Our new lake house

Congratulations to my cousin Rachel and her husband Justin on the birth of their son, Sam!



I hadn't wanted to mention anything in the blog about this until things were final, but recently we purchased a vacation home on a lake in Michigan! We've officially owned it for a little over a week now, and Andy and I spent last weekend up there doing a bunch of work while Grandma and Grandpa Nold watched Jack. Our friends Don, Emma, Dave, Megan, and baby Leah also spent a night there and helped christen the house.

The house is on Fisher Lake in Three Rivers, Michigan, which is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Chicago. The house was built, and largely decorated, in the 1970's. So there's a ton of fabulous wood paneling and some awesome shag carpet. But decoration aside, it's a great space, and just what we were looking for in a lake house. It's also a very unique space and has a lot of interesting and quirky features.

The picture up top is the view from our back porch, and at the end of the dock is our boat! We don't have any waterskis or wakeboards yet, but we look forward to spending time just being out on the water and enjoying our weekends. All of us (Jack and Louie included) will be leaving tomorrow afternoon to go up there for a nice long holiday weekend.

Okay, now for a brief tour of the house. Here's the view when you walk in the front door. As you can see, the house is very long and narrow.


After going down the stairs at the end of the hallway, you enter the kitchen and living room area. Here's the living room (and Dave & Don).


Here's Emma, Megan, and the kitchen.


Another view of the kitchen.


The upstairs hallway.


One of the upstairs bedrooms.


The back porch, which is screened in.


I also wanted to include some pictures of the unique components and fixtures in the house. Here's what the sinks in the bathrooms look like. The sinks also have a hidden shelf for soap along the back of the basins, which you can't see unless you look in the mirror at the reflection.


The humongous fireplace. You can actually bake bread in the little cubby on the left. When the chimney sweep came, he told Andy an interesting story about the fireplace. The orginal owner, who had the house built, had seen a fireplace like this somewhere and liked it so much he decided he had to have it in his house. So he found the architect and flew him out from the East Coast just so he could make the fireplace.


You may have caught a glimpse in the hallway pictures of all the wall fixtures. None are exactly the same. Here's a close up of one of them.


The interesting chandelier in the dining room.


And finally, the lovely orangey shag carpet in one of the bedrooms.


I realized after we got home that I never took a picture of the outside of the house, so I'll try to do that this weekend. It's also very interesting-looking. All you can see from the road is the garage, which looks like a huge barn.

I probably won't be posting any more entries until we get back from Michigan, so happy early 4th of July to everyone!

First trip to the zoo

Jack had a great time with me and Grandma Nold at the zoo on Friday! He was very interested in watching the animals, and he behaved exceptionally well--especially considering he napped very little. We took him to the petting zoo, and at first he happily petted a goat. Unfortunately, one of the goats decided that the bottom of Jack's shoe was a great place to scratch his head. Jack got a little freaked out when the goat kept pushing its head against Jack's foot, so after that Jack wasn't willing to touch any more animals.



Jack still loves to do "so big."


Here's a polar bear getting some relief from the heat in his pool.


Jack loved the monkey house, where this picture was taken. Though I'm not sure what fascinated him more--the monkeys, or the big skylights and waterfalls.


An oranguatan


Some gorillas snuggled up together taking a nap.



And finally, this was Jack within about five minutes of leaving the zoo. As per his usual, the monkey blanket is in his mouth.

So, all in all, a very successful first trip to the zoo! Maybe on our next trip, Jack will have enough stamina to see all the animal exhibits. Between the heat and Jack's being tired, we only saw about half the park this time.

Bed head

Jack woke up with an awesome case of bedhead this morning. I'll have to try and tame it before we leave today....to go to the zoo!! My company is having a family day at the Brookfield Zoo, so Grandma Nold and I will take Jack to the zoo for the first time. I've actually never been to the Brookfield Zoo either. We'll take lots of pictures! Hopefully the heat won't be unbearable.

I was startled this morning to turn on the news and see that Michael Jackson died. Even though he was definitely a strange person, it's sad to think that a man whose music and music videos were such a big part of my childhood is gone.

Happy Fathers' Day!

We had a very nice Fathers' Day! We went to visit Grandma and Grandpa Nold and ate brunch at the country club, where we took these pictures. The food was good, though all we could convince Jack to eat was some grapes, pineapple, and the crackers we had brought with us. He's always been a somewhat picky eater, but the last couple weeks have been really bad. Jack keeps refusing many of the foods he used to like, and there are only a few select things he'll predictably eat. As a pediatric dietitian, I know this behavior is a normal phase, but it's really aggrevating! Now I have a better appreciation of the frustration my clients go through.


Here are a couple pictures from Fathers' Day last year. What a difference a year makes!

Jackie Redcheeks

We discovered today that Jack's cheeks turn tomato-red when he's exposed to hot temperatures outside. The picture above was taken after we came home and he had a chance to cool down, so there's much less redness. It's weird because I don't even think he was that hot when we were outside; we were in the shade much of the time, and his skin didn't feel too warm.

Andy and I had taken Jack and Louie to the "Taste of Randolph," a street festival in our neighborhood. It was pretty warm outside (high 80's), but nothing too extreme. We'd only been outside for about 15 minutes when I noticed Jack's cheeks. We stayed at the festival just long enough to grab some food--Jack enjoyed some pizza and chocolate-covered banana.

