The Plus of Minus!

There was another major celebration in our house this week besides the 4th of July. It involves vision...a rather important sense in our family!

You may remember from past posts that Patrick has worn corrective lens since...well FOREVER! He is basically blind past his fingertips without his glasses. Thus he is very attentive to the care and keeping of his glasses especially after an extreme incident in his childhood when one pair went missing!

I, on the other hand, had beyond perfect vision until Mother Nature decided to celebrate my 45th birthday with the gift of presbyopia....the fancy medical terminology for loss of elasticity of the lens...another fancy way to say since your arms can't grow longer to help bring writing into focus you need to invest in reading glasses!! I fall into the buy them in bulk from Sam's Club and keep them everywhere category.

Mari failed her 3 year old pre-school Vision/Hearing screening conducted at the school....but we all somehow convinced ourselves that it was due to her recent arrival and language acquisition level that had interfered with her ability to correctly identify which way the E was pointing. We were wrong! She had superior language skills by 4 year old pre-school and still couldn't answer which way the E was pointing!!! Felt like a complete slacker when we picked up her first pair of glasses and she looked up at the TV screen in the mini-van on the car ride home and said "Wow that picture looks so good now!" She has never been enamored with the fact that she must be seen by her peers in glasses and literally puts them on in homeroom and takes them off as the final bell rings. She has had one pair break and has lost several cases but managed not to ever lose a pair....yet.

So this is where the reader may surmise I now introduce Julia in her new pair of glasses???

That would be a big NO! The optometrist says if he had many patients with as good a vision as Julia has he would be broke.

Maybe it is Alyssa who now wears glasses? No, she has worn them for years and comfortably alternates between frames and contacts. Auntie Peggy used to be as bad as Patrick but she was one of the RK pioneers...as in back in the day when they still did it with scalpels and not lasers!!! Was absolutely the most impressive, life altering thing when she had it done. The very day she had the first eye done, as I drove her home, she turned to look at our local grocery store as we passed and gasped at her new found ability to SEE the advertising signs hanging in the windows!

Gratuitous shot of fireworks now inserted to mark the big announcement!!!

As promised, we let Mari get contacts!!!! For several years she has been campaigning HARD to be allowed to ditch the frames...for purely VAIN reasoning. I decided she needed to be mature enough to handle the care and keeping of contacts herself and set 8th grade as the spot on the calendar when we would allow her to switch over. With a date now on the calendar from the orthodontist for the removal of her braces and the contacts she is now heading into a new school year with renewed confidence. 

I'm beginning to see the confidence in her body language...can't you??  Who would have guessed that there would be such a 'plus' when you subtract a pair of glasses and a mouthful of metal?

Happy Birthday to us....

Busy, busy, busy week culminating in two straight nights of celebrating!! Warm summer weather finally arrived in time for us to get outdoors to celebrate a good ole 4th of July....on the 3rd AND 4th!!! As a matter of fact I should be preparing for tonight's picnic and firework party but just thought I'd give a shout out to say Happy 4th of July to all our friends and family!!

Nice thing about our 'small' big town are the friendly neighbors! We choose not to pack in with the thousands of others in the local polo fields to watch the concert and fireworks every year in favor of a local business park with plenty of parking and no restrictions on food and toys you can have amongst your supplies. A very friendly neighbor joined our celebration this year.....

...a little 'friend' who found our 'big' girls to be far more fun and interesting than her family!

Especially when she discovered our little girls [that she called 'the big girls'] had a waaaay cool toy....one that flashed fire and popped loud when you throw it on the cement!

Meanwhile, our big girls sprayed themselves down and headed off to rollerblade through the fields of parking lots while waiting for dark to fall.

Auntie Peggy is already bummed at how much taller Mairead is than the rest of us...but add a couple more inches from rollerblades and she's really not happy!!

Did I mention that my creaky old cell phone went for a swim in the toilet earlier this week and that the blow dryer and rice tricks failed? Auntarie brought a book to read while waiting for dark and just as she thought she'd have to pack it in due to the dark, the big girls informed her that my new 'smartphone' had a 'flashlight' app...who knew?!?! I am scheduled to go back into the phone store this week to take lessons on how to use this Ferrari of a phone I now own...meanwhile my girls have already taken it around the track a couple of times while I'm still trying to figure out how to start the engine!!!!

