One of the reasons I love the name Jane is because of our family friend who has always sort of been an honorary aunt/big sister to me. I’ll never forget the road trip out to CO Springs that Jane, my mom, and I took when I competed in ISI Worlds. My skating wasn’t that great, but we laughed pretty much the whole way there and the whole way back. Fortunately, I had my camera with me at church to snap a picture of two Janes!
And this is just me playing around with the lighting in my parents’ family room.
Guess who slept through the night last night? Yes, that would be all six of us!!!! Finally…
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The kids spent a lot of time in Grandma’s garden.
Tommy got over his aversion to worms…
…and Cammy introduced Susie to roley poleys.
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We always wait until the last day to take family pictures. Fortunately, in Royal Oak, it was right before church, so at least the kiddos were dressed up.
And I posted this one on facebook, but I love this picture of Matthew and the kids, even if the lighting was a little wonky.
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I forgot about these pictures until I cleared my camera card last night. Pretty glad to be able to eat dairy when Ray’s is nearby!
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The drive down from Michigan to Missouri went as well as could be expected. My dad met us in St Louis, where we dropped off our rental van and transferred all our stuff to his friends’ minivan. Then Janie cried unceasingly all the way to Columbia. It was kindof brutal at the end of a day that had started with six wakings in seven hours, then nine hours in the car. But we had a really wonderful time once we got there, and the week just flew by!
The hammock was a big hit.
Elizabeth loved celebrating her fourth birthday for the third time!
The kiddie pool was fun, too.
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Yesterday, both Leann and Katie were able to come over and hang out at my mom’s and meet Jane. The fascinator is a throwback to our photo shoot days.
Tommy very proudly took this picture of Leann and me with all the girls. Only minor cropping needed.
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Our second stop in Hillsdale was the Millers’ house. The kids and I hadn’t seen them since last Memorial Day weekend, but of course we picked right up where we left off. Evangeline and K2’s dress up clothes were so fun that my girls spent most of Monday wearing them. We had big plans to let the kids run around outside all day like last year while the adults stayed in with the babies and talked. But since it rained incessantly all day, we had to talk around the dancing ballerinas and the knights and cowboys who were alternately protecting their sisters from bad guys and harassing them with cap guns and a sword. Oh, and we read some books, too.
We’d also wanted to see the Gaetanos, so Matt and Amy brought their kids over for dinner. And Hannah and Robert drove all the way from Chicago to spend the afternoon and evening with us. Bethany gamely rose to the challenge of tripling her dinner guests on short notice and feeding 8 adults and 10 children in a small house. It reminded me of a scene from The Relatives Came–conversation in twos and threes all over the house, with a small, scraggly looking waif (Susie) absconding with cookies and making puddles with her cup every few feet. Everyone had a wonderful time!
The only bummer about visiting the Millers is that after two nights of talking past midnight, we have more things to discuss, not less!
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Our first order of business in Hillsdale was to spend a few fun hours with the Coles. As soon as we got in the door, Tommy made a beeline for the bookshelf and did not get up again for two hours. We had barely sat down with Lee and Kelly before Elizabeth appeared in a butterfly costume and Susie appeared behind, stripped down to her diaper and asking for help with putting on a princess dress. Our girls and Margaret and Edith treated us with quite a bit of dancing (stay tuned for a youtube video) before we headed outside for a picnic dinner.
It’s so fun to hear about Lee’s experiences on the other side of the lecturn at Hillsdale. And Kelly and I barely scratched the surface of discussing our homeschool plans, how to best fit four children into a three bedroom house, scheduling our days, and the hilarious spectacle of little girls dressing up in princess costumes. We did not manage to get a traditional Muller-Cole couch picture, but I managed to at least capture the big kids in a rare moment of rest. My girls are already asking when we’ll get to see Margaret and Edith again!
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We took advantage of being in church clothes (notice the girls’ matching dresses?) to take a family picture before we left Detroit on Sunday.
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We’ve made it to Columbia, and yesterday Tommy got to go on a four mile bike ride with Peter on the MKT Trail! He had a blast.
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