She's One!

Has it really been a year? Must be, because we celebrated Cami's first birthday yesterday (Sunday, July 20). We had to do it a day late as I was playing in a softball tournament on Saturday. Boy was it hot out!! It was hot for the party too, so it was a good thing that we planned it for inside. We had about 25 close friends come by to help celebrate and Cami received some wonderful toys including a wagon, money in a college fund and lots of clothes. We cooked some burgers and brats on the grill and had plenty of cake and ice cream. The cake even came with a smaller one just for the birthday girl. Here are some pictures of the birthday girl herself: getting ready to eat "her" cake, eating the cake, feeding Poppi and Uncle Jason adding in some ice cream. She was on quite a sugar high for a little bit, then totally crashed. Sara had to wake her up from a two-hour nap and she still went to bed easily.

Back Home Again!

What a wonderful time we had up north with the family! A huge THANK YOU to Cindy and Joe for putting up with all of us. Imagine - nine adults and six kids (all under 8) in the same house. If you have already read Dad and Rich's blogs, then you know all the fun we had: eating ice cream and watching fireworks; going to the lake and working on our tans; entertaining ourselves during thunderstorms; going to the lake again and eating delicious fish; and getting together with mom's side of the family for the 4th.

I'm not sure that we have gotten back into our normal (do we have normal?) routine yet, but we're pretty darn close. My manager is stressing out right now because I was on vacation last week, in a training class all this week and she is on vacation next week. We have several projects that we are trying to get into production before the end of the summer, so she stresses. Me, I'm not too worried about it at all.

Sara is back to work and Cami is back to day care. By the way Paula, we had to buy some chicken nuggets to keep in the freezer for her. She loves them with some fruit or just by themselves. And the trick of putting the fan by her bed works just as well here as it did in Michigan. We are now trying to get a small birthday get together done for her since her birthday is in less than two weeks. I still can't believe that she is going to be a year old already.

John and Jason were glad to have us back home. Even though they might not admit it, I think they were lonely without us. :)

Here are just a few pictures from the last week. I'm not posting a lot since Dad and Rich already did that.

Cami and Gabi got along well and shared the double stroller during most of the week:

Dad taking (another?) nap:

Sara and Paula with Cami and Gabi enjoying Lake Michigan before eating fish:

Getting ready to eat good fish (not the one Bart 'caught'):

The beautiful Lake Michigan shore line from the picnic area where we ate the fish. Isn't it gorgeous?