Boards

I just thought I would post this because we are so excited. Jake got the little envelope today. For those of you who don't know what that means, it means Jake passed his first board exam. Yeah, one less worry for a while.

Singing Happy Birthday!

Libby sings Happy Bithday to herself, in the beginning, because she thinks she is going to get cake faster. Cake was the most important part of her birthday this year. Sorry about the singing from us.

Eating Birthday Cake

Libby blowing out her candle.

She started out eating so nicely....

And then she decided to ditch the fork and just use her fingers, and it just got worse from there.


She loved her cake!

More Birthday

Libby's cake, more cake pictures to come.


Grandma and Papa Bell sent Avery a present too. This is her enjoying her new princess doll.

Libby's presents before she opened them. I meant to get this in earlier, but not enough room.

Libby's Birthday

Ok so, Libby's actual Birthday isn't until tomorrow, but we are celebrating it today. She doesn't care. This is her waking up and seeing all of her presents.


Opening presents

Her tutu from Jessi David, and baby Norah.

Libby with all her new toys. She says to tell everyone "Thank you." She loves all of her presents. More pictures to come.

Wax Lips

My mom sent some wax lips in Libby birthday package, and we decided to play with them this afternoon. I have such lovely kids.

Earlier Birthday Package

We got Grandma Bell's package yesterday. She sent Libby's birthday presents and some fun things for her to play with now. I just thought I would take a few pictures of her playing with her new stuff.
When the grass skirt tickles Libby's legs she tells me that the "squitoes" are biting her legs. Libby also says to tell Grandma, Papa, and Uncle Deric thank you for her new toys, that Avery is not allowed to touch yet.

Libby is really excited about going to visit her Grandmas' and Papas' in just a little over a week. She is pointing to this picture and telling us. I am going to see this Grandma and this Papa. She has to say this one, because Libby assumes all women and men that are a little bit older than me and Jake are her Grandparents. This causes problems sometimes.

Libby decided to do this all on her own. She even put all the stickers on all by herself. She kind of looks like an alien in this picture, a cute one though.

We went on a bike ride this last weekend (kind of late I know) on the Des Plains River Trail. It is a really nice trail. The trail doesn't look like this most of the time you are completely surrounded by trees. It makes it nice and cool though. We rode to Independence Grove and had a picnic. It was a fun day. Here are a pictures from the trip.


There were lots of bridges to ride over, Jake really wanted to stop and fish at most of them. Unfornutally, he didn't get to do any fishing this trip, maybe next time.

These are some pictures of the girls playing at the park after patiently riding in the bike trailer.
They really liked this tunnel, despite the look on Libby's face.


Here are Daddy and the girls posing on the rock wall.

Girls in Goggles

Jake found his old goggles from swim lessons, and of course the girls had to try them on. Libby thought it was great because everything looked blue.


posing for a picture

So, tons of people recently having been calling Avery a boy, so I have been putting a little pony tail on top of her head. Jake says if I keep doing it her hair that way it's going to stay like that, and it did. (until we washed it at least.) She still looks pretty cute though.

Avery in the goggles. (notice the little ponytail on top. She barely has enough hair to do this).

Daddy Daughter Wii Time

Ever since Jake took the boards, he has been playing the Wii, A LOT. So Libby has been wanted to play too, since she has seen her daddy doing it so much. She also saw that Daddy was wearing his hat while he was playing so she went to get hers, so she could be just like her Daddy.

Same face.

Daddy is focusing hard and Libby thinks he looks funny.

Last of Evanston Pics.

Jake took this picture through the binoculars Libby was playing with. I thought it turned out pretty cool.


Libby enjoying the pirate ship slide.

Avery being cute.


I thought this was cute.

Avery had a hard time going through the circle, because she had to lift her foot and bend her head at the same time. Her female genetics haven't kicked in yet, multi-tasking must come later.

More Evanston

There was a cute little play area for the kids near the Lake. Libby loved this pirate ship, and looking through the binoculars.


Here is Libby and her Daddy doing push ups together. You know Libby was way better at them than Jake, but don't tell him that.


Libby loves ducks. She almost chased them into the pond. I wish I had something she could have fed them, that would have been fun, but no such luck.

Libby and her Daddy doing some thinking out on a jetty or a pier, I don't really know the difference.

Libby posing on a rock near the beach. We would have played in the water, but they wanted to charge us $8 a person to use the beach, and all we wanted to do was put our feet in the water, so no way were we going to pay that.

Evanston

We met up with my roommate in Evanston, to have Giordano's pizza. We got there early and decided to walk around. We found this pretty little fountain, and took pictures like crazy. Here is a little family portrait.


The girls playing by the fountain.


Daddy and the Girls lounging in the grass.


They are sitting on a hill that goes down into the pond, Avery kept standing up and falling backwards towards the pond and scaring my half to death.

Libby was better and not falling toward the pond so she got more pictures. More pictures to come.

My college roommate

This is favorite roommate from my college days. I haven't seen her in over 2 years, since her and her husband moved to MO, for school. She came up to Chicago for the weekend and we got to catch up. It was so great to see her again, hopefully it won't be another 2 years before I see her again.

Here are our two families. It's amazing how much things have changed since we were college roommates.