Jacob's 1st Birthday

This weekend the girls & I attended Jacob's 1st birthday.  Jacob is the son of one of my friends, Allison, & he's a precious boy.  I can hardly believe it's been a year since he arrived.  There were lots of cute kiddos at the party, so I couldn't help myself from taking some pics:)  Here are some fun snapshots of the adorable monkey themed party that we attended, didn't his mommy do a great job?.  All the parents of theses kiddos attend our church, so I hope they don't mind me sharing their cute kids pictures :)  Happy Birthday to Mr. Jacob.

Here's my little monkey :)

Jessie loves Ms. Allison, in Jessie's words, "Ms. Allison is a really good baker" 

Big brother Luke (Jessie's future husband) really liked the monkey cupcakes

My girls never shy away from sweets, they are my children after all :)

A Jessie update

I haven't done a true update on Jessie in a while, but here are some things worth noting.  She has a very vivid imagination & now believes she is a magician.  She got a plastic hippo recently & believes she can make him appear & disappear using a the magic word "ag-ga ca daba" aka abracadabra...it's funny & she just moves the hippo behind her back & then in front of herself.  Real magic, obviously :) & she thinks she's hilarious doing this.   She's my little pal all day long & likes to "help" do whatever I'm doing.  She is learning about money & always thinks she needs money to pay for her icee (she & her sister get these at Sams or Target in order to prevent meltdowns...necessary evils).  Last week after she helped clean up the palyroom, she found a penny & asked to put it in her piggy bank.  To her it's a big deal to get a "whole penny" & put it in her piggy bank.  She loves play doh, although, she always reminds me that "we need to put it away before Ella wakes up from her nap".  Ella has tried to eat play doh & Jessica doesn't like that.  On another note, she likes to mix all of the colors of play doh together...it bothers me, no, seriously, like really bad.  Finally, I caved & let her mix it, so now all of the play doh is brown, which looks so appetizing, as you can imagine.  I find myself thinking, is it play doh, a cat hair ball, or a potty accident on the floor??  Jessica has discovered earthworms & thinks they're great.  She thinks all worms are named Jim & that they all have little sisters named Ella.  She likes to pick worms up & hold them.  Thankfully, neither of the girls have tried to eat them, mostly due to the fact that Ella will not touch a worm or anything that resembles a bug in her opinion.  Jessie has discovered Scooby Doo & thinks he's a "silly puppy".  She has watched a few of the old shows from the 70s, but considers them much too scary unless we sit with her.  In fact, we're going through a time where even Dora the Explorer is too scary.  Jessica loves animals & is quite fascinated by all the different types.  She really loves all of her stuffed animals or stuffies as she calls them.  The big ones right now are the giraffe family--mommy, daddy, & baby, Momo, puppy, & a smaller stuffed cat, which is occasionally part of the friends group & occasionally not welcome at all with the other friends.  This small white stuffed cat is named "new kitty lulu".  Kitty Lulu was her ill-fated Fur Realz cat that she received for her 2nd Christmas.  Kitty Lulu was a lovely cat & Jessie did like her quite well, however, animatronic robot kitty + pee = dead Kitty Lulu.   At the time Kitty Lulu met her unfortunate fate, we were having major renovations done in the house & we had an actual dump sitting in the driveway (yeah, real classy!).  All this to say, we put dead Kitty Lulu in a plastic bag & put her in the dump in our driveway.  To this day, Jessica remembers the story of Kitty Lulu & that she went to the dump because she peed on her.  It's hilarious!  At random time, when we haven't heard it in a while she'll just say, "Kitty Lulu went to the dump."  She now has it in her mind that Santa will be bringing her a new Kitty Lulu this year for Christmas.  I didn't mention it at all & then one day a week or so ago she just said that Santa is bringing her a new Kitty Lulu.  Ella, of course, thinks she's getting one also.  We'll see!  Did I mention, these two keep me laughing :)  P.S.  Jessie loves her purple popsicles hence the below pics.  I'll try for some better pics of the girls this week now that they are well!

Our tradition continues....

