Summer Summer Summer Time

That's a line from a famous Will Smith song. And by famous, I mean, not really that famous (or good for that matter), but anyway, appropriate for this post.

Thought I'd give you a little update as to the goings-on this Summer so far, as it's been quite fun.

We had a St. Helen Father's Club outing at the White Sox game, which was awesome on a lot of fronts:

1. I got to eat a TON of junk food because all the other kids were and mom and dad got really tired of negotiating with us (Mabel more than me, she's relentless) so cookies and cotton candy and all kinds of other junk was consumed, and it was fun.

2. I got to hang with my homegirls - that's JoJo on the left and Shea on the right.

3. Pax got his first baseball game of his life under his belt.

It's also been quite a chill Summer so far, lots of fun on the weekdays with our nanny Julianna, lots of chilling out fun on the weekends.

Some sprinkler time for the young's and then the below shot, for example, is what we call our Backyard City Golf Course. A bucket, some mini clubs, and see who can chip it in first.

It wasn't all chill, though. We had a very stressful Stanley Cup run with our Blackhawks, who turned out victorious (if you've been living on the moon the past month). Nana saved some newspaper cut outs for me and I, in turn, decked out my room with my favorite players (Kane, then Crawford, if you're wondering. And Kane is not pictured because Papa didn't get the paper that day).

Dress up has been on the docket, both with ourselves and at a sleepover we went to at Ana and Sid's. Sid made a fantastic Hawai'in Santa Claus. Hm, I don't think I've ever written the word Hawai'in before in my entire life. I know it's wrong because that little red dotted line is underneath the word (and also because there's no way it has an apostrophe in it) but guess what - I'm not going to fix it. I'm not going to go to Google right now and try to type it in and see what comes up. You know why? Because I don't care. I don't think I'll ever write it again at this point so who cares. 

So you'd think I would be done about now, right? That looks like a pretty full first 2-3 weeks of the Summer, on top of piano lessons, reading camp and all the rest of it. Well, it's not.

We've done picnics

And parks

And played our fair share of games.

We've chilled out with our best pal (and sometimes worst enemy)

And our best pals when Isaiah and Eli came down last weekend.

And last but not least, we had a visitor who is royalty. That's right, Buddy came to town. Nana and Papa went to visit Uncle Paul in Connecticut so instead of boarding Buddy (I feel like that could be a name of a movie - "Boarding Buddy") we took the little rascal in and he spent the week with us.

Needless to say it was amazing. He was chill and we snuggled with him a lot (that's him taking his paw and resting it on Mae's foot unprompted while she stood there, like he wanted to hold her hand) and Mae fed him at breakfast and I fed him at lunch and we took tons of walks with him...

And then we left for a little too long and he tore up the recycles trying to get after the empty box of chicken broth which still had some remnants on it. (Uncle Brian took that photo. He just thought it was hilarious that dad had to clean up such a mess).

And when we found him he was like this... just chilling in his bed with an empty beer can in his mouth. Good to know Buddy can sit back and enjoy the Summer with a cold one too.

End of Summer Fun

So the Summer is wrapping up and we've been having a ton of fun. Here are a couple snapshots:

Went out to Soph's house and went to her neighborhood festival, then had an awesome sleepover.

All this while Sid and Pax hung out with mom and dad at the Renegade Art Fair. This is the scene of the crime where Pax picked up a wad of already-been-chewed gum and proceeded to chomp on it for a bit. Yah, he's gross.

Been making a habit of waking Pax up by jumping into his bed and playing animals with him. Preeeeeeety sure it's one of the best parts of his day.

All three of us take swimming lessons on Sunday mornings and then the ritual is to head up to Dinkel's Donuts on Lincoln Ave., snag some donuts and sit on the sidewalk and eat them.

And then apparently Pax decided he didn't want to wear pants, so there's that.

Mae's New Friend

So we made our annual trip to the Dog Show last Sunday and it was quite the occasion. As usual, we made the rounds and saw all the dogs but with one in particular made a long-lasting friendship, or at least Mae did.

It started with a simple hello, the usual dog sniff of the hand.

Then he said he wanted to tell Mae a secret so she gave him her ear and, well, he took it.

And then he fell in love with Mae and things got out of hand.

And then, well, nothing. He went into some fake grass area and ran around in a circle. Mae said goodbye and told him we'd write.

Oh, and one more thing - has anyone seen the Summer? I'm pretty much ready for the pool.

New Pictures

Summer Lovin

Well, Summer is definitely on its way out and I thought I'd give you an update of what's going on in our house lately.

There's been some time spent on the potty...

Some time eating chocolate...

Mae's still doing her thing at the kitchen table...

And on the floor...

It's still nice enough to be outside, so that's been fun...

A little more time spent on the potty...

Yes, I know my underwear is on in the photos where you see me sitting on the potty... don't worry about it - I'm employing a new strategy to this whole potty-training thing.

Oh, and Mae is climbing all over God's creation. Here you can see she has climbed the water bottles...

And not quite sure about how to dismount.

So that's that at the Skertich household. I've got all my opposites down, I've got all the sounds of letters down, I'm counting to 50 and beyond, and Mensa called but I told them I'm a little busy right now eating some grapes so they should call back later.