back up north

oh man- we are heading up north!  last year miranda and levi invited us to go with them up to the upper peninsula of michigan for a long weekend.  it was so much fun in grand marais that we made plans to do it again this year!  but this time we actually invited a bunch more people and planned for a full week up there.  diana and i had been waiting for the vacation for months!  in preparation we went down to south bend and dropped off ledger with grandma and grandpa (it was hard to tell who was more excited about spending the week together: ledger or grandma!)
miranda and levi came to get us super early to get a head start on the week of fun!  levi drove with the girls and i drove barbara's car.  that way the three girls could sleep a little while longer (and i got some good podcast listing in too, so i didnt mind the drive alone in the other car).  we made our way up to grand rapids where we met up with aaron and nicole and continued on our way.  about half way up to mackinaw city we were joined by lissa as well- finally the whole gang was convened!  we took a break at mackinaw city and grabbed a delicious lunch at the dixie saloon.  we spend the meal catching up and talking about all the exciting things we had planned for the week, you know, exciting things like sleeping in...  well, thats exciting to us at least!
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summer starts at the pines

its the start of summer with memorial day here, and that means we are heading out to sandy pines!  my parents had their annual memorial day grill out at their place and invited the whole gang.  its always nice to catch up with everyone after the long winter, see how much the kids have grown, and compare how much hair we've lost (i didn't win this year, but came in a pretty close second...)
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ledger rules

my wife made this fantastic list of rules for ledger.   it has been really helpful- now, instead of telling him over and over again, we just have to ask him about the rules and he realizes that he is misbehaving.  well done, diana- now that's good parenting!

a cheesy afternoon

diana had a couple appointments in town, so ledger and i took the afternoon and had a little fun- we headed over for a special afternoon at chuck e cheese!  we had been there once before for his birthday, but this time it was just the two of us to play the games and have a blast.  well, it worked- ledge loved it and got so into the different games and rides!
its always nice to get an opportunity to do something different and a little special with him.
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blue merc

one of ledger's favorite new shows right now is 'miles from tomorrowland'.  its a new show on disney jr. and it features his favorite character: merc, the robot ostrich.  he is constantly pretending to merc, running around making bird sounds and telling us he his a robot.  well, here's the thing, the character of merc is blue.  ledger thought it would be a great idea to color himself blue, you know, to make it more realistic...  he grabbed a blue marker and started to color his arm blue.  when diana and i caught him he knew he had done something wrong.  we figured we would play it up a bit and told him that the marker doesn't come off.  (is this mean? maybe, but we wanted him to realize that he shouldn't be coloring himself)  he was mortified that his arm would stay blue forever!  finally after about a half hour we told him that we might be able to wash it off if we tried really hard...  it came off very easily of course- we aren't dumb enough to leave permanent markers around a child- it was a washable marker the whole time!  he was so relieved that he promised never to do it again!  parenting mission accomplished, i'd say.

clean teeth

now that we are up in grand rapids, we needed to find ledger a new dentist.  we found a great one that specializes in children.  he was a little unsure when we told him he was going to the dentist, but was excited to check it out.
the place was really cool, they had neat fish in the lobby and lots of toys for him to check out while we waited.  when we were called back i was able to go along with him and hold his hand if he needed it.  he didnt!  he was so excited to check out all the different tools and things in the dentist's office!  he was, as always, a chatty cathy with all the people in the office, asking about what everything was and what they were going to do with it.  if i remember correctly, i'm pretty sure he even broke out into song at one point...  he was having so much fun and fortunately the dentists were thrilled to have a patient who wasn't scared that they were having a great time laughing along with him too!
i'm sure if it were up to him, ledge wouldn't mind going to the dentist every week...

roof repair

i got a call about our rental and how the roof was really bad and needed to be repaired.  i feared the worst and took some time off of work to try and repair it.  i enlisted the help of diana's dad and his friend todd and the three of us headed down to griffith unsure how bad the damage would be that we would find.
turns out it wasn't so bad!  i was expecting it to be caving in and terrible- i thought you would be able to see the sky from inside the bedroom!  actually, it was just some wet drywall and a leaky point in the roof.  we spent a couple hours replacing the plywood and bracing it, then put on some new shingles and- voila! everything was looking better!  we also did some repair work on the drywall, getting rid of the warped parts and making it look better.  the whole job, which i expected to take a couple days, ended up taking only about 6 hours.  it helped that todd and diana's dad were seasoned vets when it comes to roofing, that's for sure!
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