Smooches

Who could resist him?

The Artists in Residence

A masterpiece.

Go Brendan Go!

About 10 days ago, David took the training wheels off of Brendan's bike. And then without any instruction, off he went. Within minutes, he was circling this parking lot like a pro.

It is as though he just knew how to ride (for this, we credit the Strider PreBike that he has been tooling around on for the past few weeks). Brendan was ready. He was just patiently waiting for us to get around to taking off those training wheels.

In related news, while we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa a few weeks ago, I took his swim vest off -- intending to give him a little lesson. Without any intervention on my part, he basically swam the width of the pool by himself.

Kids can really surprise you sometimes.

I'm still here. Are you?

I know that it seems like I have fallen off the face of the blogging world. I can assure you that I am still here -- just trying to do too many things all at once (as usual). Bogged down with all of my blogs, I guess.

I've been working on a special summer project over at ChicagoNow that has been keeping me busy. I am writing a blog called School's Out! about family-friendly activities in and around Chicago (and also chronicling our family excursion up to the Wisconsin Dells). And of course, I've been continuing with Wee Windy City as well. So if you are looking for fun things to do with your kids in Chicago this summer, I'd love for you to take a peek at these sites to get some (hopefully helpful) ideas.

I have all sorts of posts in my head that I still want to share here -- and I hope to get to them in the coming weeks. You're on summer schedule too, right? (Say yes).

So how's your summer going?

This photo captures our summer thus far in a way that words never could.
Hope that you are having this much fun too.

The Budding Equestrian

A few weeks ago Ellie had her first official riding lesson on a old fellow named Huckleberry.
She's only asked me about twenty or thirty times when she can have her second lesson.