to go in it…so I told him we could do it after a swim lesson when daddy was there. So today was the day!
Sunday Swim Lessons
Playing before her lesson:
She has reverted back a little from that one day of awesome jumps and floating…she still does well enough, though, and has fun.
Normally she plays after her lesson (while Owen does his lesson) but today she wanted to get dressed. We didn’t bring anything for her to do (since she normally plays in the pool the whole time) so we gave her the camera to take pictures—which she LOVED. These were the best two. 🙂
Anniversary dinner…outside the box!
Tom and I were celebrating early since he will be out of town on our anniversary. Fourteen years. Holy wah.
First, my obligatory pre-dinner selfies since I’m dressed up (and wearing a dress I haven’t worn in who knows how many years!). 🙂
Love.
We didn’t take our traditional pre-event selfie because we were running late and then of course the traffic was horrible and it took 45 minutes (instead of 25) to get there so as it was, we were 15 minutes late for our reservation.
So, as you may remember, we have a tradition of eating Chinese on our anniversary. And I’m sure there are many über delicious Chinese places in the area, but we decided to go outside our box and have a Greek dinner at Mike Isabella’s (from Top Chef) Kapnos Taverna (recommended by a friend). Delish. Three “small plates” was too much food and we each left a few bites (we did technically eat too much but it was seriously a quarter of what we’d normally have eaten!). We splurged and shared a chocolate dessert, too. 🙂
Then we got back to the parking garage and saw this:
How funny is that? You know they saw this car and parked next to it on purpose!
And then we finally took our anniversary selfie! 🙂
Guess what Tom got?
A 2015 Subaru CrossTrek in Tangerine Orange Pearl!
He has been researching for awhile now so this wasn’t totally out of the blue…but it was a quick decision (the dealer only had this one on the lot and wasn’t getting anymore and it was a decent deal—and someone else was coming to look at it that night). We hated to spend the money, but really wanted to trade his 2008 Prius in before it lost too much more value or required major work like hybrid battery replacement.
The car is quite cool, though I’ve only had a quick ride around the block thus far (he got home about 8:15). Tom loves it—it’s a HUGE upgrade with extras like Bluetooth and leather seats that he’s thrilled about. I kinda hate him because it’s orange and I’m the one who really loves neat colors…but I’m excited because I’ll actually drive it (I never really liked the Prius).
The only minor snag in the process is that I can’t find the title to his Prius. Normally my recordkeeping is SPOT ON but it’s nowhere—it’s not in the safe and it’s not in the file cabinet…and there’s not even a scan of it anywhere! I have an old title (with the first lienholder still on it) scanned into Evernote but that’s it. And oh yeah, of course I can’t find the lien payoff letter, either. WTF??
I know it can be resolved, but now it’s going to be a PITA. What gets me is that I scan everything like that into Evernote—or at the very least, my computer. And there’s nothing. NOTHING. I know we got the lein release letter but can’t recall receiving the title. To be missing one of them maybe…but both?!
The kids were SUPER excited! We went for a short ride around the block and they were practically giddy!
Throwback Thursday
I have no idea what year this is—I just know the goatee dates it to pre-USMC which means 1997 to 2001. My mom guessed around 16 years ago due to the posts being gone in the living room.
Swim Lesson Sunday
She’s not even posing. This is just a natural look. Hoo boy are we in for trouble… 🙂
Getting better at floating—lasting longer in the float position little by little.
Then guess who suddenly LOVED jumping in?
She loves wearing her goggles now! We think that’s why she liked jumping in this time!
And another natural look LOL. I missed the actual eye roll. 🙂
Owen’s half birthday pool party!
The wait was finally over—the day for Owen’s postponed birthday pool party! And the weather was perfect!! We had 19 kids and 14 adults!
The timing was perfect: at the end of every hour, the lifeguards take a 15-minute break and all kids must exit the pool. So we used this time to have our pizza lunch!
The second break was time for cake! Of course, I had completely forgot to put the balloon in the cake…
So it went in the leftovers so I could take a picture. 🙂
Two of the kids from his Kindergarten class (who are about his size so he looks normal!).
