Life as We Know It: a few things

before i forget - i got notice today that all my paperwork did, in fact, make it in to the engineering board and i will be sitting for the PE (professional engineering exam) in october... i was secretly hoping that it wouldn't all get in and i would get to wait until april to take it (that's the procrastinator in me). but i guess it will be good to take it and get it out of the way and, maybe, get a raise for it or something... don't know if gsipt gives raises for licensing, but we'll see - if i pass it! best get started on that studying thing!

now, about our vacation. we arrived late in alpena on friday night. poor little belle didn't go to bed that night until 1:30am so she was quite tired saturday. she and i slept in saturday until 10:30!!! it was great! :) then we went to aunt pat and uncle neil's 50th wedding anniversary party. it was great because we got to see everyone, but it was so HOT!!! we aren't used to that hot, humid michigan weather anymore without having the lovely AC waiting for us inside! we were sweating our tails off!

sunday, we had belle baptized, then went to the lumsden family reunion for a bit, then went to the lake! :) ahhhh... love that lake! :) and belle did too! she played in the water for about 2 hours until she was tired and turning a little blue! :)

here is belle in her pretty baptism dress

us at the family reunion (gloria, adam, belle, howard, nick and me)

nick and belle swimming at lake avalon

belle and william swimming. she was loving all the attention from her cousins and had a sweet spot for william! :)

we had lots of visitors on our week up at the cottage. grandma and grandpa hietikko, schonnie and josh, aunt mildred, grandma flint and grandpa brunk, uncle jeremy, andy, jeff and adam. and of course, grandma and grandpa lumsden and uncle adam came to visit often. :) we had a great time and belle was crawling all over the place. she also decided that she loves to chew on shoes and she is trying to pull herself up. she also got another tooth while were gone. poor little hunny was fighting the pain all week and that dang thing FINALLY broke through on sunday morning! so we now have 3 teeth - two on the bottom and one on the top. she is getting another one on the top too, so she's been a little fussy. but we discovered these all natural teething tablets and boy do they work!!! it's almost instant too! i would highly recommend them!

so anyway, we had a wonderful vacation until our trip home. our flight got delayed out of midland because of broken windshield wipers so we missed our connection in detroit. when we went down to rebook, they told us they didn't have anything else for that night, but they could "get us a hotel and get us out first thing in the morning". well - clearly that just wasn't going to work for us, so they finally rebooked us through chicago and then back to baltimore. so we finally got back in to baltimore at 12:30am, just to find that they lost our luggage, including the car seat. so, we had to borrow a car seat from the air lines. we got our luggage back on tuesday - and it's still hanging out in the living room and in the bedroom and it will probably stay there until this weekend! well, anyway, that's enough for tonight. i am way past my bedtime, but i'm watching a movie and typing all at the same time... here are a few more pics for you...