Still here!

Family picture in front of the marina in Ludington

Look at my big blue eyes - I am soooo alert!

Sweet smile

Hitting the beach at Lake Michigan

On the way to Ludington, we met up with Andrea and Eli. I only wish we would have had more time to catch up and hang out. Next time!!

T's First Father's Day! :) Lila's shirt says "Daddy's Girl"

"Ohhhhhh... I LOVE my mozart music cube!!"

Lila at Four Months

Lila loves her baths - now she's big enough to use the big tub!

Happy happy girl!

Lila has seemed to have inherited her Mommy's thighs - it's now difficult to slide her legs into the bumbo. She thinks it's funny!

Cool shades for the hot summer sun!

Beautiful baby girl

At Nick's baseball game

Oh my goodness... my goal of blogging at least once a week once school got out has been shot to hell. It's hard to believe, but I've been out of school for almost a month! A MONTH!! It's been wonderful, to say the least. This is the first summer since 2001 that I have not taught summer school. Yes, it's only half day and decent cash, but there's this little girl here who needs her mama!!

Let's see, some of the things that have been going on this past month:

-Lila turned 4 months old on June 18!

-I actually had my classroom cleaned out and ready for summer the day after school was out - a new record!

-We had another baby shower - T's mom's friends got together to shower Lila with more presents. Fun fun!

-T and I had our first trip somewhere without Lila (farther than Men.ards in Ion.ia) - we went to Detroit to see a Tigers game. It actually got rained out and we only saw 4 innings, but it was a great time. Of course, we came back with a little pink Tigers hat for you-know-who... We have 2 more games that we have tickets for in August. Yay! :)

-June 25 we celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. Four years!! It's so hard to believe that it's been that long. It's also crazy to think that we were building this house FIVE years ago. There's 6 months of my life that I never want to relive... We are living in this house until we go to the nursing home!!

-We took our annual trip to Hamlin Lake in Ludington - this was the longest amount of time that we have spent there - 10 days. It was wonderful to get away. T really needed the break from work - it's been crazy busy for him with all these federal stimulus programs going on. He said he didn't think about work once (although I caught him checking messages on his work phone a couple times). The first 4 days we were there, the weather was fantastic! 70's and sunny - perfect sunbathing weather! Then we had some cool/drizzly days. That was fine with my mom and I since we are perfectly happy hanging around the cottage. T and my dad golfed just about every day - even in the cool and drizzle. I must say, this year was definitely different than ever having Lila there. I usually read at least one magazine or novel per day while we're there. This year, I did manage to eek out one novel for the week. Lila had a great time - we went on lots of walks, went to the beach at Lake Michigan, went to Manistee, made lots of trips to the House of Flavors (yummy!!) and played and played!

-Lila is teething something terrible. Usually the mornings are pretty okay for her, but the afternoon/evening is another story. She'll be her normal happy self, then the next minute she's screaming. Poor baby girl... Ty.lenol is a wonderful thing.

-Once school got out, Lila stopped sleeping through the night most nights. Like clockwork, she woke up every night at 3am and was up for an hour, then went back to sleep for another 4-5 hours. I got reacquainted with my good friend Ti.vo to keep me awake.

-I took Lila to the doctor for her 4 month checkup/shot visit today. She now weighs 17 lbs. 13 oz. and is 25.5 in. 95th percentile! :) Whoohoo - in my class, 95% is an A! hee hee...

-In the parking lot, while loading Lila into the truck after her doctor's appt, I threw my back out. I wasn't totally surprised since I've been toting her around more since she's been more clingy with her teeth issues, however, I wasn't expecting it in the parking lot. I called my mom and she met us at our house since I could barely get myself in and out of the truck, let alone lift her. We went to my chiropractor and he worked some small miracles and I'm now moving and feeling much better. I go back in a couple days for more magic adjustments and a massage. yaaaaayyyyy...

-We're now truck-shopping, although we'd like to sell ours first. If anyone out there in bloggerville is interested in a 2004 Expedition in good shape - email me!