July 2012

IMG_4047, a photo by tracyg00 on Flickr.

Yep, that's right....it's almost the end of October and here I am finally getting to July! Perhaps I'll get caught up by the end of the year and my New Year's Resolution will be to stay current! Gotta have a goal, right?

On the 3rd of July, the 4 of us went up to Wisconsin and took in the fireworks show at the Grand Geneva resort. The kids always have a good time running around on the hill and it's actually a pretty good show. Here's a pic of me with the kids:



Since the 4th of July was on a Wednesday this year, we ended up getting a nice long vacation. We went to the cottage on Tuesday and stayed until Sunday. We had plenty of lazy days on the lake - here's Darin's big catch:



The kids always love the fireworks:



This guy always has a smile for the camera:



We spent one last day on Nuts Largo before Jenny traded it in for a pontoon boat:



I like this photo of my two favorites at Gage Marine. It just screams "summer" to me:



After our relaxing weekend, I spent an evening at Ravinia with many of the moms of QAS. We saw Natalie Merchant (who was not really at her best - she forgot the words to one of her songs!).



I was lucky enough to have Jenny come along and of course, she arrived in style!



The next day, the Marino kids went to Jenny's house for Wacky Wednesday with all of her high school friends and their kids. It looked like a public pool with the amount of people there!



Gratuitous Megan and Jenny photo:



On a rainy July day, my crazy kids and Francesca got all dressed up in random stuff. I have no idea what they were doing here:



Jake's baseball picnic was in July. He earned his trophy with his mad baseball skills this year.



Megan and Jake both got pretty comfortable in the pool this year. They even started doing tricks with Darin:





Under water is no longer a problem!



Best buds:



Eileen Neis celebrated her 50th birthday with a big neighborhood party in their backyard. Here's the whole crew:



And we ended the month at a Sox Game. It happened to be one of the hottest evenings of the summer and it took us at least an hour to get there in traffic (and our AC in the VW overheated and stopped working on the way there). Not a very pleasant experience, but hey.....the tickets were free. Ugh!