Everyone had a great time! The kids LOVED the water shooters and, while a few got broken, each kid was able to take one home. We guessed pretty good on the pizza—we ordered five and ate about four. There was enough cake to leave out a few pieces and freeze a nice chunk for a later date. The best part was after 10 minutes of cleaning up and packing the car, we were DONE. 🙂
Daddy cuddle time
Cirque Italia (Water Circus)
We surprised the kids with tickets to a water circus. We were driving around beforehand running errands and they saw the big tents and they knew it was a circus!
Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as I thought it would be from being called a WATER circus…it was pretty much your basic circus acts with a few of them done inside a ring of falling water. I didn’t really even take any pictures. It was also REALLY warm inside the tent and we were there an hour early, so it was a loooong afternoon of sitting on uncomfortable seats in an unfriendly temperature. There were some neat acts and the kids enjoyed it, but it certainly didn’t compare to the Big Apple Circus we saw last year.
Riding bikes on the last day!
We had high hopes of having the kids practice riding their bikes on vacation since Gramma Jean and Grandpa David have a great driveway and live on the corner of two (basically) flat roads…but we were so busy that we didn’t get to it until our very last night. Uncle Rob was tasked to help out!
Tom said they actually did pretty good…but they still need LOTS of practice. At the rate we’re going, they might be able to ride without training wheels by high school.
Sorting Stones
I finally got around to sorting the bucket of stones from our beach trip…
Unfortunately…not all the stones were legit. I blame Tom, who was grabbing lots of random fossils, LOL. (They’re neat and all, but they’re no Petoskey stones!)
Only the bottommost piles were actual Petoskey stones (broken up into partial Petoskeys, good Petoskeys, and excellent Petoskeys). 🙂
Local Petoskey stones!
Why did we go all the way to Petoskey when we found all these in the front yard landscaping in the last 30 minutes?! 🙂 I swear we found them all last year.
The kids even found some rocks for their new collections (yes, they’re apparently starting rock collections now).
Kaliseum Daredevils
We took the kids to Kalkaska today for open swim…and boy did they have a blast! Owen was excited to go down the slide again (mom fail: I may have forgotten to mention he did it for the very first time when he was there earlier this vacation). I LOVE the faces he makes. 🙂
My favorite:
You see his harem standing by watching him, right? 🙂
Katie really wanted to go down the slide but she was too little…or so we thought. The lifeguard came up and told Tom she could go down as long as he was at the bottom to catch her. So Owen took her up:
There were other kids going up and they were getting too close to them on the stairs so Owen put his hand out to stop/block them and protect Katie. And then he guided her into the slide while he made sure to keep everyone back. Awwww, I know. 🙂
Here she comes!
Caught her!
Her reaction? She LOVED it and wanted to go again! (But she was done after the second time!)
I still can’t believe it—Owen was 6.5 when he finally went down the slide…and Katie was 3! You can tell who the family daredevil is!
More Sorry!
Katie’s last 3rd birthday party!
We celebrated Katie’s birthday at the Ramada again this year. She didn’t want to go in the pool, though—choosing the playground instead.
Of course Owen wanted to swim!
Caught mid-jump!
She finally decided she wanted to swim!
We FINALLY got her to jump in the pool again!
Owen also received a few gifts…Papa and Grannie gave him a roll of quarters to use in the hotel game room!
He shared his quarters with his sister!
A great time was had by all…
Beach, grandparents, stones, and sand!
One of the two things* I wanted to do on this vacation was look for Petoskey stones in a target-rich environment…so we headed to Petoskey State Park! The kids were super excited to go to the beach and Grannie and Papa met us there! Unfortunately I didn’t take many pictures because I forgot the waterproof camera and didn’t want my expensive phone out in the sand and water!
Eating lunch after the grandparents left:
The stone hunting was fairly pathetic as we were obviously in a well-populated and well-picked-over area right on the main beach…plus we were in knee-deep wavy water trying to dredge stones from the bottom. This was all we found after about four combined hours of searching:
But the kids were having fun!
So we talked to a park ranger who told us where there was better stone hunting…so Tom went to scope it out. He came back about a half hour later with full pockets…so we packed stuff in the car then took off walking down the beach. It was quite a walk but it was the place to be—we filled about 2-3″ of a 5-gallon bucket in another two hours!
