Vacation

We've been absent from blogging because we've been on vacation! We headed east last week to visit family in Ohio. Here is Henry with his cousins Greg (only a few weeks older than Henry) and Doug. This is the formal picture that was taken when we did a full family picture.

Grandma Janet and Grandpa Delmar were host to our family and my (Tina) brother's family for an extended weekend. We kept busy with the three boys and laughed a lot at how long it took us to get ready to do anything.


Here are all the boys at the zoo. We had a fun but everyone was very tired the next day.

Here Greg and Henry are attacking Grandpa Delmar.


On the way to and from my parents house we decided to camp overnight to split up the drive. It was nice--except on our way Derek set up the tent in the dark and took it down the next morning in the rain. On the way home, the weather cooperated but Henry got a fever (and the flu???) right before we arrived at the campsite. So there was much unhappiness and less sleep than a normal night of camping which isn't much to start with. It was still nice to have the time to break up the drive both ways though.

This morning, after a less than restful night of sleep we did manage to hike to the beach (Lake Michigan) and take a family portrait. Henry was a trooper even though he wasn't feeling good. (he loves the backpack so it bought us some time until the Tylenol kicked in).

We made it home. We had a great time with family and with camping. Now we're unpacking, doing laundry and going back to the real world for a few weeks before our next trek. That's when we'll head West!

Busy weekend

Last weekend was busy--with celebrations. Henry turned 1 on Saturday and Sunday was Father's day. Grandpa Delmar and Grandma Janet were here to help celebrate both events! Here are some random pictures from our festivities.

Grandpa Delmar playing with Henry while we prepared for his breakfast birthday party.



Henry was very sad to see Grandma and Grandpa leave (especially Grandpa's singing) Here's a picture right before they left.


Since Henry is now one he can ride in his bike trailer so we celebrated that and Father's day with a short bike ride to a playground. Here we are heading out on our first trip.


So far he's been okay with the trailer rides as long as the helmet stays put.


Here are Derek and Henry at our final destination--the "ayroun"--as Henry would say. It took us forever to realize that he was saying playground. He practiced that word for quite a while!

Henry received a new high chair as a present for his birthday. It works better than his old one to have him eat right off the table.


Henry's hair was getting quite long and a bit like a mullet. We decided it was time for a real haircut. So this Friday we finally went to get it chopped. Now he really looks like a little boy. So far we don't have any pictures of the new do but here is one of our favorite pre-haircut pictures.

Week 52

Yep. That's right. It has arrived. Today is the 52nd Thursday since little Henry was born. Hard to believe. I don't feel like I've changed (physically) that much in like the last 5 years but Henry...wow! Oh and we counted last night and our best estimate right now is that he has about 27 words that he says on his own, uninitiated. This is also a very amazing thing to watch. That is the development/acquisition of language skills. 

Anyway, here's the weekly picture. We probably will not continue with the weekly pictures, but we will try to do monthly updates. So this is the best picture we could get. If you haven't noticed in the last 3-4 weekly pictures Henry has been holding something. It's because there's no other way to get him to sit still in the chair. 

He was only in this position for about 20 seconds.

As a point of reference (and to save you from going back to week 1 on your own), here is the very first weekly picture we took. 
I don't know what's more shocking, the difference in the pictures, or the fact that (according to their file names). The week old picture was image number 879 with our camera and the 52 week old picture is image number 3886. As far as we know, the counter on the camera has always been set to sequentially number pictures. 

Wow, I'm glad for digital cameras. Think about the money we saved. at ten cents each we're looking at over $300 for prints. 

Week 51

We're getting to the end of the weekly pictures.  Maybe next week I'll actually post on time to end on a good note. We'll see.  It's summer and life it pretty busy around here.  

We went camping this weekend.  Actually I'm not sure if we did or not.  We went to the campsite with friends and made it until 10:30pm when all three of us started getting rained on (inside the tent).  Since rain was predicted the rest of the night we decided to pack up before we were completely soaked and cold.  So we were really only at the park for a day.  However, we did get the full joy of a short night of sleep and unpacking wet muddy things the next day which seems to be half of the fun of camping!  

It was quite an exciting adventure overall seeing that when Henry and I got to the park we were instructed to go to the park office basement with workers and other campers because there was a tornado warning.  At that time I also got a call from Derek (who was biking there) that he was hearing a siren and trying to decide if he should stop.  Hmmmm.  Needless to say we all made it there safely and had a much less adventurous trip than our other friends who were biking (in the rain & lots of wind, with tornado sirens,  and bike mechanical issues, and directional challenges)  We had a nice dinner together and Derek, Henry and I got a taste of what camping would be like.  We promptly came home and started shopping to replace our 9 year old tent--that seems to be not so waterproof as it once was.  (Unfortunately we didn't get any camping pictures since we didn't think about it when it wasn't raining.)  Also, fortunately we had made a brilliant decision to leave Zoe (the dog) at home.  Very good choice in rainy weather.

Week 50

Very late this week but the picture is from last Thursday.  Sorry the xylophone was the only way to keep him in the chair.  

Henry was helping me make cookie bars one evening.  I remember helping my mom in the kitchen all the time as a kid.  Hopefully Henry will continue to enjoy that time together.

Here we are reading Henry and Levi's favorite book right now, at least it's the one they both bring to me the most to read.  I'm learning a lot about excavators, scrapers, fire engines, etc. (Levi was very interested until the camera came out!)

Henry also enjoys helping Dad with projects.  Here they are finishing up putting his new rocking chair together.