Staff Fellowship

Every year, right after staff training and before school starts back, we take a little trip with our staff team. This year we went back to Lake City, Mn (the birthplace of waterskiiing!). Here are some shots of Callie with her friends. She had a blast having playmates every day! Here's Annie, Maddux, and Callie. Maddux is the only one looking really ready for a picture.

Callie and Evey. Evey grew up so much over since beach project. She is now talking more and tries to say Callie. It comes out "Cah" She is almost as tall as Callie too.

Chicago

I am still trying to play "catch up" on the blog. We had all these pictures from Chicago and I felt that I had to put them to use. In order to break up our looong trip back (18 hrs), we stopped for a day in Chicago. Getting a great hotel deal on priceline made that possible! Charlie and I both really enjoy Chicago. We used to take students there for Christmas Conferences but visiting in the summer is much much better. These first few shots are of all of us at Lincoln Park. It a free zoo and the whole area is really pretty, right by Lake Michigan. You can just make out Callie petting the goats behind the fence. That was probably her favorite part.


Her with the gorilla family.



Love the city in the background of this picture. The only problem with this is that we had to walk from right where we were all the way into the city. I didn't think I'd have too much of a problem with it because I walk everyday, but I was wrong! For some reason, I really feel like that day I was having a growth spurt and I was in flip flops! I literally waddled the 5 or so miles into the city. Thankfully, Charlie and Callie did their parts to make the walk more bearable. Charlie used a walking tour guide and took us down historic streets w/ neat old homes, and Callie slept in the stroller the entire hour and fifteen minutes it took us to walk!

This was the light at the end of long walking tunnel for me. Chicago style pizza! Who wouldn't smile?

After that we visited the infamous "bean" It's this huge kidney bean made of mirrors. It's cool, you can see yourself reflected in it and people like to take pictures of themselves at it. Being the tourists that we were, we couldn't resist. We then proceeded to a nice playground area in Grant Park for Callie to play. After that we walked over to Navy Pier that stretches out into Lake Michigan. By that point it was starting to rain and we were too tired for pictures. We ended the day with another mile and half walk in the rain back to the subway.

We had about a 40 minute ride on the "L" to get back to our hotel. So, we entertained ourselves by watching Callie try to roll her tongue. Yes, this is what she does when she is trying to mimic us rolling our tongues! So funny. I was just glad to be sitting down. We got back to the hotel and I didn't even move! I didn't even want to go out and get dinner. Instead I opted for a PB and J in the room. We had a great trip even if it did take a week for one of my feet to stop hurting!

Last of the Summer

We had a few more pictures to post from our time in Spartanburg. We were there for almost 3 weeks, and Callie had a blast. We started things off with the baby reveal party and here's some quick snapshots from the weeks following that. We have actually been back in Minnesota for a little over a week now. It's been crazy getting life set up here again, so I have no pictures to show from our time here thus far. We will be posting some soon I'm sure. Callie's had a lot of fun being reunited with her friends. Anyway, in no particular order here are some pics from the rest of our time in Spartanburg.

Warning: These pictures are really bad quality, especially this first one because Callie's face is blurred. Here she is with the big 5!

Callie playing with my old dollhouse from when I was little. My Grandfather made it just like Callie's Papa made her one.

Callie and Gami at Barnet Park

These next few are of Callie at Shipwreck Cove, a little water park about 20 min. away from Gami's house. She loved this place!




Callie loving on Goldie.

Callie helping me make fig preserves.

Callie doing exercises with Aunt Laura. She actually did exercises w Laura a few times during her visit.