A New Big Sister and Crummy Weather.

I spent an hour and a half on this post the other day only to have it completely vanish from my computer just before publishing it.  Flames shot out of my ears.  It was quite a sight.

We are back from Door County and had a great time despite the weather.  It was incredibly windy and cool, so I couldn't help but be a little disappointed in the amount of beach time we got, but it actually allowed us to do lots of other fun stuff that we hadn't done since we were little.  More pics from that are below.

But first, I failed to mention previously that we celebrated my niece, Ella's, 2nd birthday a few weeks ago.  In addition to celebrating that, I am excited to share some news I have been waiting twelve weeks to blab about on the internet...Ella is going to be a big sister!  My sis, Court, is due in March.

Congrats Court & Adam!

(Notice the little finger moving in for the kill on the cake frosting.  B you are so BUSTED!)

We also enjoyed a girls' night out last week when we went to see the play Billy Elliot and had a delicious dinner at Petterino's...mmm.

This summer has flown by, but we finally got in our annual Door County summer trip.  This year we found lots of alternative activities to keep us entertained.

Like climbing the Eagle Tower in Peninsula State Park...

...and doing some hiking.  My dad was conveniently standing in front of the sign for our trail.  I think he didn't want us to see the specifics for the hike we were about to do.

"Ky, first we are going to go here, then we will loop around over here..."

"I don't know, Dad, that kind of looks far.  Are you sure we should do this?"

Ky Ky loved being in his back pack.  He got to harass Chad the whole time...pinching his ears, taking off his hat, pulling his hair, and giving him kisses.

I LOVE this shot.

B loved checking out all the caves with Papa and hoping she would find a wild animal in them.

She actually loved hiking and did the entire two miles all by herself.  It was the longest span of time on our whole trip that she didn't complain about this, that or the other thing.  She finished it off with a little back scratch Baloo the Bear style.

This was the kind of trip that while we were enjoying one meal, we were already talking about the next one.  We did a lot of eating, so it's a good thing we did so much hiking.

The wind created some majorly great body surfing waves which we enjoyed off our dock.

I mentioned it was windy, right?

This is just an example of one of the shots I wanted to get but missed due to having kids hanging from me at all hours of the day.  I was putting Ky to sleep as fast as I could and I grabbed my camera and ran out back just in time to miss the sunset.  Darn it.

We tried to outsmart the wind by heading over to the other side of the peninsula to Bailey's Harbor.  It was a little better, but not much.

Ky learned a new trick.

We had to keep the tradition going with the new generation of riding the go-karts after dinner.  B was all smiles, Ella, not so much.

One of the traditions we did not all get to partake in was jumping off of the Sister Bay dock in the cold water.  Luckily, B kept it alive by doing it for us.  It was her very first time jumping.  It's a rite of passage.

More hiking...

and more kissing.

For the photographers out there...these last shots were taken with my Nikon D700 in the pitch black with the fire as my only light source.  I had my 28-70mm lens on and my settings were f2.8, 1/30 shutter speed, and ISO 6400.  I like how they turned out.  That blue behind them is the horizon after sunset which was barely visible to the naked eye.