Unfortunately, Owen lost his goggles (even after I specifically told him to put them around his neck) and we hadn’t thought we’d be gone that long so we didn’t reapply sunscreen…so Owen’s face was pretty red and both kids had a little too much pink. 🙁
But! Both kids were amazing while we were out there—they stayed close, Owen mostly played in the water and Katie mostly played in the sand running between me and Tom (we were about 20-30 yards apart), and they listened well and weren’t cranky!
Of course, I’d forgotten how much I hate the beach—sand, sand, and more sand in every crevice of the kids’ bodies. Ugh. I pulled Katie’s bottoms off and literally a half cup of sand fell out (in addition to what was stuck to her). We were all done at that point (we’d been in the sun for six hours!) and had just trudged (guessing) 1/4 mile back along the beach to the car (with me carrying 20# of stones and Tom carrying Katie on his shoulders) and we just didn’t have the energy to go get them showered.
Within two minutes of starting the car:
Within 25 minutes:
So overall it was a good day…even though we can already tell we’ll be sore tomorrow. 🙂
*The other was to see the start of the canoe marathon.
Campfire and fireworks!
Thanks to the magic of a little packet from the fireworks shop, this is how we do campfires on vacation… 🙂
Katie’s first sparkler. She was…intrigued. She didn’t love it and she didn’t hate it.
And then the fireworks! It was a wild crapshoot because we didn’t know what 90% of them were supposed to do…we just stood back and watched…and we had a few close calls with things whizzing by us and up and into the neighbors yard. EEK! But the kids loved it!
Well, they thought some of them were a little loud. 🙂
Of course we did the pooping dog again!
And we still have a bunch left that we hope to get to before we go home!
Fish Hatchery 2015
Katie liked to feed the fish one single pellet at a time.
Katie caught a fish! She didn’t want to look at it, and after one she was DONE.
Owen caught three fish…in about 10 minutes. 🙂
Len Christmas in July, Year 2
This year the party was at my mom’s house! Katie “helped” with the party prep!
Katie loved her Anna dress from Grauntie Rose!
The cousins being silly!
If there’s water, the kids will come.
Bubble wands at the ready!
The annual by-age lineup: Katie (3), Owen (6), Aubrey (7), Gracie (9), and Nick (11). You’ll see a direct Owen/Nick comparison tomorrow. 🙂
Everyone always complains but I think they secretly enjoy the family photo! 🙂
Our little Santas.
Owen was GIDDY with the bazooka Grauntie Rose got him! It’s almost like she knows him exactly like I do. :p
Katie LOVES her Frozen magic music wand from Grauntie Marilyn.
No snow? Grass angels!
Ice cream face!
Overall it was a great day—the kids all had a blast together, the food was abundant and delicious, and everyone had fun relaxing and playing games. I think it was the right decision to move our Christmas to the middle of summer!
Owen’s first Fun Run!
Owen ran his first Fun Run (with daddy!) this morning during the AuSable River Festival! (Sidenote: it will always be Milltown to me…though AuSable River Festival does fit better.)
Katie wanted to run…on daddy’s shoulders. 🙂
We had time to waste before the race started so we wandered around downtown and ran into Papa and Grannie! 🙂
And a pout for good measure.
Pre-race announcements:
Heading to the starting line!
There they go!
Heading a block back to the finish line—it won’t take them long!
Here they come! There was no official time or finish places, but they were in the top 10!
And here’s the start—and finish—all in one video!
Post-race snacks! 🙂
A day with Grandma Marsha!
Kid Fest!
It’s Milltown week so we took the kids downtown to Kid Fest! They had a blast!
She LOVED the popcorn. The SnoCones…not so much.
Making bracelets and necklaces with Gramma.
Then Owen got to ride in a racing canoe!! Some of the racers were the back seat paddlers and took the kids up and down the river. It was his very first time in a canoe and he loved it!
If you notice, he’s watching what the pro does and copies him to steer the boat!
He said he was a little scared at first but then he was okay! We were SO proud of him!
Owen loved sitting in the big fire truck—and even got to turn on the lights and the siren! Katie wanted NOTHING to do with any of it. 🙂
Getting a ninja turtle mask!
And lastly, our crazy photo booth pictures!