Louie was also pretty wimpy in the heat. If he would have just drank some water while we were at the festival, I think he would have been fine. But for some reason, our dog who will eat trash and sticks, is extremely picky about the water he drinks. Several of the vendors at the festival had doggie water bowls out, but Lou turned his nose up at all of them. So by the time we headed home, he was a panting mess. We must have been a sight as we walked, what with Jack's flourescent cheeks and Lou lagging behind us with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. Anyone who looked at us must have thought we'd been dragging them around in the heat for hours.

Here's a couple other pictures from this afternoon. Jack likes to climb on Daddy's bosu ball.


He's also a big fan of Lou's dog bed.


And finally, a little plumber's crack to round things out.

Taking steps

Here's a clip of Jack taking a couple steps! We'll have to work on his endurance, but I'm sure before we know it, he'll be running around driving us crazy.

Congratulations to our cousin Michelle and her husband Scott on the birth of their first child Monday night!!! Welcome to Parker Robert Frost. We look forward to introducing Jack to his new cousin soon.

Jack's stay with Grandma and Grandpa

Hey there, this is Jack. These are some pictures from last week when Mom and Dad abandoned me so they could go play in Costa Rica. But even though I missed them, I had a great time with my Grandma and Grandpa Nold. They're a lot of fun and let me do all sorts of exciting things.

Grandma gave me have some shelves in the TV cabinet so I could practice stacking my toys.


I also got some more practice standing, but I kept my promise to Mom and didn't take my first steps while she was gone.


It didn't take me long to figure out how to sucker Grandma into giving me treats.


I love Grandma and Grandpa's refrigerator with all its cool magnets.


I also got to ride on the horse that Grandma keeps at their house for me.


I was a big help to both Grandma and Grandpa too. Here I was giving Grandpa some guidance as he was working. I also suckered him into giving me some of his banana.


I gave Grandma a hand in emptying the dishwasher too.



Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for taking such good care of me and Louie!

This is Erin, and I just wanted to add a note that Wednesday night, Jack took a tentative step by himself for the first time! He surprised me, so I didn't have the camera with me. He's been reluctant to take any more steps since then, but we'll work this weekend to see if we can coax some more out of him--and hopefully record them!

We're back!

Andy and I have such fair skin we had to cover up with mud instead of sunscreen so we didn't get burned.

Just kidding; well, sort of. The equatorial sun was pretty intense. That picture was taken when we went on an excursion that included coating ourselves with volcanic mud and then taking a dip in several hot springs.

Andy and I returned from Costa Rica early Sunday morning. Unfortunately due to a storm in Miami, our connecting flight was delayed for several hours so we didn't get home until 2 am. Ugh. But other than that, we had a great vacation. We stayed in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica, which is on their west coast. Our resort was specifically located in the Gulf of Papagayo, which is fairly far north along the coast, near Nicaragua.

Here's the view from the hotel lobby. Our room was in one of the red-roofed buildings on the far left. You can see the Gulf of Papagayo in the background.


The view north from the hotel lobby.


A beautiful ocean sunset--I took this standing on the terrace of our room.


The same day we took our mud "bath," we took a bus up to the top of a mountain and then zip-lined our way down. I think there were 11 stations that we went through along the way down. The longest stretch of cable between stations was about 400 meters. We had a lot of fun!

Me

Andy


After the zip-lining, we cooled down on a waterslide, and then we went horseback riding. It felt great to get back on a horse. When I was younger, we owned a horse for several years, but before this I hadn't ridden since high school. This is the horse Andy rode--he actually looks like our old horse, Dan.


Here's a couple pictures of one of the local creatures, a coati. Several coatis roamed around the resort regularly, looking for food. They're very similar to racoons. The coati in these pictures was actually on our room's terrace. Andy threw her some grapes so she would stay long enough for us to get some pictures. She actually stayed on our terrace for several minutes after we had finished and shut the door. She sat there expectantaly, waiting for us to bring her more food.



This was a howler monkey we saw while zip-lining. I thought the noise they made sounded more like barking versus howling.


This picture was taken on our next-to-last night in Costa Rica. Andy and I went with some people we'd met from the resort out to Coco, a nearby town, for shopping and dinner. Unfortunately the day before we went, a truck had driven into some power lines and knocked out the town's electricity. When we were in the shops, we got followed around by people holding lamps so we could see. Of course, it was also brutally hot without any air conditioning. It was fun watching the sweat drip off us into our food while we ate dinner. Luckily, while we were still eating, the power came back on.



We had a terrific vacation, but it's good to be back home too. It was very tough being away from Jack for a whole week, so it was wonderful to finally be able to hold him again yesterday. Thanks so much to Grandma and Grandpa Nold for watching Jack and Louie for us while we were gone! Jack coped irritatingly well without us, and he hardly cried at all while we were gone. Grandma and Grandpa helped us with the separation by emailing pictures of Jack occasionally. I'll post some of those on the next blog.

I'd highly recommend Costa Rica to anyone. It was beautiful, the people were so friendly, and there were a lot of fun and unique things to do. Pura vida!