A month of firsts

What an exciting month we have had! We are all back in the swing of things after our nice long summer vacation.

Rory is slowing starting to walk and will now take 20-30 steps before resorting to crawling. Her preferred method of travel is still crawling but she is making great progress on her walking skills. Her new favorite thing is to push our little child sized shopping cart around the house. Funny, it is now Alex's favorite thing to do as well. The girls are learning to take turns with their toys and neither of them is enjoying that! Rory is talking up a storm although most of it is gibber jabber. She is saying kitty, shoes, doggie, toothbrush, Alex, Daddy, and Mommy. I am not sure that anyone other than us can understand her but it is a great start. Alex has also taught her sign language for more, eat and play so Rory is communicating nicely these days.

Alex is growing up before our eyes. Last weekend she woke up before everyone else so she just came downstairs and got a few toys out and played on the couch alone until we all woke up. It was the funniest thing to see her alone downstairs playing. She also will now take a couple toys up to her room to play alone when she has something that she doesn't want to share with Rory. Now that may seem mean but it is actually pretty wonderful. Alex is finally learning how to entertain herself and we are so happy to see her learning how to have fun without an adult helping her.

Alex and Rory both had haircuts this month and both look so cute! Rory loved her first cut and sat in the chair like a big girl with no complaints. Pat thinks she looks like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber but I think she is adorable. Alex is sporting the cutest little bob which is perfect for summer and her active life.

We made a visit to Gigi and Baba's and Alex had fun again with the piano and Rory also has a new favorite musical instrument there...a musical card. Here is a little video of the fun. (To play the video left click on the arrow below the picture)

Alex had her first day of preschool yesterday which was quite a success. For the first day of class the teacher asked that parents stay with the kids which really helped her to feel comfortable. It also allowed me to get a bunch of pictures! I was so proud of Alex and how well she participated with the class. She truely loved every minute of it and I think it will be a great experience for her. Here are a couple pictures of the big day.

A great summer

It is hard to believe that we are already home from an amazing summer. I must warn you, this will be a long post with many many pictures so feel free to breeze through it. We took over a 1000 pictures while in Chicago so as you can imagine we have a lot to share. I am adding a couple slide shows to this posting so we can get more pictures in.

What better place to start but the beginning....

Alex and Rory did great on the flight to Chicago. As you may recall Alex spent the month prior to our departure planning and preparing for her big adventure and she was ready. Alex is such a pro at flying how I am pretty sure one of the airlines will hire her on soon. Rory is still lacking experience, but she hung in there pretty well.

The girls sharing a lollipop and a seat on the airplane. Aren't they cute!

We spent a great part of our time at Klinger Lake, Michigan and the kids had a great time. The kids had a so much fun being outside, playing in the sand, riding on the boat, throwing balls for Molly and other random activities. Here is a slide show of some of our fun activities. Highlights to share...Alex took her first kayak ride, Rory went tubing, Alex stayed up to watch the fireworks, both girls had tons of fun! As a side note, Alex didn't enjoy participating in water activities much. She seems to have developed a phobia of algae. We now talk about algae almost daily.

Rory celebrated her birthday twice this year, which she didn't mind at all. Thank you to all of you who joined us for her birthday celebrations. We had a great time!
Here are a couple pictures from her first party, which we celebrated the day before her actual birthday and a slide show from her big party which was a few weeks after her birthday.

Because we were gone for so long I decided that Alex should have a trike to ride for the summer. She had a great time taking everyone for a ride...including her Great Grandpa Smitty!

We made a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo which we very beautiful and just about the perfect size for our little group.

In addition to Rory's birthday parties we also got to help celebrate Colin's 3rd birthday and attend Ruthie's birthday party. Wow! What a birthday month!

The girls and I drove to Rockford for a day to visit Becky and her family. Alex and Rory loved playing in the sandbox with Emma and Jade. They didn't love going to the pool quite as much - Alex was too concerned about algae.

The end of the trip concluded with Peppa, Uncle Peter, Aunt Cate and Daddy riding their bikes across Iowa with some of the Bryant family and roughly 10,000 other freaks. The ride was 471 miles of rolling hills, beautiful midwest scenery and lots of food and drink. The weather was perfect and everyone had a great time.

I am sure I forgot to include most of our trip, but I am sure you have seen enough, so I will call this the end.

Miss you all!

Caycee, Pat, Alex and Rory