Kylie our photographer.
Recently Kylie has started to use our small camera to take random pictures. Mainly her pictures are of herself or her toys. But sometimes she captures some really cute ones. Here are a few of our favs.

We spent a wonderful weekend visiting Granny or GG as the kids call her (short for great-grandmother). Granny is doing pretty good for an 87 year old, still living her in own home. And she can beat anyone in Scrabble!

No trip in the summer is complete without picking raspberries from GG's patch. These berries have been filling bellies for at least 40 years. We picked in the mornings and evenings each day. Nothing says summer like fresh raspberries on your Cheerios!

We also went to Copper Harbor, which is the furthermost northern point in Michigan. It's a cute little town with shops and a few restaurants. Speaking of restaurants, we made sure to stop at Toni's for pasties. They were sooo good, wish they were available in Indiana. While in Copper harbor, Matthew found some bear slippers that he couldn't live without. He calls them his "bear feet". It's pretty sweet.



We also stopped at Eagle Harbor Lighthouse. We've visited this lighthouse each year for 3 years in a row. But the kids love to climb it and there really isn't much else in the area to do.


Looking up the spiral staircase.No one goes to bed without a helping of ice cream and fresh raspberries.

We had a really nice trip. I hope we're able to go up there for many more summers.

Back from the UP. Other wise known as a beautiful area of the country to visit but probably not to live. Kids did great in the car considering it takes 4 hours to get to my parents house and an additional 8 hours to get to Granny's house in the UP. Not much to look at either, various stores selling cheese and beer in Wisconsin, road kill and lakes. But once you come over that hill and see the Quincy Mine on the top of Hancock Hill, your heart just soars. Mainly because you know you're almost there but also because it really is a beautiful place.

This picture doesn't do it justice but it gives you an idea.
Granny (85 years old) has been living in Hancock, MI for 50 years or something. My grandfather worked at the above mentioned mine, mining copper. That area of the country is known as the Copper Country - during it's heyday it was the largest copper supplier in the world. There is still millions of dollars of copper in the ground but it's too expensive to mine it any longer. So unfortunately, when the mines shut down, so did a lot of the towns. The area now mainly survives on small businesses and tourism. Lots of Harley's in the summer and snowmobiles in the winter. They average over 300 inches of snow a year so it's a snowmobile r's paradise. Too bad it takes so darn long to get there.

Raising 'em right.

I'm raising the kids to enjoy classical music. In addition to knowing the difference between Mozart and Vivaldi, Kylie plays a mean air guitar to the opening lines of "Sweet Child of Mine" by GNR. And Matthew says "Aie, aie, aie" just as well as Ozzy in "Crazy Train".

I'm going for a well-rounded childhood experience.

Eleven. That's how many water bottles - empty, 1/2 empty and full - that I found in my car when I cleaned it out today. That's not counting the new stainless steel bottle that Kylie got for me at the Hendricks County Fair's expo hall.
Eleven. Seriously?!

More detailed info on the kids, since that's what most people care about!

Kylie is all girl. Loves princesses and baby dolls. Her favorite music right now is Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus. I swear she listens to "You Belong With Me" 20 times a day, enough that Matthew knows all the words as well. She's currently working on her own dance to it. She's working on riding her bike without training wheels but is scared to fall so we don't get too far. Kylie has learned to play chess and checkers this summer. She's not bad at either. Her favorite chess piece is the rook because she never has to be reminded about how it can move. And she thinks the king is a waste since he can only move one square at a time vs. the queen who can move however many she wants. Kindergarten starts in just 3 weeks. She's ready for it, excited about riding a bus and meeting new friends. I'm excited for her but sad as well - she'll be gone 5 days, every week now. A school girl, how did that happen?

