Ahhhhh Vacation

Ok friends. I'm finally parking it and wrapping up our vaca before it becomes ancient history. There's a lengthy video at the bottom of this post, but if you want a condensed version, read on. I'll do a bullet point highlight of our week of rest and relaxation.

*Wed & Thurs were spent in Chicago(land) area. Out for breakfast, trip to awesome children's museum, visit to the Warps house in the midst of a tornado, visiting with the Riegers and their two dudes, romping around Nanna and Pappa's house, downtown to Millennium Park fountains, lunch with my entire fam, minus Kyle, meeting Ky's better half, Becky, hangin' at Ross and Kira's house, including a fabulous home made meal from my sweet sis-in-law, bonding with our darling nephews.

Emmers and the dude got along just fine.

Psycho lifelong best buds decide outdoors is the best place to be in the midst of a tornado.

The fountain park is THE place to be on a hot Chicago day.

May I introduce Becky. Kyle's favorite person on earth.

Heaven for Nanna and Pappa. Their favorite 3 little men.

Sweet sweet Hudson.

Who gave that kid a squirt gun?

*Friday-Sunday were spent at Mom V's cottage in Holland. Vacation takes on a whole new level at the cottage. Pure relaxation. Dude adored the sandy beach, the uncharacteristically big waves, digging holes, playing with all Grandma's toys, looking at the big boats in Saugatuck, driving Uncle Bruce's pontoon boat, riding in the neighbor's golf cart, etc. etc. etc. It was a wonderful 3 days with Grandma and Great Grandma Jabaay.

This is taken at our favorite rest stop. Dude decided we should look for tigers. Didn't find any.

My two dudes with the famous lighthouse in the backdrop.

This is where we spent 90% of our beach time. Dude wouldn't have it any other way.

We made dude a mermaid. Watching Mommy do it intrigued him enough to cover himself in sand. We were pleasantly shocked.

How cute is this shot?

Dude found a big stick. An awesome source of fun.

Dude sure does love his grandma and great grandma.

*Back to Chicago on Monday morning for one more day of fun at Nanna and Pappa's house. We picnicked at their super cool park, I went to see my friend Missy's new baby girl with childhood friend, Erin, dude swam on the deck in Nanna's little plastic pool, Kyle joined us as we dined on my fave, steak and mushrooms, hiked around Lake Katherine and treated ourselves to Plush Horse ice cream (a childhood hot spot for me). It was one of my favorite vaca days.

Missy with Jasper and baby Elliot.

Scenic Lake Katherine.

What are they doing? They're all spitting and watching the fish eat what they think is food. Yup. That's what they're doing. Each and every one of them.

Plush Horse ice cream. Dude got his own, but walked down the row and licked from every one's cones. Little bugger.

Video below. Enjoy.

My Pappa n' Me

I know, I know. I've been absent. Reason being, we've been 1,000 miles from home. We took our little 3 person clan on an aroplane to Chicago and Michigan for a week. Glad to report that we're home, back to work and day care, safe and sound. And more than happy to have a break from spending 24/7 together. But the 316 photos we took are going to require some major fanny time to organize, edit and put into some sort of viewable format. SO....in the meantime, enjoy some shots of dude and his pappa. They had quite the time those two.

To the Left

We're taking the dude back to the old school rap era with a little ditty that he LOVES dancin' to. I found the second video of the little little man learning how to walk and couldn't resist posting it. It melts my momma heart. Enjoy.

Adults Only BBQ Baby!

I've told you before how kid friendly our neighborhood is. Tons of playmates for the dude, parks, sidewalks for attempting, but not quite figuring out how to ride a Big Wheels, the ever present, especially during nap time, ice cream truck etc. etc....we l-o-v-e living here.

