Lakeside

My family rented a cottage in Lakeside, Ohio for Memorial Day weekend. It's a nice little community right on Lake Erie. We had a great time! The weather was perfect for lots of fun outdoor activities.

Our cottage was the perfect proximity to the park and the lake. However, the decorators had a serious obsession with corn.

On Saturday night we went to see an Elvis impersonator. The show was really good- especially for the songs I actually knew!

Mom holding sweet baby Sam.

Dipping our toes into the lake. The water was cooooold, but some kids were brave enough to swim. I'm pretty sure Alli's swimsuit was on backwards - excess room in the front and a little extra cheek in the back if you know what I mean.

Little Jamesy just being cute.

We were right across the street from the park, where there was a playground, shuffleboard, basketball hoops, horseshoes, and miniature golf.

The (in)famous tire swing. One day Riley was spinning so fast that she got sick and ended up puking a few hours later. It wasn't pretty.

Celebrating James' 2nd birthday.

Happy Memorial Day!

Our Memorial Day salute (wrong hand Mom).

More pictures to come. Spencer, we sure missed you!! Everyone says hi!

P.S. Here's me at 17 and a 1/2 weeks:

Spencer finished his finals last Friday, so he is now officially a 2nd year dental student! We celebrated on Monday by going to the zoo since Mondays are free for residents of our county. It was such a nice day, and not too crowded!

We dressed like twins. On purpose (Spencer copied me).

We thought this grizzly was pretty funny, just chillin' in his pool.

This was a weird red kangaroo type thing. It was cute, mostly when it jumped around on the ground.

This koala was asleep for most of the time we "explored Australia," but he did wake up for a second and looked around. He kind of looked like Yoda.

Our funniest/most inappropriate story of the afternoon occurred when we were checking out the monkeys. A little girl was looking at these small monkeys with her dad, and one of them was bent over with his rear facing the glass. It was noticeably male, so Spencer and I cracked up when she said "Dad, how come his butt looks like grapes?" He didn't answer, but just laughed and moved her along to the next cage.

Dear Spring,

Thank you for coming and bringing sunshine and warm weather along with you. I love your flowering trees,


the unexpected presents you left me in my garden,

and your ability to make even a street lined with multiple foreclosed homes look beautiful.

And even though the lack of snow has revealed some large spots of dead grass in our front yard,


I'd still take you over winter any day of the week.

Love,
Suzy

The Best Kind of Update

We are going to have a baby!

I'm just about 13 weeks along, and for now my due date is October 30th. We got to see the baby for the first time last Tuesday, and we also got to hear the heartbeat. I have been feeling pretty good, just a little nauseous if I go more than 3-4 hours without eating anything. We are so excited to have a little one of our own!

Coloring Eggs

It's been a good 7 years since I've decorated Easter eggs, and since Spencer has never been interested in coloring them with me, I asked my neighbor Becky if she wanted to. It turned out it that she hadn't done it for a while either, so we set out to decorate this morning. I certainly learned that I'm not that great at boiling eggs. Is there some secret to it? What started as a full dozen ended up being a lame 9. Good thing Becky made some too, or we would have been done in like 10 minutes.

Little Macie thought throwing the eggs in the dye was the coolest thing ever, and it was certainly entertaining to watch her break and then peel some of the eggs... or take a huge bite out of one and then have a look of utter disgust cross her face.

Best Husband Ever

Thanks to a gift card that came in a well-timed birthday card yesterday afternoon (Thanks Jared and Barbara!), Spencer and I went to the Olive Garden for dinner last night. We had a good time, and when we were almost home Spencer said, "I have a surprise for you," and made me put on a blindfold. I was thoroughly confused by this, and I spent the next 15 minutes guessing where we were going. I could tell we were headed downtown, but Spencer wouldn't tell me why. When we finally parked and got out of the car, I found out what we were doing. As an early birthday present, he took me to see this:

I was so excited!

The show was really great- totally funny, full of great music, and much cleaner and happier than the book. Thanks for the perfect birthday gift, Spencer! You're the best.

Car Show

Our Saturday night date was going to the Cleveland Car Show at the massive IX Center. It was fun checking out all the cars, especially the ridiculously expensive ones that cost like $100,000. They were pretty, but I don't really understand why anyone would buy a pricey sports car when you can really only ever legally go about 80 mph. Regardless, we had fun choosing our future vehicles:

Spencer had his eye on this Lexus for his "work car."

We'd get this Jeep for our frequent off-roading adventures.

And this Bumblebee Camaro would be our family car for running around town.

(HA- yeah right!)

But for real, we liked this Ford Explorer:

It was one of Ford's concept cars, which I thought were the most fun to look at. They were totally futuristic, very neat, and sleek! I don't think this one will ever be produced in real life, but it would be pretty awesome to have as a family vehicle.