**UPDATED**--with pics

Well, I think we've officially survived the summer. After checking my calendar, it appears that we have nothing else planned until Lauren's birthday, over a full month away. Thank goodness!

We spent some time catching up with Chris' sister Brea and her husband Steve over the weekend. They stopped down after visiting some family in Illinois. The nice thing is that we really didn't do anything except sit around and laugh at Lauren for two days.



Seriously, the kid is funny. She's started playing games on her own, now. For example, "Where's Lauren?" Ever since she was a couple months old we'd put a burp cloth over her head and say, "Where's Lauren?" in the required syrupy baby talk voice. We'd keep saying that until she pulled it off her head, and then go, "There she is!" Wow. Thrilling. But it always got a big smile out of her. Now, she'll start the game on her own, and she'll leave the burp cloth or whatever on her head until someone starts saying "Where's Lauren?"


She also has this thing about holding toys she likes at the back of her neck and spinning around in circles while sitting. She's also discovered that there's space underneath things, and lays down on her stomach to look under the couch, pack and play, etc. She's found things that I've been missing for months! And I swear she did the splits yesterday. She's also officially a professional stair climber. So much so that we broke down and bought a baby gate last night. So much for my adult decor. I've decided that my life has gone through design phases, something like this:

1. High School: who cares? I never spent much time in room.
2. College: Monet, Georgia O'Keefe, or any other famous artist, all in paper poster form attached to concrete block walls with putty. I also "checked out" art from the local library. They had framed artwork you could check out for 3 months at a time. Pretty cool, actually.
3. Post-college: non-ripped posters from college, hand-me-downs, whatever wass cheap enough for my first place.
4. Adult, pre-children: Chris and I put our individual styles together to come up with something we really like. We've watched enough design shows on TV to be able to really put a room together. Awesome!
5. Adult, with small children: all decorations, knickknacks, etc. at least 3 feet off the floor; high chairs, pack'n'plays, etc. in the least baby-like pattern possible, but I'm still not fooling anyone; smattering of brighly colored, loud toys throughout the general living space.
6. Who knows what's next?

One of the perks of babyproofing is that I got to take some of Grandma Bilek's pottery in to work. It definitely brightens up my day.

I'll work on getting some pictures and videos to add to this post. Of course this likely will not happen due to Murphy's Law of Parenting #1: nothing cute will ever be caught on film. James has had luck defeating this law so I may seek his guidance.

Update: I still haven't defeated Murphy's Law of Parenting #1, so I cheated and just put some pictures in. Who wants to read a whole page of text?

Confessions of a Grown-up Sorority Girl

I'm not sure which part of that title is more surprising..."grown-up" or "sorority girl." I suppose that would depend on who you are. For me, neither one is that surprising anymore. Many of you probably don't know that I am a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. Yes, it's a sorority, or to be more historically accurate, a women's fraternity; the word sorority was not coined yet when Theta was founded in 1870 by the four women pictured below. Pretty hot, eh?


Every year around this time I delve back into my days as a student at Albion College and resume my duties as the Advisory Board Chair for the Gamma deuteron chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta at Ohio Wesleyan University. Whew, that's a mouthful. Officially, it means that I help guide the President of the chapter in her duties. What it usually means in reality is that I get to relive my college days a little, and realize how the drama of college life never changes. It's amazing for me to hear about the trials and tribulations, think back to how devastating they were for me when I was 20 years old, and then laugh at how I wish those were my biggest problems now.

Right about now you're probably saying, "Wait, you're almost 30 and you still do stuff with you're sorority? You're crazy!" And that's what Chris says most of the time. Don't even get me started on James and his snide comments. But here's the thing. Without getting into the "if I told you, I'd have to kill you" kind of information, no promise I made when I initiated had a time limit on it. The women of this chapter, as well as the hundreds of thousands of other Thetas across the country, are my sisters, and I'll do whatever I can to help them. Always.

So, yes, I'm a sorority girl. And I love it. Will Lauren be a sorority girl? Judging by her Theta bib and the box of Theta stuff I've already started for her, it just might happen. Just don't tell her dad...then he'll have two sorority girls to deal with.

Our Michigan Vacation in Top Ten Form

Rather than the usual rundown of how our vacation went told in the narrative, I've decided to use a Top Ten format instead. Because I'm lazy.

For reference, here's an aerial view of the lake our rented cottage is on. Note the lack of anything really resembling a city. Although you may notice a golf course directly to the northeast of the lake. Chris was happy.


Top Ten Great Things about our Michigan Vacation
1. Being unreachable by phone or email. Because the cottage didn't have a phone, we couldn't get cell phone service, and the only people we knew with internet only had dial-up access.

2. Standing on a dock in the water and feeling like you're moving instead of the water.

3. A 5 year-old catching her first crayfish with a Barbie fishing net.

4. Another 5 year-old running from a crayfish screaming "Crab!"

5. Buying 24 jars of baby food carrots for $1 at the Gerber Factory Store.

6. My husband and brother-in-law fishing on the lake in their trusty watercraft, "The Mackerel." However, I never actually saw any fish.

7. Bonfires with various family we haven't seen in 4 years.

8. S'mores.

9. Beer.

10. Wildlife I don't see in Columbus. Like buffalo, wild turkeys, and large herds of deer behind fences on a deer farm.

Top Ten Not-So-Great Things about our Michigan Vacation
1. Being unreachable by phone or email. Because the cottage didn't have a phone, we couldn't get cell phone service, and the only people we knew with internet only had dial-up access.

2. Driving 6 hours with a 10 month-old baby.

3. 37 mosquito bites in one night.

4. Poison ivy (just Chris, thankfully).

5. Wet sheets, floors, pillows, furniture, etc.

6. Lauren's first cold/allergy attack/snot geyser.

7. 7 people in one 2-bedroom cottage for 3 days.

8. Packing. Note: this is not unique to the Michigan vacation. Packing always sucks.

9. Staying in a hotel on the way back with two different wedding parties in the same hotel, complete with two different Bridezillas.

10. Only getting one hour to soak up some rays due to crappy weather and other various commitments.

All in all, it was a good time but I was exhausted by the time I got home on Saturday. Give me a year and I might be ready to do it again.

And no, I don't have any pictures. Refer to #8 on the Not-So-Great list.

First of all, let me start by saying all of our friends and family in the Twin Cities are fine. Chris is still in shock over the whole thing, given that he's driven over that bridge more times than he could count. I think you can even see the bridge in the background of some of our wedding photos. Chris took the boys downtown to do their pictures before the wedding, and they could see it from where they were. This map helped me to put it all into perspective.


I always find these kinds of things sort of surreal. I'm not alone:

“I realized there was nothing I could do so I continued to take pictures,” Reynolds said. “I realized I couldn’t capture it on film. It couldn’t fit it in the camera. Some things are meant only for the eyes.”

As always, I try to find some sort of good in any situation. I'm just a glass half full kind of gal. From what I can tell from the coverage, it sounds like the emergency response by Minneapolis-St. Paul was fantastic. 22 of the city's 26 fire trucks were on the scene within an hour, most of them within 15 minutes. In the end, over 200 rescue crews from Minneapolis-St.Paul and the surrounding suburbs aided with the rescue efforts. I was also impressed and touched by the stories of victims turned heroes. So many people fell, figured out they were ok, and then went on to help those who couldn't help themselves. This is the most touching photo I've seen yet.



Keep the Twin Cities in your thoughts.