Cruisin To Colfax

The 4th of July has come and gone and summer cruises on like a 3 year old on a tricycle.....we wish! More like a rider in le tour de france which I'm sure all of you are following with great interest. : ) We had a nice 4th of July weekend. Nice visit from one set of grandparents on Friday evening to start it off and visiting another set of Grandparents to finish it up on Monday evening. Lots of "adventure" in between. : )

We took our first real trip as a family o four. Oh sure we've taken the walks, been to the parents houses and even the grocery store. But this, this was real trip! 202 miles to Colfax, WI and back. All in about 30 hours too! We traveled that way up to celebrate my cousin Dennis & Laura's daughter Evie's 1st Birthday! We headed out at 9am and arrived by 230....a 3 hour trip turned into 5 1/2! But it's not as bad as it sounds - actually not bad at all. We stopped for lunch (Zeke too) and checked in our hotel along the way so that added to it. But all in all the whole thing was a success in terms of the trip up, hanging out with family, overnight in the hotel room and back home Sunday. I believe it's the first time Ayla has ever slept in a bed with us but you could hardly tell in a king size! While it might not seem like much it was a big deal for Ruth and I to take our 7 week old (and 3 year old of course) on that kind of trip consider we were scared just to leave the house when Ayla was that age! Unfortunately we didn't take a single picture along the way. None in the car, the party, the hotel or swimming in the pool - which Ayla and I had a blast in Sunday morning. So, you'll just have to imagine via my brilliant write up.....and enjoy the pics of Ayla on her tricycle.

Ayla isn't the most avid "biker" but she's officially peddling on her own now - maybe with a few pushes up the inclines of course. At her 3 year appt a few weeks back we got her the bike helmet you see - which she was excited to wear (thankfully). What's funny is she actually seems kind of big for the tricycle so maybe we'll look into a bike later this summer. Otherwise Ayla is more content to just run, jump, somersault or swing these days. I think we'd be on the swing set 4 hours every evening but would rather not cover her in 5 layers of bug spray over that time! But we still get out and the other day I walked away from pushing her for a minute only to turn around and see her pumping her legs and swinging herself. Little kid haha.

Wow, that was a sidetrack! Continuing on from before - we were home later sunday to do some fireworks (ayla's first by herself) and then a few more per tradition for Ruth and her dad - and now Ayla - on Monday evening. Lots of pics from those to post soon. Otherwise for those of you facebooker's you've already seen some of them and I'm sure I'll post more there too. (and pics of our ever changing little guy too!)

In the meantime enjoy these and if you didn't notice I also put up another slideshow of Ayla eating her first ice cream in a cone. If you click on the slideshow you can view the pictures much bigger. We hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July. Still lots of summer left!