As we watched Mother Nature's light show....

All the girls...including the newest little girl...settled in to snack and crack out the glow sticks and watch the spectacular display of fireworks while shouting out "Happy Birthday America!!"

As I head off to prepare for fireworks round two I thought I'd let you see a couple of shots I managed to catch as I practiced with my firework setting on the camera that I'm still student driving....

Don't blink!

Or you may miss this post that attempts to cram a bunch of the past week into this limited space!! Between Auntie Peggy and myself we have hundreds of pictures from this past week and I have had no time to edit or play with them in any manner....I also just grabbed a quick selection which may or may not include some of the 'best' shots taken this week. I apologize to Auntie Peggy in advance for just slamming some pictures up without first previewing and tweaking them!!

So here we go! Remember I left you in the last post at our family picnic...and I mentioned that my uncle had brought his family up from North Carolina to attend? Well it was also their summer vacation!?!? Being the 'make memories' kind of girls that we are, Peggy and I packed up my cousin, his wife, and their three children to see THE city!

Seeing as how it was a warm day during the midst of the annual Taste of Chicago festival, we headed to the train! Trying to find affordable parking downtown on a day as busy as this one would surely be was nigh on impossible!

Then we caught a water taxi to circle us around the Loop...

...with three little girls hanging on the front railing watching all the sights as we pointed out the many historic buildings and unique features seen along our route. They now know that the city of Chicago has more 'draw bridges' than any other American city and they witnessed several raising to let tall masted ships pass down the river.

First we took in the sights on Navy Pier!

We even popped for the group picture they take before you board the ginormous ferris wheel....

...where they got to see our beautiful city from the air!

They also road some of the other rides and we even splurged and did the fun house maze!

On our way out of Navy Pier we took in the Crystal Gardens....where someone played fast and loose with the rules regarding playing in the jumping fountains (-;

Train to a boat to a cab to a ferris wheel to our own two feet....

...as our journey next took us to Millennium Park where we....

...showed them the sculpture the artist calls Cloud Gate but us Chicagoan's just call The Bean [due to its amazing resemblance to a giant jelly bean!!!].

By this point we were ready for a cool down, so we took them down to the 'fountain' to splash in some cold water....

...which is not only allowed but ENCOURAGED by the city planners!!   

Now soaking wet and bone tired we caught cabs back to take the train home because the next day we had plans!!!....

...with a bigger group of the cousins to go to Brookfield Zoo!

It was such a warm day that most of the animals were found near their watering holes!

The kind of soooo very warm day that put cups of Dippin' Dots into the hands of everyone...even the Aunties who took in the sights from their electric carts!!

In an effort to cool off we also headed into the Living Seas exhibit where it turned out to be feeding time for the penguins..yeah! Except we were NOT the only ones with that plan but thanks to my making the big splurge on my camera purchase...

I could still see the show!!!!

As we were leaving the zoo for the day Julia just insisted I get one last picture....

...don't know why I thought it might have been one with all the cousins when this was a choice???!?!?!

Favorite Foto Friday

Just call me difficult! Going off script again with my FFF post. Mostly out of pure laziness. Since I have sooooo much to catch up on I'm using this post to play some catch-up!!

So as you can see my Dad is in town and behaving maturely...wonder where I get my irreverent streak?!?!? He's here for two weeks because it is family picnic season!

Brothers and nephews along with in-laws who like to call themselves outlaws....

Children and cousins big and small....

....men...

...women...

..and children gathered together to celebrate the fact that they are FAMILY!

Auntie Peggy really enjoyed it this year since she passed the baton of Picnic Organizer off to another family member.

Most really just enjoyed the play time.....

...while others enjoyed playing catch-up! My mother's brother brought his family up from North Carolina for this year's gathering and while it was hard to see my mom, aunt and uncle as the ONLY three from their generation to feel up to attending this year it was nice to see the three of them together. Who knows how many more times that will happen?

3 different generations as well as 3 different families at a single table is no big deal at our picnics....

...where the family tree has grown so big that we now must run it as a descendent list minus the 'out-laws' and it still is 44 inches of single spaced names!!! I was so busy visiting that Mari stepped in and took over some of the photo journal duties and ended up with my FFF!

I can still see you smiling behind that burger Ethan!!!