Wedding festivities

My youngest sister got married this month . . hard to believe she is old enough for that, but time marches on. My first year of teaching after college she was a sixth grade student in my classroom and so I guess I've been out of college for a while now.
There have been a lot of family milestones to celebrate so far this year. My grandma's 90th birthday, my parents 40th anniversary, Zach's college graduation, Abby's grad school graduation, Abby's profession of faith, Dave and Abby's wedding, and three other first cousins who did or will be getting married this year.
Abby has been living in Kalamazoo the last couple of years, so we had her bachelorette party in Kzoo. It was a lot of fun and a great mix of sisters, cousins, high school, college and K-zoo friends of Abby's. We had a beautiful spot in the Loft of the Wine loft and everybody was dressed for a night on the town.


The following week we had rehearsal night, followed by the wedding. . It was beautiful setting and weather for a summer wedding at Meyer's Castle. Everything was perfect and a great time was had by all. .

July flies by

This month has flown by!
Here are some highlights . .
Steve spent some time with us since I signed him up for a summer class called GlobeTrackers . .geography games including Risk! He loved it. . He had the treat of spending a day at the beach with an old Kenwood school friend, Dorian. They cooked five alarm scrambled eggs for breakfast and they were very good.

Independence Day weekend was interesting. .Jeff and I decided to spend the whole weekend with only the three of us as we have so many family special events and friend gatherings this summer. It felt weird to be just our family on a holiday, but we were glad to spend the time together as sometimes at bigger gatherings we barely hang out with each other! Sunday afternoon we spent an hour or so at the very new and very nice Green Lake Family Aquatic Center in Calumet City. Perfect for 3-10 year old kids because it is a smaller scale water park.

Sunday night we biked and rollerbladed from our fireworks viewing spot to BR pool for an early evening swim, then back to Munster Centennial park for some vendor food for supper. It was a beautiful night for the fireworks but our early staked out spot was actually an obstructed view and we should have parked by the pool and biked the opposite route to have a quicker getaway post fireworks!

On the Fourth we spent the day at the Hammond City beach and biked/bladed to the Whihala beach and checked out the new park construction plans there . . looks like good things are in store.

The following two weekends were full of celebration events for my sister's wedding . .I'll post that separately. .

Mainly though we've been finding various watery spots to beat the heat if we're not building thomas trains and lincoln logs in the cool basement:
Deep River Water Park outing today.. .loved that Cyclone pitch-black waterslide.
West Beach . . . one of the nation's best!
Wicker Park splash pad
Briar Ridge pool Kiddie fest with mom, sisters and Douwe's cousins
Munster Pool
Park Forest has an awesome municipal aquatic center . .Douwe loved the water slide there
back yard mini pool at Grandma Groen's
pool day hosted by a friend. .
rooftop pool swimming in the city with another friend.
our back yard sprinkler!