Another One Bites the Dust!

Blake has already lost 2 bottom teeth, but today he was excited that lhe lost his front tooth on the top. It was been loose for a while and after accidentally biting down on a popcorn seed it was definitely ready to come out. Blake took a paper towel and pulled it out himself!

Our little toothless wonder

He'll be starting 1st grade with this goofy grin :)

Tooth fairy comes tonight!

Go Cubs!

Back in June Monica and I surprised Tim and Brad with tickets to go see the Cubs vs. Braves at Wrigley field (lucky guys, huh!). So this past weekend we spent time hanging out in Chicago and playing around in Wrigleyville before we watched the Cubbies.

Brad, Monica, and Tim at a rooftop bar across from Wrigley Field

Monica and I at Millennium Park before we went out to Wrigleyville

Brad and Mon hanging out on Michigan Ave.

Tim and I . . . of course I had to pose ;)

GAME TIME

Sooo COOL

I love Chicago

While Monica seriously shopped til we dropped we seemed to pull it together enough to go out at night, too. Well, until 11pm at least . . . we were tired!

Besties out on the town

Super fun trip, can't wait to go back again!

Our Family 2010

Thank you to Monica for capturing some super cute pictures while we were on vacation in Traverse City. Take a look, I think they turned out great :)

Max Aiden - 10 Months

Brycie - 4 years

3 Handsome Boys

Blake - 6 years

Family Vacation: Part 2

WOW!! I cannot believe I have lived in Michigan my entire life and have missed out on some of the best parts of this state. After Cadillac (see previous post) we travelled to Traverse City and met the Woolmans there to spend the rest of the week. We had the BEST time exploring dunes, going to beaches, biking up and down the bike trail, shopping, and even squeezed in family pictures. My pics are in reverse order, and while I wish I could have captured the awesomeness we experienced, you will get the drift . ..

After exploring Sleeping Bear Dunes we went to Empire Beach. It was by far the beach I've been to in Michigan with a nice breeze coming off Lake Michigan, fun waves to jump into, warm water to play in, sand dunes in either direction, and gorgeous blue, clear water.

Taylor and Jenna taking it all in

Monica and Max out for a swim


Even the Mommies had fun playing in the waves

Blake and Bryce were catching big waves with tubes and you can see Bryce in the right corner wiped out :)

Monica loving Empire Beach

Max -- beach baby

Blake -- the goof ball

Bryce -- the tough guy

Shoreline to the South

Shoreline to the North

The next group of pictures is at Sleeping Bear Dunes

This gorgeous picture is a very steep dune at Scenic lookout

Blake showing his muscles on top of a dune

Tim & Max at Scenic lookout

Monica and the girls are in the middle of the picture, you can see the steepness of the dune and it gets even steeper as you go down further

Jenna and I at the Dune Climb

The big kids after they reached the top of the Dune Climb

O'Mara Family

Going up, up, up

It was a lot more work that it looked like!

And to add to the excitement of the day Taylor lost her first tooth!!!!!

Blake is still asking me a million questions about why Taylor got more money from the tooth fairy than he did ;)

Cute toothless girl

The day before we went to Elk Rapids to a beach that was so relaxing Tay actually fell asleep on the raft out in the water. Monica had to push her to shore

Down the river was a natural water slide that the kids had an BLAST on. Tim and Brad stayed at the bottom catching the kids for a good hour or so!

Water slide maniacs

Max and Jenna at Elk Rapids beach

The water at this beach is shallow FOREVER! The kids had a great time walking out far and playing on the sand bar
Max says HI
The third beach we spent time at is in Traverse City right across from the State park. We were there one morning when all the sail boats were going out, it was pretty cool.

Daddy & Max having fun

We were even there for sunset several times. The kids swam past bed time and made a lot of memories.

SUPER Great trip that made for many happy dirty campers!

Family Vacation: Part 1

We just got back from the best family vacation! We spent a week camping and started off in Cadillac with just the 5 of us. Tim worked all day while the boys and I spent 2 beautiful days at the State park building sand castles, playing football and volleyball, watching boats, and splashing around in Lake Cadillac and Lake Mitchell.

The water was so warm, it was hard to get the boys to leave the beach!

The best 4 guys a girl could ask for xoxo

View from our campsite

We had fun with just our family, but as we pulled out of the campground Blake said "Well, that was fun because it was just us, but let's not do that too often".

Big Catch

The boys and I spent some time with our friends Mike, Emily, Carter, and baby Adalyn (who currently resides in Emily's tummy) last week while Tim was gone golfing. They live on Lake Orion so the boys were pumped to fish off the dock and go for a boat ride!

Max and Mike driving the boat . . . about 5 minutes after this picture the boat died and we were stranded until someone came along to tow us to shore! Blake and Bryce thought the tow was the highlight of the day :)

Me with Bryce, Blake, and Carter

Blake's big catch!

Bryce's first fish he ever caught! So cool!

It was a great day and a fun visit!