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Grace and Tim…thank you for a wonderful visit!  We spent a lot of time just hanging out.  The boys played street  hockey…much to Bryan’s delight…  We went to Sylvia’s first play: If You Give a Pig a Pancake. We walked to Great Falls in Maryland.  We spent a lovely evening at Heather and Michael and Evelyn’s house and got to see their new home and the place Joe will be staying for the next couple months.  We watched the fireworks on television.  And we read and cooked and ate and played.

Here are some photos of our visit.  I only wish I’d ventured outside to take some photos of the boys as they exuberantly played street hockey.  What fun!

We always so enjoy our annual vacations with Grace, Tim, and John.  As I pull together photos from this trip, I’ve been thinking back fondly on our visits over the years.

In 2005, we went to DC for John’s baptism in October (photos here).  The boys were six and four months old.  Such tiny things they were!

In 2006, the Ernst Manubay crew came to Madison for the start of our 4th of July weekend visits (see photos).  John was adorable…just testing out running at 15 months, and Andrew was a chubby, crawling, curly-topped babe at 12 months.

In 2007, we traveled to DC with Andrew (who was a newly minted Two), and John who was Two-and-a quarter (see photos).  We told them we were pregnant with Sylvia during a visit to the National Zoo.  Here the boys are playing in their froggy boots at Sligo Creek.

In 2008, Grace came to help me out soon after Sylvia was born (we cleaned out my closets!), and then we traveled to DC over Labor Day to visit and to go to Kacy and Reutiger’s wedding.  Much Slip ‘n Sliding fun was had (see photos).

In 2009, we met again in Madison (see photos). In honor of the previous year’s water fun, we spent lots of time in the sprinkler.   It’s so nice to see these boys enjoy each other so much even though their visits are so far apart!

So here we are in 2010 (see photos)!  These boys didn’t need much warm-up time at all this year.  Andrew slept in the trundle bed next to John’s bed, and the two of them stayed up waaay too late each night talking and giggling.  This year’s visit was punctuated by sports: street hockey, soccer ball kicking, and indoor goal scoring.  John loves games with balls as much as Andrew loves animals.  It was neat to see that John’s passion was contagious.  Andrew caught the bug:)

Thanks, Grace and Tim, for having such a great son!  We’re looking forward to many more years together.

While we were in the DC area, we attended a great 4th of July parade in Takoma Park, Maryland.  We missed the Monona Memorial Day parade this year because we were in Maine, so Andrew was particularly excited to eat the candy see the parade with our friends.

Grace has a friend whose parents have a home right on the parade route.  They invited Grace to come and bring her friends.  So she brought 10 of us: her family, our family, my brother Joe, and Heather, Michael, and Evelyn.  The parade was really well stocked with politicians and performers and community groups of all sorts.

We all enjoyed spending the morning on a shady neighborhood street and watching them march by.

The color guard started it off.

And then there were oodles of local, county, state, and federal politicians in neat cars.

A lady in stilts protesting the hot topic of the parade: the elementary school was going to switch to Styrofoam plates, and most everyone was carrying signs demanding the return of a dishwasher.

Bag pippers.  Uncle Joe wants to learn how to play the bagpipe.

Good buds.

Evelyn in the flag-waving spirit.

John considers eating his lollipop.

The Learners on the 4th.

Evelyn is just so stinkin’ cute I could eat her with a spoon.

Michael helps Sylvia with large chunks of watermelon.

Two girls are poooped out and manage to be sharing a common space without arguing.

My Sylv taking a rest with Poodle and Paci.

Hope your 4th of July was a great one!  I’m so glad to be an American.

We’re back home after spending the last five days enjoying time with friends in Maryland (next to Washington DC).

Last week…the week of my 33rd birthday…was wonderful – and soooo busy!  I had somewhere between five and eight items on my calendar on MTW, and then on Thursday, we flew out of Milwaukee.  Thank goodness we didn’t leave early in the morning, because I was doing laundry and pulling bags out of the basement before swimming lessons and then our flight.  This week should be more chill, with the calendar touting two-to-four activities a day.  Nice to have some structure but not to be running around too crazy.  Always looking for a balance.

We flew to DC on Thursday on a really bumpy flight.  Sylvia was playing in her seat, and Andrew was reading a big stack of books to himself until, without warning, Andrew vomited all over his books, himself, and (you guess it) me.  Andrew has never before thrown up, so this was a little starting to him.  He couldn’t figure out what was all over him and why he had some “chewy stuff” in his mouth.  Then he got weepy because his armadillo shirt was dirty.  A nice book and two magazines were later sent to the trash.  Andrew and I got ourselves (sort of) cleaned up, and I talked with him about the feelings he may have been experiencing in his tummy and that in the future if he experiences those feelings that he should request a bag.  Now I’ve been puked on by both my kids (if you missed Sylvia’s 2009 barfing story with the cocktail napkin, you can catch it here).

