Lukey turns 7! (and some cat pictures)

Anna and Lukey sometimes request that we take pictures of the cats.  They're right.  We need to take more pictures of these guys.  They're pretty nice.

He is cat perfection!

Stunning.

The weekend before his birthday, Luke invited family over to eat cake with him to celebrate.  He designed his cake himself.  It had cookie dough, sprinkles and gummy bears.  It was actually really good other than the gummy bear part.  On his actual birthday we celebrated with just the 4 of us going out to dinner at Luke's choice of Buffalo Wild Wings.  

The next day, Luke had a party with friends at a bowling alley.  This was the first friends party he had.  He had a lot of fun.  There were 17 kids there so it was a little exhausting but it was worth it for Lukey because he's so special.  

Haha.  I'm noticing now that I'm looking at this picture that Luke's friend, Charlie is handing him a bag with most likely the present he got for him. I think we used that same bag to give Charlie a gift the next week.  Oops.  Oh well.  It was a nice bag.

We tried to politely get Jakob to not crash this family photo but ended up letting him in.  Afterwards, we distracted him then took another photo sans Jakob.

Back to School and Frankenmuth

The kids were so excited to go back to school.  So far so good.  Anna really likes kindergarten and Lukey seems to really like first grade.  Anna was excited to dress fancy for her first day of school. She's been talking about wearing the same dress for picture day this week.  

Last weekend we went to Frankenmuth to celebrate Pa Bob's birthday and to eat chicken.  We left plenty of room for Uncle Ben in this picture because he couldn't make it.  

Cats and cider

Oliver and Chester and Tilly.  They all got along after a few days.

Cider mill with cousins.

Flowers

This spring Tim did the wonderful task of removing our ugly bushes in the  front of the house.  We needed something to replace them so we planted a bunch of flowers.  They lasted all summer and still look great.  We took some pictures to remember them.

Tilly the cat

We got a watch Leah and Juliet's cat, Matildo while they were in Chicago.  He was a great houseguest.  The kids still talk about little Tilly all the time.  He liked to play piano.

Boulder

Last weekend, Tim and I went to Boulder for 2 nights.  It was a lovely place.  We mostly walked around and drank beer.  It was kind of a waste to take the camera because I barely took any pictures.  That's okay though.  The kids stayed in Michigan with grandparents.  They had a lot of fun.

I think this was a deer.  I might have had horns.  

Prairie dogs are very common to see.  

Lukey's first swim season

This summer Lukey joined the Colony swim team.  He did a great job!  Yesterday was the league meet (I didn't take any pictures of the league meet, all the pics were from dual meets) and he won all of his heats and got his best time in his 25 freestyle.  Tim looked at the best times for the whole league from the season and he got the best time of any 6 year old in freestyle by about 2 seconds.  He loved being on the team and had a lot of fun with the kids.

Anna was pretty good about coming to all the meets and practices (because Luke had perfect attendance) without complaining too much.  It will be nice when she's on the team next year though because sometimes she got a little needy.

The big kids hung out after their practices to help the little kids at practice and were great about cheering for them and helping them.

Luke's starts got a lot better throughout the season.  Even yesterday after it was all over, he continued to practice starts in the diving well after the banquet with some of his friends and do races.   

For most meets, Luke swam a 25 free, 25 backstroke and free relay.  The first time he found out he'd be doing backstroke he started crying because he was scared he'd run into the wall.  He soon got over his fear and started liking backstroke.

All the 8 and under kids swam the free relay.  Eliana was in his relay for a lot of the meets.  These two were pretty crazy together!  They had a lot of fun!

At their meet at Northville, there was a dance party after the relay!  It was a great idea!

At our last home meet, kids that aren't on the swim team yet got to swim in a heat.  Anna agreed to swim!  She was with her friends James, Charlie and Calleigh.  

Lukey swam right before Anna's big event.

She said that she would not go off the blocks.  I told her that was totally fine and she could get in on the side.  We were all surprised when she went off the blocks!!  She was in lane 4.  You can tell from this picture that she took off a few seconds after the rest of the kids.  But, she did it!

She did great!

They gave all the participants of this event a freeze pop and a ribbon.

I swam too in a parents relay.