Baby on the Way

My cousin Josh and his wife Crystal expecting their first baby this October. My cousin Nate and his Jodi are expecting baby number two in October the same week as Josh and Crystal. For a family, that reproduces so slowly, it's funny it's so close this time.

We travelled to Lake George, IN for a lovely baby shower. The weather was amazing when we arrived and while we had lunch on the screen in porch. --I want one of those -- Anyway, sat and talked while with a beautiful breeze blowing in, just the right temperature. The whole event was a little weird for Crystal. She's from Florida and the majority of the guests were people she'd never met before, but I she handled it beautifully.

Meanwhile I fell in love with my aunt's dog. What a cool dude! Uncle Jim and Aunt Ann have an a succession of West Highland Terrier's: Spooky, Woody and now Mac. Here's a lovely picture of my mom and Mac.

A few years ago my aunt and uncle flattened the original lake cottage and built their retirement home. Here's a shot looking from the lake to the house.

Then from the house to the lake.

Oh, the fun times I had there when I was a kid.

The Simplest Things

Sometimes the simplest things are the best. For instance I just love this card I made for my cousin-in-law Crystal's baby shower.

All the Fun!

Finally Recovered from the Weekend

Friday night found us headed down to Fort Wayne for a graduation party. Joe's cousin's daughter Danielle, our flower girl, graduated from high school. They had a really nice party for her on Saturday: family, friends, great food, and a jumping thing. My kids bounced their brains out.

We were heading out the door saying our goodbyes, when Griffin got a look at the Dustin's, Danielle's brother, girlfriend. She was sitting and had he legs crossed. Griffin just stared at her legs then looked up and her and signed the "I love you" sign, with a big goofy grin on his face. He was smitten. Unfortunately the romance was short, because it was time to go.

The big plans for the night were karaoke-ing with Joe's brothers, Andy and Josh and Frank, Josh's friend. They were hysterical. Josh sang "Going to the Country" by Canned heat. He did the whole thing in falsetto. I couldn't stop laughing. It was so creepy it was wonderful. I'd love to show you the video, but everytime I try to do anything with it my whole computer locks up.

Andy is a true performer and had the crowd of . . . 15 or so throughly entertained. His masterpiece was "Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol. Joe even got into the fray with "Touch Me" by The Doors. He sounded great.

We stayed out until 3am. I was toast until probably Tuesday and I only had one shot. The one the karaoke guy bought us because we "Rocked!"

Hypnosis

Will and Carson are upstairs goofing around and one of the planets falls off the ceiling. Will carries it downstairs to show me; it's dangling from fishing line. The following occurs . . .

"Carson, I'm going to hypnotize you." Says Will swinging the planet two inches from Carson's nose. "You're getting sleepy, very sleeeeeepppyyy. I'm hynoooootiiiiiizzzing yoooouuu. You control me."

Kind of got that backwards buddy. Shouldn't the line be "I control you!"

Crazy Weekend

It was a wonderful weekend and I know you're shocked to hear me say that. It was over 85 degrees and therefore I should have been miserable. Well, Friday the garage sale came to an abrupt halt when by 11:30 I had only sold $3.oo worth of stuff. I grabbed lunch for Patty, her daughter and niece and sat over there for a short while, then hurried home to get some stuff done before Griffin showed up. It was so hot the kids didn't want to play outside and Joe was going for a ride. I just couldn't stand to be cooped up with my people, so it was off to the beach. Soggy and sandy we arrived home right when Joe was. Perfect timing on my part!

The Young Ones had arrived in the mail via Netflix earlier in the week. Joe and I watched an episode and I promptly fell asleep. (I normally don't do that but lately around 10:30 I'm ready to crash. Maybe I'm finally growing up.) O.k. The Young Ones. It was this kooky show on MTV in 1988 or so, that I just loved. Four university students living together in a hideous flat: Vivian, the punk, Neil, the hippie, Michael, the wheeler and dealer, and Rick, the Anarchist. It was something Joe and I had in common from day one. We were the only people in the US that watched The Young Ones. So we've been having a Young Ones revival this weekend.

Now our young ones had a blast on Saturday when we went to the beach again. Yippeee!!! It's officially lake season. I love it. This was a much easier trip to the beach, because Joe was along to be another life guard. When I'm alone I spend the whole time counting. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. I should have just had one kid. One. One. One. Joe went in the water to play with the kids and I people watched on the beach. That's another blog.

Anyway, we came home and had dinner, then afterward, went for the first whole family bike ride. What a blast! There were moment's we were worried Griffin was going to kill us or myself, but we did it. He knows how to stop, but doesn't seem to remember when it matters most. So after crossing Burdick and heading down the little hill to Frosty Boy, he didn't stop. It appeared he was going to cross through Subway entrance/exit, but skidded to a halt as Joe, Gus and Myself screamed "STOP" for the enjoyment of everyone eating ice cream. Then as we were leaving he wasn't watching where he was going and ran into the Pizza!Pizza! sign and knocked it over. This made me abruptly stop and hop out of the saddle and it jumped up and poked in the butt cheek where I how have a bruise. Everyone did get home alive.

Today, we planted our very little first garden. We only planted things the kids will eat, so we have corn, strawberries, tomatoes (actually those are for me), watermelon, pumpkin (for carving not eating), and something none of us can remember what it is. This should be an interesting experiment. Worse case scenario all the plants die, we have a great little flowerbed started.

Everything in the ground Joe headed off to mow. I hung out with the kids and of course fell asleep, what it wrong with me? I woke up to the sound of thunder and thought I better bring the umbrella in. Gus came to the door to help me and the wind was really picking up. Gus yelled, "What is that?!?" pointing to the south. It was a giant wall of rain. I threw the umbrella in the house and shut the door, whipped around and it was as if the house was going through a car wash. Then I remembered the windows were open on a van, parked in the driveway. I ran out to shut them and Joe was actually standing in the storm cleaning off the mower. I will never understand.

Wind whipping everywhere, lightning, thunder, he points at the grill cover laying in the driveway and yells over the noise, "Why is the cover off the grill?" I answer in my usual loving manner, "Maybe it was the 50 mile an hour wind gusts!" Oy!

That's it. I'm exhausted. Good night!