In addition to being kiddo friendly, it's also quite adult friendly. There are some super cool peeps for mom and dad to hang with too. For the first time since we moved in, we dumped kids on sitters and some of us adults played for the night. By "played," I mean engorged ourselves on mouth watering eats and drank adult friendly beverages. Quite a bit of the latter. We hosted and shipped the dude off to Maria and Tim's across the street. Splitting a babysitter...genius. We're definitely going to do that again.

We couldn't fit all of the super cool grown ups from the hood at this little shin dig, but we had a rockin' good time with the ones that came. Thanks for hangin, kid free, friends! We really do have the bestest neighbors on the planet.

We chowed on tequila chicken, unbelievably tasty summer salads and grilled some mean fruit skewers with honey lime sauce, served with Kristin's even meaner chocolate, no flour cake below.

These little Pier 1 finds added some "festive" to the night.

My main squeeze, grilling machine.

My Big Dude on the Dude Ranch

While the dude and I partied with Uncle Kyle, Dadio was playing on a dude ranch. His company owns an unbelievably beautiful and oh so cool ranch out in Wyoming-about 5 hours from us. They were opening for the season and Tim is now in charge of managing all things financial for the ranch. SO....he got the "task" of driving out and spending 5 days with the staff, the horses and the endless amounts of mud that resulted from 3 days of consistent rain. Bummer. He did get to take a lovely horse ride, minus his lovely wife, to a meadow where breakfast was served. I still can't get a mental image of my husband on a horse in a meadow, but he swears it did indeed happen. He hiked a bit, ate quite well and slept in peace and utter silence (the part I was most jealous about). The diesel trucks on each side of our house and a three year old needing to use the facilities in the middle of the night don't provide much in the area of utter silence.

Dude and I can't wait to go hang with Dad on the ranch next year. Here are some shots of Dad's 5 days away from house and home.

Views driving to Wyoming.

The 8 mile dirt/mud road leading to the ranch. Good thing Tim was driving. I would have ended up in that there river.

Hundreds of horses call the A-(bar)A Ranch home.

There's normally an island you can hang out on where the statue is. Not so much that weekend.

Tim's hummingbird friend outside his cabin.

Proof that he was on a horse. A white one apparently.

This is the entrance to the cattle ranch, about 20 miles outside the dude ranch. He made a quick stop there too. Lots'a cattle and a boat load of hay.

Ky Time

Hubbie leaves for 6 days on business = crabby wifey. Enter Uncle Kyle. He has saved the day folks! Tim finally got his dream of leaving house and home for business purposes. He hasn't been able to travel thus far in his career, so this was a good thing for my man. He's establishing some roots at his company's dude ranch in Wyoming at the moment. Pretty sweet stuff, or so he says during the 4 minutes I get to talk to him each day.

Uncle Ky decided to fly out to keep us company during this time of no husband and father, so we've been keeping busy and laughing a whole lot. Dude adores his Uncle Kyle and tells everyone he sees that Uncle Kyle is here. We roamed the zoo on Friday, were treated to Applebees Happy Hour by Oma and Opa, went to another successful swimming lesson, toured Coors Brewery (quickly as dude kept asking where the toys were), napped, bummed around the house, went to yet another Happy hour at PF Changs, rented movies, swam at the rec center, visited with Aunt Helene and cousins Megan and Susan from Grand Rapids, etc, etc. We've been keeping plenty busy. Busy enough to keep my mind off being a single mom fo sho!

Uncle Ky is our hero for the week - especially since he's tackling the dude on his own while this Mama goes to work tomorrow. Thanks for keeping us company brother. Especially since it meant leaving your precious love for 4 days! Thanks for sharing Becky:)

If you know Kyle, you know that he couldn't pass up an opportunity to clothe his nephew in Black Hawks gear. They were quite the pair walkin' around the zoo.

Baboons. They're funny, I guess. Not quite sure what I'm laughing at. Dude walked into a glass door, smashed his nose and cried, which was pretty funny, but he doesn't appear upset in this shot.

Seriously, no matter how old you are, this is just amazing.

Dude has a perma-smile on his little face the ENTIRE time we were hangin' at the pool.