KC visit

A short-but-sweet visit to KC over Memorial Day weekend to get all the cousins together!!

 V and Max were making a "bunny nest."

 At a sweet new little aquarium with O.

 Popping up inside the bubble! 

 Max fills the space!

 All the cousins!

So sweet!  I have virtually no photos of the grownups.  Ha ha!  But it was so great to hang out with my siblings.  I do wish we lived closer together. 

On another note, I ran my Dam to Dam 20K race yesterday.  It was a beautiful morning, and despite the fact that I woke up at 3am (buses to start began at 5am) I felt great!  I was happy with my time, which included some time waiting in line for a Port-a-Potty.  I was totally spent afterwards, but I am proud to have accomplished it just in time for turning 43!  Woot!

More summer fun...

I voyaged to KC with the kids and had a lovely couple days before I had to come back to teach in G-town. The kids stayed there with Grandma and Grandpa, and though we had a tough good-bye, I know they'll be having loads of fun!! Much more than if they were here while I teach and clean the house! We already had some fun with cousin O:

They have the same hair!

Running in the sprinkler helps ease the onus of the ridiculous heat wave.

The fountain at Crown Center is such a great place for photo ops! And a great place to keep cool!

Summer!

Wow, I'm bad at posting! Sorry! Summer has begun, and as usual it is busier than I expected. I am teaching quite a bit. Mark is busy with his 3.5 summer students. M3 participated in a swim camp with the college swimming coach. She had a great time and learned a lot, and next year she wants to spend the night in the dorms! Eeeek! M & M both did a naturalist camp at our local "lake" and really loved identifying the plants and animals and tromping around in the mud.

Of course, we are having lots of time to play with friends on the deck:
...and for visitors (we're looking forward to more visitors this summer!!):
We are the pigtail trio (Mon, cousin O, and M3)!! (Apparently some of us are succumbing to the humidity worse than others. Ew.)

CA part I

We had such a fabulous time in Cali! In a few parts, I'll post the highlights:

Highlight #1: seeing cousin V, Uncle Nick, and Aunt Lauren of course!
#2: We met up with Mark's cousin and his family at Paradise Cove beach in Malibu. The water was FUH-REEZING!!! The kids played until they turned blue and shook uncontrollably. I preferred my cold temperatures for the beer I was drinking.
#3: Seaweed!
#4: La Brea Tar Pits, where we found a Grinnell eagle (who knew?! um, not me) in the Page Museum.
Poor mammoth. It was supposed to be the mom, of course. How very Disney.

I don't know why...

...I love this photo so much. I just do! M3, cousin V, and M4 in Cali.

Talent in the family

I always look forward to summer laziness...and then summer always ends up being busy! Mostly because we take time to visit people or they take time to visit us. And that is the best kind of busy-ness, but it doesn't lend itself to spending time on the computer (not such a bad thing, in my case!!). So herewith, I will take a few days to try to get up-to-date with some of our summer highlights.

Up first, our first trip to Music in the Park all summer was to see cousin Aaron play!! How cool is that? He played acoustic guitar in a an Irish (Scottish?) music trio. It was possibly the first rain-free, truly beautiful Thursday night we've had, so it was extra special to be able to sit with Gina and Mitch and listen to Aaron. The kids had fun running amok with their friends, and then we all went to La Cabana for dinner. We rode the bikes home after dark trying not to get fireflies in our teeth.
Sadly, I didn't get a picture of Aaron playing because he was behind the music stand. I didn't want to make him nervous by stalking around the gazebo trying to get a good shot!

Ring around the rosy!
M4's hair's a-flyin'!!

Thanksgiving

November was a rough month, so it was lovely to end it on a happy note: spending time with my whole family in KC. Thanksgiving dinner was awesome. Really, what's not to love about Thanksgiving? No gift pressure, just good food and hangin' with the ones you love (OK, sometimes there is turkey pressure involved). Friday I scratched the yoga itch with a great class at The Yoga Gallery. It's so fun to have people to go to class with! And a little post-yoga coffee klatch? Sigh...I wish we could do that regularly, girls! Jenn and I have do our coffee klatches (yay!), but they aren't generally after a juicy yoga class that neither of us had to teach! We also took the kids to see Fantastic Mr. Fox (a Wes Anderson movie for kids?! Suh-weet!).

We took advantage of the kick-a** 70 degree weather on Saturday to take some family pictures. And they came out pretty well!! Not too many closed eyes! (Whoops, I guess Mark's eyes are closed in this one...but you can't really tell, can you?)
Carmelle double-fisting it. Party on, Carmelle!
All four cousins. Their personalities are so evident already. Four amazing little people.
I'm thankful every day for these four and for the rest of my family. I am so very lucky.

July fun!!

Sorry it's been so long since I posted, but with four sets of visitors since July 4, it's been crazy around here! And a TON of fun! Not to mention my trip to Madison tacked on the end, which was also a blast. With my dad serving as SAG wagon/bike tech extraordinaire, some of us rode a few miles along the RAGBRAI route this past week:

My tandem riding partner, M3. She was a powerhouse!! It's nice to have two people to pedal up those hills!
M3, Noelle and Nick...M3 pedaled 18 of the 33 miles we did this day.
Lovely baby V...she's not too photogenic or anything... It was so fun to have her around! And it reminded me of how exhausting a mobile baby is!! OMG, Nick and Lauren can't be farther than a foot from her or she will find the most dangerous object in the room. And eat it.

I promise I will post more this week before we leave for our camping trip. As soon as we get back from that, it will be time for school to start...I can't really believe the summer is almost over! NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

KC visit

We had a mini St. Angelo family reunion last weekend. Too short for us Iowans as we only got to stay about 36 hours! But we had such fun hanging with the new cousins, V and O, and seeing everyone. I didn't get any pics of O, though! What's up with that? Next time. Also I was treated to a lovely early 40th birthday party! Thanks everyone!M3, M4, and V

Making her laugh.

Fun at the playground.

Mmmm...this spatula tastes great!

New baby!

Carmelle and Matt had a baby girl early this morning! Yay!

Pics from Christmastime

We have a picture somewhere of my dad with M4 in almost exactly the same position as this: A pretty cute pic of this trio:

M4 and some new Playmobile dinosaurs that like to eat Wampas:

M3 enjoying her big present (of course, I'm already worrying about her damaging her hearing. Thanks, Santa!!):

Said Wampa and a happy boy:

Steph won!

She won the Miami Unscene photo contest, so she gets to go to LA and compete with the other finalists (all men...ahem). Good luck in LA, Steph!

Vote for Steph...

My cousin Stephanie Stalnaker is a finalist in a photo contest in Miami. Please vote for her to win: http://www.944.com/rsvp/unscene/index.phpx!

If she wins, she will move up to the national level of competition! I would post one of her pictures, but right now her site is overloading my ancient (in computer years) CPU. You can go look at her amazing pics yourself: http://stephaniestalnaker.com/.

Go Steph!

P.S. Your photos are making me painfully envious of your home climate.