The girls were finally well enough to go to the big pool yesterday, so we went & had a great time.  After our visits to the pool, we always come home to have an ice cream treat.  Neddless to say the girls really enjoyed theirs, although, they did need a bath immediately following this in order to be allowed back inside the house.  Have a great Friday & wonderful weekend!

She was pretty proud of how "filthy" she was

    

Sprinkler Fun

The girls & I have been too sick to go to the big pool (we belong to a nice community pool) so the sprinkler in our driveway was a fun way to cool down yesterday.  I should also mention that it has been so hot & humid, that Ella's hair has been crazy curly & the humidity caused my camera lens to totally fog--so that's the haze in these pics, no fancy editing.  Here are some candids of them enjoying this simple pleasure!  Have a great day :)

Hands on her hips...Ms. Priss

I know I missed my focus, but it's still cute :)

Our Vacation to Northern Michigan

We began our little vacation by traveling to Sleeping Bear Dunes, which sits on the coast of Lake Michigan.  It was huge, I guess I wasn't expecting the dunes to be so big, but yeah, they're big.  It's quite a hike also & I have to admit that I didn't make it all the way over the 5 large dunes to the beach of Lake Michigan.  As Michael put it--I was dressed for yachting not hiking.  Ok, so maybe there was some miscommunication as I thought flip flops & a sun hat would be appropriate; however, I soon learned I needed hiking shoes instead.  After we had done the Dunes, we headed to Traverse City.  Traverse City is a beautiful city sitting on Grand Traverse Bay.  That day we had timed our trip to be there for the final day of the National Cherry Festival.  I'm not even kidding, those cherries are amazing.  One of the hallmarks for the festival for me would be the fact you buy large cups of fresh, washed cherries & walk around eating them & spitting the pits everywhere. They had cherry everything, cheery sauces, soaps, drinks, wines, jams, dried cherries, fresh cherries, cherry pies & pastries, & even cherry bbq sauce.  Eventhough it sounds different, I sampled it & it was delish!  That night we had a fabulous meal in a great sushi restaurant.  I didn't take any real pics in Traverse City b/c it was sweltering.  The next morning we had a lovely breakfast at a french place & headed to our next destination, which was Charlevoix.  It's another beautiful bay town & known for it's yachting & cutesy shops.  I had a great time browsing the shops.  One notable shop for me was the handmade taffy store.  They had every variety you could imagine & it was great.  This area is also know for it's fresh caught white fish, so I dined on that for dinner.  That evening after we were both full & happy we strolled down to the beach to watch the sunset & I took a few pictures of us on the beach using my tripod.  Not perfect & it had rained on us before we did them, but I'm happy to have them (10 years of marriage next month).  The next day we awoke to a rainy morning (hence no pics :), but we tried to make the best of it.  We headed to Petosky to browse their shops & toured their small museum, which told about the importance of the lime mine & railroad to that area in the Victorian days.  The town itself is a perfect time capsule of that era, with many homes & stores that have the original Victorian architecture. The stores inside are perfectly modern & filled with many treasures, but it's fun to see the old store fronts anyway. [I should mention that Petosky is known for being the best place to find Michigan's state rock, the Petosky stone--it's a fossilized coral reef piece that gets polished & has a spotted pattern] After we had mostly finished all of the shopping we did a brief detour into Bay View, which was on our way to Cheboygan (our final destination).  All of the homes in Bay View are beautiful little Victorian cottages that served as summer homes to many folks from that time.  After a quick coffee/tea refuel, we headed to Cheboygan to meet up with some of Michael's old friends, who have known him since he was a kid.  It was a lovely dinner & time to reconnect before heading home to get our kiddos who were with Grandma & Grandpa in Mason.  Thanks to Michael's folks for watching the girls so we could get away for a little time for each other, it was a great trip.  For those of you who've never been to this area...I highly recommend it.  Here are some pics to enjoy & for those of you curious, a map of the areas we visited (the red stars were our different stops :)  Have a great day!

Sleeping Bear Dunes/Traverse City:

Charlevoix:

A large fossilized Petosky stone (aka coral)

Petosky/Cheboygan: