Belated Updates

Wow! Another month has zipped by and we haven't had a chance to update out blog. I'll give a quick summary of what has been going on.

The end of May Becky went back to Utah to visit family. It was a short busy trip for her as she was only there for 3 days. Here is an exert from a blog entry that was never posted to the blog on her trip to Utah.

"My trip to Utah was fantastic! It was a real treat to get to see so many friends and family members. Congrats to Natalie and Ulli on the beautiful ceremony and on the new house! Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures of the event because I was having too much fun talking to people. It was too short of a trip, but I had a great time."

About a week and a half later (June 7th-15th) Becky's parents came out here to visit us. This was their first trip out to see us here in South Bend. It was fun to be able to show them around the area. While they were here, they did a ton of yard work with Becky. They ended up getting 3 trees planted and redoing all of the flower beds. This included having to cut the grass back to expand the beds. They found a lot of buried treasures in the grass that we did not know were there (about 100 bricks, concrete fence posts etc.). Who knows what else is lurking under our lawn? It looks great and will just need a little time to grow. We'll just need to make sure the rabbits don't eat all of our hard work.

The last night Becky's parents were here (14th) we stayed the night in Chicago with them so we could see some of the sites and visit other family members who live there. Timing worked out pretty well for us because Todd , my brother, flew into Chicago for some meetings this weekend as well. That night we ate at a pizza place called Giordano's. Here we had the true Chicago deep dish pizza. I could only eat two pieces then I was stuffed. The rest of the night we just walked around and took some pictures of the city at night.

The next day we took a archaeological boat tour of the city with Janet and Dennis. It was fun to see all of the buildings and such, but it was very hot. We then spent the next 4 hours driving Becky's parents to the airport and then driving back to the city so we could meet Todd again.

Todd's time with us was short. We picked him up at his hotel at 5:30 and left Chicago to head back to South Bend. He wanted to see our house, South Bend, and Notre Dame. However, traffic was so horrible that a normal 1 hour and 45 min drive took about 3 1/2 hours to get home. It wasn't until 9:30 that we made it back. It made it a little hard to give Todd a tour of campus with no light. The picture is of Todd trying to download his photos to his laptop to free up space on his memory card. Since his laptop battery was dead he had to find an outlet in the parking garage to download them.

The next morning I left with Todd at 7:30 to go back to Chicago. Todd had one more half day of meeting to attend. I'll also add that during his trip he has been having to limp around due to surgery he had on his knee two weeks ago. This was because he crashed a motorcycle and broke 3 of his ribs and filled his knee with gravel/dirt. So, he has been on some medication to help ease the pain.

I dropped Todd off at his meeting and then spent the next 4 hours wandering Chicago taking pictures. (I really enjoy my new digital SLR Rebel XTi) I then met up with Todd for lunch and we then wandered the city 'til he had to catch his shuttle to fly back to Seattle.

Riley is doing well. Growing like a weed (could be 'cause he eats so many of them). He is about 50 lbs. and is as cute as ever. He is 5 months old now, and in one more month we will be able to enroll him in obedience school. He does a great job listening to us now, especially if we have a treat. But if there is anyone else around he gets too excited and has a harder time listening to us.

Things are going well with us. We will do a better job at updating the blog so you don't have to read such a long boring post. Short boring posts are so much easier to deal with. No big plan for the 4th as of yet. Probably will just have a little barbecue.