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
