Go West, Young Man!

 

The Big Sky State turns out to be pretty photogenic, so some (actually, many) shots from the trip are here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo

4th of July Dance

Just returned from a summer trip to Montana with JY and Lena to our old friends Matt and Brittany's wedding.  Among other highlights, the parade in Big Fork on the 4th of July was quite an experience.  The town is only 1500 people, with a couple blocks of main street, but people travel from 3 hours away to catch this (1.5 hour) event, complete with streaking fighter jets, full snickers bars and freezy pops being thrown at the crowd, and lots of whole-hearted anti-democrat sentiment.  

Alden celebrated the flower-pot-drum-line with his own shadow-oriented dance, captured here.  Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvH31f9wMzs

Bikes!

Notice (below) the new sunglasses and bike helmet with yellow and orange flames?

...and off they go, to enjoy their morning commute together.

 

gramma + pop pop memorial day visit

We had a great visit with gramma + pop pop last weekend.  The following elements were incorporated (in no particular order): fires, root beer floats, feet dipped in latex, hairballs removed from bathroom sink, cherry porter beer, and naked golf (alden).  If this sounds like a frat party, im perhaps exaggerating the scene -- but it was a great weekend, complete with summer weather and lots of time spent outside.

All made even more exciting to find out that Gramma Sam will be retiring at the end of June -- which should lend itself to more visits, since the State of Illinois will no longer be charge of how Gramma Sam spends her weekdays.  This will be good, especially with baby two en route.

Attached are some photos. . .

Littlest One

A first glimpse of our newest family member - due to arrive in early December.

Alden, MI

We took a vacation week and drove up north in Michigan to the Traverse City / Seeping Bear Dunes / Alden, MI area (last spot chosen for obvious reasons).  We were gifted with some gorgeous weather and met some wonderful up-state folks, happy to have our pre-season tourism dollars.  A wonderful week spent together.  ..

enjoy:
https://picasaweb.google.com/carl.koschmann/NorthernMichiganVacation?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPPm6r2-8un0KA&feat=directlink

totally random twos