It's official. We own a house in Delaware.

Week + Weekend=I need more sleep

Last week Julie and Oliver came to town. They stayed with us from Monday through Friday, and then on Friday we drove to Pittsburgh for a weekend of more festivities than any 48 hours have ever seen, ever in the world.

As you can see above, both Will and Oliver are expert standers as long as they have something to hold on to. Oliver has been doing this for months, and can stand unsupported for many seconds at a time. He even walked a distance of about eight feet or so totally on his own last Monday. Big T, who was at a conference, was sad to miss it. But we joined up with him again in Pittsburgh on Friday, along, of course, with Robbie and Jess. Jess is sporting a fashionable baby-filled belly about as large was mine was at around 36 or 37 weeks of pregnancy, although she was at 25 weeks. How that happened, nobody knows. But she looks great and is doing well. The photo below does not do her belly justice because black is slimming and it's a front shot, but you get the idea:



I took this picture Saturday afternoon at the surprise baby shower that Julie, Robbie, and I have been planning for the past couple of months. The surprise went magnificently, and the shower was a lot of fun. Thanks to Megan for coming early to help decorate and to Robbie, Matt, and Tobias for shopping and setting things up.

The next celebration occurred Saturday evening in honor of Jess' 30th birthday, which is actually tomorrow. Since there was so much cake leftover from the shower (thanks to Jess' parents), we didn't even have to make a birthday cake, but still got to sing, blow out candles, and eat more cake and open presents. So that was very nice.

And the final celebration was Sunday morning for Father's Day. Jess, Julie, and I have been planning this one for almost as long as we'd been planning the shower. We had a crafty plan of sending the guys out on a forest walk with beer (OK, sparkling water) in the German tradition while we made a fancy surprise brunch. Since the guys took Will and Oliver on their walk it was a luxury for me and Julie to spend some real time in the kitchen doing some bona fide cooking. The timing worked out very well and brunch was just about ready when they got back from their walk. I think Matt and Tobias enjoyed their first official Father's Day and Robbie enjoyed his as an expectant dad. Somehow I managed not to get any pictures of this event, but I hope either Jess or Julie did.

First swim, sort of

Will had a pretty good time with his first swim, especially considering that the lifeguard wouldn't let us in the pool because our swim passes said 2006 instead of 2007 on them. Jerk.

Meeting Catherine

This past weekend we went to Chicago to visit Chris and Helen and meet Catherine for the first time. As always when we visit them, we had a great time. We went on two lovely walks and ate two delicious dinners (we were there for two days). Catherine is a cute little thing who loves to talk and smile. She doesn't love going to bed so much, but who in the under-one crowd does? This picture above shows Will smacking Catherine on the head, and Catherine smiling. She's a happy child. By the way, we gave her that Pooh outfit.



This next picture shows us on the shore of Lake Michigan during our walk on Sunday.



And this is Will in the airport waiting for our flight home. This is his preferred method of transportation. Just riding in the stroller is not good enough.