Really, though, that incident was pretty minor.  It’s just the type of thing I feel compelled to write about because it was dramatic and disgusting.  Somehow dramatic, disgusting events are more obvious material for writing about than hours spent talking and laughing with good friends on the deck.

And that, dear readers, is what we did a lot of on this trip…talking and laughing with Grace and Tim while Andrew, John, and Sylvia played about.  Or I lounged about while Bryan and Tim played street hockey with the boys. Or ate food and lingered at the table while the kids begged us to get up and play with them.

But all that’s to come in the next post. For now, I’ll leave you with a scene of two very happy boys on a summer afternoon.

My husband is the best. Check out the reason my toes are so very happy today.

Terry’s Uncle Donny was 97 years old when he died.  Talk about longevity!  Donny was a bachelor and had lived in California most of his life.  He and his three brothers (including Terry’s dad Forry) grew up in Red Wing, Minnesota.

Donny’s funeral was last Wednesday.  I drove up and met up with Terry, Terry’s mom Topsy (from Salem, Oregon), his brother Mike (also from Salem), his Aunt Rusty (from LA and more recently Minnesota), and his Uncle Spin (from Red Wing).  I just love Terry’s family.  They’re like my own:)  But as a special treat, my very own sister was there too.

I hadn’t seen Uncle Spin in years, and it was so nice to see him again.  He is just a charming, loving person, and it’s hard not to smile when you’re near him.

While I grew up seeing Uncle Spin pretty regularly, I’d only met Uncle Donny a couple times.  Once when I was 7 on a family trip to California and once in 2001 when Terry and I took a trip to L.A.  Here’s a couple pictures of Uncle Don from that trip.  He had a lemon tree growing in his yard.  That kind of blows my mind.  And his jade plants were huge bushes in his yard.  So this is a younger me with Uncle Donny.

And here’s Terry and Uncle Donny.

Uncle Donny’s obituary can be read here.

We all met at the St. James Hotel in Red Wing for lunch.  I had the wild rice soup and it was so seriously yummy that I almost asked for the recipe.  Then I got home and found it online!  Not-so-secret ingredients: heavy cream and whole milk.

Here’s a few photos I took at lunch.

Lovely Topsy:

I got to see my beautiful sister!!

Terry’s brother Mike:

Uncle Spin has been going blind due to macular degeneration for quite a few years.  Here he has just put on Uncle Donny’s WWII ring.  It has to be an odd thing to be the last sibling.  Donny was the oldest Haller boy and Spin (whose real name is Dean) is the youngest.

There was a color guard, and Uncle Donny was buried with military honors.

The moments after a funeral aren’t always the most appropriate for taking photos, but the light was just lovely.  Here’s Terry and Maretta.

And Aunt Rusty.

And Terry and his brother Mike.

Topsy and Aunt Rusty

We found Terry’s grandmother’s grave.

And then found Uncle Blue’s (a.k.a. Lyndon’s) grave.  Uncle Blue was Aunt Rusty’s husband.

So after that brief visit, I turned around and returned home.  How nice it was to see them all.

Bryan’s parents were here in from June 16-20, and we had such a nice visit.  I didn’t have my camera out very much, but thanks to Granny, we did get some pictures.  Enjoy!

Getting Grandad at the airport.  Sylvia and Andrew raced to see him and jumped and yelled excitedly while he came down the escalator.  Such a fun welcome!

We had lots of fun meals together.

Granny took Sylvia shopping to get her flip flops and sunglasses…items that my girl has been very much desiring.  While shoe shopping at Target, Sylvia found that she couldn’t try on the shoes fast enough.

She had fun trying on so many, but it was all a little overwhelming for her.  We ended up with some cute pink flip flops and purple sunglasses, and we managed to avoid purchasing a satin zebra striped purse that she set her eye upon.

When Bryan’s parents were here last weekend, we were enjoying a quiet, post-kids-bedtime moment in the sunroom when we noticed that the sky had turned an unbelievable shade of tangerine.  It really looked bright orange.  We’ve had a lot of storms passing through the area over the last several weeks (one of the reasons why Sylvia now covers her ears and cries about thunder when she is put in her crib), but this orange sky evening was amazing.

I ran outside with my camera to take a few pictures.

First the birch tree in a neighbor’s yard that was lit up so amazingly.

Then my view of the sky from our driveway.

Then our house…bathed in orange light.

Oh, and my flowers.  Look how soft and pretty they look!

On a different night in a different state, Bryan’s mom took this lovely photo.  I just love light!