No Power

Well, we survived a weekend without power :)... FR night a big thunderstorm came across Michigan and left 400000 homes without power including us and we just got it back a couple of hrs ago (SUN night) which was ok. Of course our freezer stuff wasn't frozen anymore but luckily we didn't have that much left in there so we basically BBQ every night something else that needed to go so it worked out just fine. The kids were a little confused and therefore super excited when today all the lights went on again and tried out every switch. Appreciating the little things ;). The weather was luckily cooling a lot down so the very hot and humid FR night turned into a very nice and acceptable weekend and our windows were open all day long and the TV off all day long it was wonderful :). Husband wasn't as happy but he has his AC back and TV as well now so all is good. 

SAT we went to the Three Cedars Farm and showed Jenny our Fall Fun early :) 

First week of school

It's FRIIIIIDAY :), yeah... well if you think we have a weekend... you're wrong! *lol*... Jenny has to go to practice tomorrow morning 8am - which is not bad but she doesn't even get to sleep in on the weekend :(. However we've almost survived the first week of school. It has been very busy and if we're lucky we have Jenny with us for family dinners but this week it maybe happened once or twice so far :(. Such a bummer but I get to eat breakfast with her and since she has to leave the house at 650am and the kids don't wake up until 730 or 8 if I'm lucky I have some time to get house work or work done ;) or blogging like now :)... but I hear already one munchkin tossing and turning in bed so I better be quick here.

WED we met with Kimberly at the playground for a last play date because her schedule will be so busy with her work and Kaitlyn's preschool that we probably won't be able to meet in the mornings anymore during school :(... 

Me sitting down chilling on the couch for one little moment until the first one is up...

Yesterday we went to a spontaneous lunch at Cheesecake Factory with Adelheid who just came back from her trip to Germany. I got to get my mac fixed since when they replaced my screen they kind of left one screw weird and it bugged me a lot so they fixed it :). Now it's all smooth again. And now the kids start to be hooked on Apple too... was hard to get them out of the store!!!

Henry is having a conversation with the other kids. They want his cars which he won't share therefore he's giving them his stinky look! *lol*

'Momma, take a picture of me'

Jenny's First Day of High School

The day has arrived... Jenny had to start school on TUE Sep 2nd and it was a bitter sweet moment for me :(. It's so cool that she gets to go to high school and meet students her age but now we get to spend so little time with her only. 

High School seems to be a really good experience so far and she also is on the swim team which requires a lot of practice! I've never seen this amount of practice for a teenager before!!! I have to say this is CRAZY... but as long as she enjoys it I'm totally fine with it. Apparently they're getting very competitive over here and now the coach wants to see everybody at the SAT training and they even added a 5:30am training on Monday as well. I'll be sleep-driving her to school *lol* just kidding. I actually thought about adding some workout in myself once I get back home I can take advantage of the 'me-time' and workout while everybody is still sleeping since I'm up anyway :). So actually a win win situation. I'm super excited for her and hope that we get to spend also some family time with her as well. I think she feels very comfortable here and the kids adore her a lot... she's quickly grown into a our family. For me it is funny to see how the dynamic changed and now I'm trying to give everybody same amount of attention which is a lot harder to juggle with 3 and a husband but I'm getting there and enjoy it a lot :).

The very great thing is that I can double check and make sure she gets on that bus since I can 'see' it from our drive way :).

5th Anniversary & Baltimore

Time flies when you're having fun... ;)

We celebrated our 5th Anniversary on Aug 27th and it's amazing how fast time flew by and how many memories we've made together! Funny enough we did the same exact trip that we did 5 years ago and we hit the road loaded up to Baltimore the next day to spend some time with family before school starts. Jenny's school schedule won't allow us to do any spontaneous trips to baltimore until Thanksgiving weekend so we figured we need to go now :) and we did. We had an amazing time. I stayed with the kids at Paula's place and Frank stayed at his parents home so he can spend more quality time with his parents especially with his dad. I don't know if I ever mentioned it on here but he has bladder cancer and starts treatment of chemo / radiation next week hopefully (It got delayed due to an infection 2 weeks ago). 

After our arrival on THU we headed to Downtown Baltimore and Fort McHenry:

On SAT Paula's kids had a surprise Birthday Party planned for Paula's 60th Birthday which was really cool. She was super excited and surprised to see everybody and enjoyed this wonderful time with friends and family. The house was packed... it was a joy. You can't tell really good but she's decorated with glasses showing '60' :)

After the party we took the family out for duckpin bowling. I thought it was something new but it's the old known 'kegeln' *lol*... the kids had a BLAST. Henry was so excited it was a joy to watch

Henry's happy dance, can you tell?

Henry handed us all the duckpins and he was not ever able to just sit and chill for a moment behind the line *lol*

On Sunday we met up with Frank's younger brother Jay and family. We drove down to Annapolis to show Jenny this beautiful city (one of my favorite ones) and then headed further south to Solomons Island and meet the rest of the gang. We visited the Calvert Marine Museum which the kids really liked a lot. This is a skeleton of a shark! Really weird and HUGE!

My sister in law Nancy

Then we took a boat-ride which was soooo beautiful. It was soooo hot and humid... crazy! But when the boat finally moved it was ok to hang out in the heat.

My little man :)

We had to give Jenny some crabs for dinner so we went to a place and heard that they ran out of crabs!!!!! oh no... so we packed everybody up again and went to another place 25 min away and we succeeded... we got crabs :)... look how hungry everybody is (and tired)

Crabs arrived :). We 'prepared' Jenny already a little bit by showing her the other tables where they've eaten crabs already with all the mess leftover etc. the presentation was still nice and neat but then we started taking them apart and Jenny did very well. Christina, Frank and Jay taught her how to pick them and she liked them a lot. We had a really great time and we're so glad we got to see as many family members as we could ;).