Detroit

Nothing like stale news, eh? Luckily, other than sick baby (recovered now), sick nanny (recovered by Monday, we hope), and ongoing car woes (solved - for the moment), nothing much has been happening here. I promise to write a catch-up post on all we've been doing since we returned from the Rust Belt Tour soon. In the meantime, no thank you notes yet (this time it's not my fault; I have the good people at Walgreen's Photo to thank for that).

Okay, anyway, here's the rest of the early August trip. After our one lovely night in Cleveland, we drove on to Detroit to see the rest of Mike's family. Natalie got some good play time in with cousin Brody.And with great-grandpa Lloyd and the rest of the gang:

We also went to the park a lot, including with some high school friends of Mike (who have a son about the same age as Natalie).Natalie also had a late birthday celebration. Her feelings about cake are, um, positive.And after that whirlwind week, we were all very exhausted!

Cleveland

Apparently, my strategy is to stretch a one-week trip into three blog posts spread over three weeks. I bet you are on the edge of your seats! (Also: the thank you notes are still forthcoming....)

Back to our grand journey. After we left Buffalo, we headed to Cleveland to see our good friends Erin and Horst. We knew them back in Seattle, but hadn't seen them since 2005. It was so, so nice to see them again! In fact, it was so nice that, in my excitement, I may have bitten off more than I can chew by agreeing to join them in June of 2011 for a 24-hour relay from Logan to Park City, Utah. Crazy has no limits, right?

Anyway, they live in a lovely, tree-intense neighborhood in a beautiful old house. The house is great (and I'm not just saying that because we had our own floor) - it's totally the opposite of the palm tree and stucco houses that are the homes of my California youth. This house was old and storied, and I totally could have imagined secret passages and the like. I only took one picture of their house - a picture that isn't terribly illustrative, but perhaps it will help you imagine what I mean.So that about clears that up, right?

They also have a very sweet son, Xander. At first, the babies played independently:But then we got them to at least sit together!And the very next morning, we left for Detroit . . . .

Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo

I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately - new job, the start of the school year, the end of summer, etc. I'm behind on thank you notes from Natalie's birthday, and I'm behind on blog postings. Also: house-cleaning, garden-weeding, friend-calling, etc.

So here's something from our trip to the Midwest a few weeks ago. We started in Buffalo, where we spent time with Mike's extended family. We then continued on the Cleveland, where we got to see our super-good friends from grad school, Erin and Horst. Last, we ended the circuit in Detroit, where we spent time with the rest of Mike's family. I'm glad we got to see so many people in such a short time, but it was an exhausting week!Natalie got some good playtime in with her cousins:And, in the evenings, the grown-ups danced to wii - some of us are dancing queens, some of us are dancing fools.My attempts at posed group pictures:We also celebrated the summer birthdays in the family:And we took Natalie to her first zoo!
Next up: Cleveland.