Family Photos

Last summer we took a monumental road trip, which also included a family reunion and the first complete family picture for my side of the family in a number of years. My cousin's wife, Jill, is a great photographer and she was kind enough to spend an evening after the reunion taking all of our families' pictures and we just had to share them. I've put together a bunch of slide shows so you can see what great work she did (and also see what a great-looking family we have!).

Our Family

My Siblings' Families

Some great black and white shots
(we love B&W pictures)

The Entire Clan
There are pictures of my parents, sisters-in-law, grandchildren, siblings, and the whole family

Blunk

Sorry, guys.
Still in a blunk (blog + funk).
I'm fine. Our family is fine.
No major (or minor) issues.
I'm just in a blunk.
Just not feeling like putting myself out there at the moment.
And we've got a lot of fun stuff going on.
It's not that I don't have fun stuff to share. I do.
I just don't feel like it.
I'm sure I'll be back.
But for now . . .
Blunk.

Someone Was Listening

On Tuesday we sat down and watched President Obama's address to school children since our very limited basic cable includes C-span. We enjoyed watching it as a family and Thing 1 and Thing 2 seemed to be inspired in their own ways to do a good job in school (like any of us were worried).

Today Thing 2 (our first grader) has a friend over to play, and I'm not sure what was going on, but I overheard Thing 2 saying:

"Well, there was this really good basketball player--I mean really good--and he didn't even make it on his school basketball team. But now he's one of the best players ever. And J.K. Rowling, she tried to publish Harry Potter twelve times before she finally did."

It's nice to see the message sinking in.

Missing TWO front teeth!

I love, love, love this age, this stage . . . the missing-2-front-teeth stage. I think it's adorable and I can't help but smile and laugh and constantly think it is so cute! Here's one of my favorite lines from today:

"I'm tho ekthited to get my own email so I can potht methageth and thend her gameth online and thtuff."

And this:

"Thith ith a fun game I made up using my thtuffed eagle thip (Zip). You jutht tie thith like thith and then relacth and he goeth around finding thpaghetti in your handth and eatth it."

So what do I do? I sit here and blog.

And apparently give him a complex with my questioning.

I try to spell Zip just right phonetically, so I keep asking him to say it.

He repeats it and then looks at me and asks, "What am I not thaying right?"

I try not to laugh (because he just said "thaying") and feel badly for giving him a complex and respond (truthfully), "I'm just trying to figure out how it sounds to say Zip's name without your two front teeth."

He responds, "Oh." And trying it out repeats, "Thip. Thip."

He looks at me and says, "The 'i' thoundth thtrange . . . Thip. Thip. Or ith it the 'the' (Z)? . . . Thip. Yeah, it's the 'the.'"

Question

Yesterday before bed:

Thing 2: "Mommy, do we do school on weekends?"

Mommy: "Not usually. I mean, we don't do anything official, but we're always learning. Why?"

Thing 2: "Oh man! Because I love school!"



Yay!