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This has certainly been a busy summer for us! It seems like we've been gone on vacation more than we've been home!

A few weeks ago the kids and I (Handyman had to do some repairs on the house, and I wasn't about to change his mind) drove the 6+ hours to my Uncle Paul and Aunt Sue's home in Michigan.
It's always a treat to visit them. It was especially fun this time because so many of my family members were also there. Oma and Opa came up with my Mum.
My cousin Andrea was there because she had some sort of doctoring business/stuff to do in Ann Arbor. She also had her son Lucas with her.

My kids and her little boy got along great. There was no awkwardness or formality between them. We'll just leave it at that.
Uncle Paul has a motorcycle that is the same age as me, and he takes the kids on rides back to his koi pond. I thought Miss Boo would be too scared to go with him, but I was wrong. That little thing has the courage of a bull elephant packed into a body the size of a chihuahua.
There was lots of book reading, complete with illustrations from Opa. (Family members will get the inside joke here. For the rest of you, be thankful you can remain ignorant!)

We even went on an excursion with two adults and four kids!

Let's just say it was an "experience".
This is my Aunt Sue. Isn't she gorgeous? She's Hungarian, not French, but she does have a lot of je ne sais quoi. (I think she needed all of it after we were gone. After the chaos of that week, even the hostas had developed a nervous twitch.)
Gabe had a blast. In between trying to fall into the fish pond and chasing the cat, he managed to find time to smile at the camera.

Lots of snuggles . . . (Is that water or vodka in the glass?)
Lots of fishing . . .
Lots of charming the pants off of Uncle Gary . . .
It was my Aunt's birthday a few days before we got there, so I knitted her a pair of socks with a skein of hand dyed with Kool-aid alpaca/merino yarn. It was sooooo soft, and I had enough left over to knit a pair of socks for Breanna, too! (Of course, when I took this picture I'd only completed one sock, so that's why there are three socks instead of four).

My Opa has a unique sense of fashion. He decided Miss Boo's tutu would look infinitely preferable as a chapeau.


I snapped this picture the night before we left. I think everyone was a bit shell-shocked after all the excitement. After all, four toddlers can create tornado force energy in the space of ten minutes, and we were there all weekend.
Heh, we weren't in Kansas anymore, that's for sure!