Picture-palooza!

This is the first post I'm writing tonight, but will be the 2nd in line, the way it archives the posts.  

This post is just a massive update about the girls and life, with lots of pictures.  Blogger just uploaded them totally out sequence, and I'm not going to spend the hour to get them back into order.  Enjoy the randomness!

Shelley and the girls love garage sales, and they scored a Hello Kitty pop up tent at a garage sale.   Who wouldn't want a bright pink princessy pop-up tent for the living room?

To Shelley's utter delight, Amie has really taken to hair bows.  She doesn't mind them at all.  It also gets people to stop calling Amie a "really cute little boy!".  I don't correct them, ever, because I don't want to end up making people feel better for the fact that they feel bad that I have a kid who was diagnosed with cancer.  It's a strange thing how much I end up doing that.

Shelley and Amie were practicing emotions.  This was the best of the lot.  :)

Anya turned 6 just about a month ago.  This was one of her presents, a matching dress for her and her baby/dolly/hippo/bunny depending on the day.

One of the major benefits of living where we do is that there is a TON of u-pick fruit places near us.  This was at DeGroots, near Pinckney...about a 15m drive.  As you might notice, there's nothing in Amie's basket.  She ate a lot.

DeGroots' also has a livestock area.  I like this picture because you can see what a put-together little girl she is.  Water boots? Check!  Sun Hat? Check!

We've been doing a lot outside together, and this was a walk we took in Fairyland.  This was also the day that I got a MASSIVE case of poison ivy.  I look happy here.  I was not happy the rest of the week.

Amie is practicing a profession I dearly hope that she never takes up.  'Nuff said.

This is "Guy" or "Turtle".  He was a gift that we received from one of Shel's brothers.  It is loud and annoying as hell and Amelie LOVES IT.  She used it daily for a few months and then grew too big for it.  I put it in the garbage.  I was done with it.

She asked about it for weeks.
She asked about it for months.
She found another of them at a garage sale!

Turtle is now a fixture in our living room.

This was Anya and I playing around with pictures in Onekama, MI on one of our camping trips.

Amie likes to "dig holes" and then "put Daddy in hole".  She loves this game.  I do not however enjoy getting sand in every orifice, but I do so to make her happy.  Is that not what being a Dad is all about?

Watching the "Sun go to bed" in Manistee.  We've been doing everything we can to spend a ton of time with each other this summer.  Shel and I are both off work, and it looks like she's going to go back to work at the end of the summer, assuming everything goes the way I hope it does.

This is a terribly blurry picture, but it's the only one I've captured with Amie wearing her high heels, or as we like to call it, practicing her balance.  She's such a gender balanced kid.  She wears pink and high heels, but she loves her "diggers", kicks a ball like a banshee, and is really physically aggressive in her play.  I love it!

Ask Anya what the best time about Aloha State Park was? Mayflies (fish flies).  She loved them!  She was constantly playing with them.  My parents had taught her how to pick them up without hurting them (Luna Pier gets a plague-worth each year).

We really enjoyed the Mystery Spot in the UP.  It was silly and fun and totally worth the money.  TOTALLY.  Of course, we are weird.

This is the bike that Diane (Shelley's former supervisor) gave to us.  Anya loves it!

More to come in the weeks ahead.  As I said, I wasn't going to do regular blog updates unless there was something to report, but there's people following Amie's adventures who are not on FB, so I'm trying to do updates once a month if I can.

More camping starts......soon.