Minnesota! (and Wisconsin for a day)

Jack's total state tally is now up to 12! It's been a big summer, picking up three new ones, Washington, Alaska and Wisconsin. (For those keeping track at home, the list is: CA OR IL MN NM CO AZ UT NV WA AK WI).

Jack spent a lot of time at lakes during our time in the midwest. We went to visit our dear friend Liz in her hometown of Green Lake for a day, because apparently it's too hard to visit her in her apartment seven miles away in San Francisco, we have to fly four hours and then drive four hours, that's much easier. But Jack absolutely did not mind the car trip, as long as I could sing him 98 verses of Old Mac Donald for last hour of it. And once we got out to the lake the next day, he agreed it was worth it.



We seriously spent all day out there. Floating on tubes, passing balls back and forth, splashing Liz's cousin's twins who were the same age as Jack, kicking wildly as we "swam" him back and forth between me and Liz's mom, going for tube rides being towed slowly by the boat (boring, according to Jack), going for boat rides while towing others very fast (a little too exciting for him), and doing some more floating and passing balls back and forth. We had to get out twice, once for a nap, and once for good, and each time was a meltdown. Jack screaming wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa like it was his lifeblood and he might wither out and die if I took him away from it. That boy just loves the water!

So naturally when we got back to Minnesota, we took several trips to the nearest lake. Mommy didn't get all the way in this time, but Jack was just as happy splashing in the shallows.



Ava is going to be such a good play-mate someday.

This particular lake also had a big slide that all the big boys went down, so of course Jack wandered over to investigate. I didn't think he was brave enough to go down by himself, but he sure showed me! He was so proud of himself. And so dirty-- I don't know what the big boys had done to that slide, but whatever it was wound up all over Jack's stomach. It took three scrubbings to get all that ingrained dirt off, and you can guess how much Jack enjoyed that. But I won't forget his little smile at the bottom of the big tunnel slide he had gotten on and gone down all by himself. I'm sorry I don't have a photo of that, but sometimes I guess you just have to live life and not worry about recording it.

We had a nice trip home. Jack got to spend some more time with his cousins after the Alaska trip, and Aunt Alison took some very beautiful photos of him.

And we even got to have a little reunion with some old high-school friends and their babies. Everyone has babies now! It was a little surreal to be hanging out with girls that I've known since we were prepubescent and watch our kids toddle around and/or crawl all over each other. I guess if we'd entered this stage of adulthood together it wouldn't seem strange, but because they are kind of frozen in time for me along with a version of high-school Becky, it's still hard for me to wrap my mind around. But wonderful.