Kylie has been very helpful while I've been on the mend with my stress fractures. She'll run up and down the stairs for me and even made dinner for us one night last week. It was so sweet, I had be laying down while Matthew was napping. I came downstairs and saw plates on the table with bread on them. I asked her about and she said that she made dinner so I could rest my stress fracture. She had smeared peanut butter on the bread (couldn't get the jelly jar open), put carrots on our plates and even poured herself and Matthew some milk. She had a bottle of water at my place and a cold beer(!!) at Brett's place as well as the only red tomato she could find on our plant (she even washed it first). The whole event brought tears to my eyes. I happily ate my sandwich and thanked her for making dinner. Once Brett got home from running, he ate his as well (he also ate some leftovers after she went to bed since he was pretty hungry). Kylie has such a caring heart, I hope she doesn't lose that as she grows up.


Matthew. Now, he's a little bugger. He has the appearance of being a sweet, innocent little boy. And for the most part, he is. You can get lost looking into his deep brown eyes and his laugh makes my heart melt. But he can go from sweetheart to stubborn in an instant. You can not make him do anything, which is interesting to see play out when Brett and him butt heads. Which happens a lot. He loves pretty ladies. He actually informed our waitress at Texas Roadhouse that he was potty training, just blurted it out to her while she was taking drink orders. I asked him why he told her that "because she's pretty" was his answer. He's a smart cookie as well, learns so much from Kylie. He still talks like a young kid so some words aren't understandable but then he can bust out Tattoone, General Grevious, Darth Sidious and Princess Amadala (all from Star Wars) . How he knows to say these words but can't say hamburger is beyond me. He'll be going to preschool 2 days a week this fall.

Guess I gotta run, Kylie needs help filling up the pool in the backyard....

Wow, nearly 2 years since I've posted. I'm taking a cue from my friend, Milissa, who is really good at keeping her blog up. We'll see how long it lasts........

Ok, lets get you updated on our family.

Brett changed jobs last October and likes his new position. Hard to leave a job that he had been at for 8 years but it was time to go. He's busy breaking his new co-workers in, they are starting to get his sense of humor.

Kylie is starting kindergarten in less then a month. We went school supplies shopping yesterday - she needed 8 jumbo glue sticks, washable markers and paper plates, amongst other things. She's pretty darn excited, me - not so much.





Matthew is 3 now. He's an official big boy now after potty training in June. Amazing how much easier it was to do with him then with Kylie. She fought it for weeks and we had many battles about it. But Matthew pretty much caught on right away and has been doing very well. So nice to not have diapers any longer! Matthew's main interests right now are pirates and Star Wars. He doesn't have a favorite Star Wars character, he loves them all from Yoda to Obi Wan to Darth Vader. We have light saber and sword battles on a regular basis.









My summer hasn't been what I expected. I started training for the Mini Marathon in January. For those not familiar with this race, it's the largest 1/2 marathon (13.1 miles) in the world and is a big deal in Indianapolis. Training went well and I actually started to love to run. Brett and I would train together on weekends and enjoyed having that time on our own, even when we were too winded to talk! Well, May 2nd came along and we ran our race. Everything went perfectly, I finished with a really strong time of 1:49:45, a 8:23 per mile pace. About mile 10, I noticed a sharp pain in my hip, felt like a toothpick breaking. Nothing for me to stop for but enough that by the end of the race, I was hobbling around in pain. Chalked it up to sore muscles. Brett and I felt so strong after the race that we signed up for another half marathon in August and a full marathon (26.2 miles) in Akron, Ohio at the end of September. Well, the pain didn't go away, running was extremely painful and I knew something was wrong. Two doctors, 5 x-rays, numerous chiropractic visits, and an MRI later - I have 2 stress fractures. Ugh. My sports MD put me on rest for 3 months. So no running until at least September. But Brett, the good man that he is, is still training for the marathon and has promised to run one with me once I'm healed up. What a man. Love him!
I did have a follow-up with the dr last week and things are healing well. He even gave me the go-ahead to run a 10K (6.2 miles)at Disney World in October (we'll be in FL for the U2 concert that weekend anyways, nice for that to work out for me, huh?) So I'm looking forward to that.


Kids have been busy with two VBS's, one last week, one this week. Their friends, 2 sisters who are their same ages, are at VBS with them so they have friends already there. Always helps to have a friendly face in a new place.

Ok, so I'm off to play princesses with my princess. Promise to be back soon!