Colin's 4th Birthday Party

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Tonight, we headed over to DLCnM's house for Colin's 4th birthday party. GnGT were there as well, but Bill and Joni (Colin's other grandparents) are travelling out of town and were not able to make it.

It was fun to see the kids and how active they all are. Maiya is crawling around with ease. Jake, is walking and coming close to running. And Colin, well, he can obviously get anywhere and do anything. He's still pretty good with the littler kids though, which is probably very fun for them.

Glad to be Back

(Please click here for photos from August and here to see our September photographs.)

So, it looks like it's been a month since our last post. Did you miss us? If you did, and you're one of our friends that supposedly has a blog as well, maybe it will give you something to think about!

Our absence was warranted as we had some computer trouble. We had our hard drive crash on us very quickly. I should know better, considering I work with computers all day, but I did NOT have adequate backups. It had been about two months since our last backup, so I had to scramble to recover data. Luckily, I was able to get dotPhoto's download service to function properly so I was able to get all of our photos back. Other than that, we lost a few videos and documents, but nothing as bad as if we had lost all those photos. Now, we have a redundant solution in place along with an easier, and continual backup system running so we shouldn't have to deal with this again. If you do not backup your files, and you care about them at all, I would suggest investing in an external hard drive or an online backup service. Shoot me an e-mail if you would like any suggestions.

In the past month, we have done a ton of things that you'll be able to see in the photos. It would take far too long to describe them all in detail, so just take a look at the photos above and you'll be able to get a pretty good clue about the fun we've been having. The biggest change has been Jake learning to walk. He went from taking about 5 to 10 steps before collapsing one weekend to walking everywhere the following weekend. He can now walk all the way from his classroom to the front doors at day care. He can easily find his way down the aisle at Church to find Michele after we wait outside to hear the bells ring. I've even taken him on a few walks around the block where he's been on his own (he doesn't want any help most of the time) for probably a third of the distance!

Jake has also started eating MUCH better. He's still on some baby food, but mostly it's just to get him to start on the real food that we've made for him. He really likes fruits like cranberries, raisins, grapes, and, as you'll see below, cantaloupe.

Camping 2007

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Last weekend was our annual camping trip. This year, there were a few less people and a lot more rain, but it was still a lot of fun.

The Wegienka clan picked Port Crescent State Park near Port Austin, in the thumb, for our camping trip this summer. It was a very nice campground with a pretty nice beach for Lake Huron. The water felt great for the little time we actually got to spend in it.

We got rained on pretty hard Friday evening and Saturday morning. The rain held off during the night, and, luckily, our new tent held up pretty well and the majority of the water that ended up inside was not from the rain, but from a leaky cooler. Unfortunately, we didn't seem to get any photos of the new tent out in the wild. I guess there's always next year. It was also nice having Kari and Craig's camper there to escape into when the rain got to be too much.

Jake did really well for most of the trip. We could tell that his teeth were still bothering him a bit, but he was a trooper. Jake and Lauren, who is one month older, played really well together. Evan was even great about playing with the little kids too until Colin made it up on Saturday with Lynette. Evan kept calling Jake his "little friend". He also is the first child to make the infamous "Camping Quote Book". On Saturday morning, after all the kids were done with breakfast and already off playing, Evan wandered back to the picnic table. He looked at a bunch of bananas and asked if he could have one. He then proceeded, instead, to grab a powdered donut hole and said, "Thanks for the white banana," and ran off!

2 ER Trips + 1 Zoo Trip = Typical Summer Weekend?

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Yes, Jake got to visit the ER twice on Friday. It started out like any other day. Michele and Jake were killing some time before heading up to Grand Blanc to go to the spray park. They were playing around on the bed, and as usual, after tackling the pillows, Jake likes to play with the monitor. This time, however, the monitor fought back. He enlisted the efforts of the bed and the nightstand and did some damage to our son. Jake was reaching for the monitor, and lost his balance and bumped his head on the nightstand. Normally, it wouldn't be a big deal, just a few tears, and then a few button presses of the monitor later, and he'd be over it. Well, this time, he caught the edge with his forehead right by the eye. It was a bit more than his skin could take, so it decided to split, letting a lot of blood come out in the process. After confirming with Jo that it wasn't ridiculous to go to the ER for the cut, Michele hauled him over to St. Mary's. The doctor agreed that it was good to bring Jake in. Instead of stitches, he just glued the wound closed. Jake, by this time, was playing with his books like nothing had happened.

Fast forward to Friday evening. I was about to leave work to come home. Pete and Teri had come down for dinner since they didn't see Jake and Michele during the day. Right before packing up my notebook, my phone rang. Jake had bumped Michele on the chin. In case you hadn't guessed, it was with the same eye. So, the glue busted open and there was more flowage of blood. The three of them took him back to the ER where the second doctor glued the wound back together, but then also added some steri-strips to help keep it closed. Michele said Jake didn't even cry at all this time, but had a very brave look on his face while the work was being done.

As I stated in the previous post, Michele is getting anxious about the end of summer. She wanted to fit a zoo trip in today, but with the Woodward Dream Cruise in full swing, I didn't think it'd be smart to head to the Detroit Zoo. Instead, we headed South and visited Ohio. We had heard nothing but positive remarks about the Toledo Zoo. It was only a little over an hour away according to Google Maps, so we thought we'd go for it. The zoo was very nice. We decided it was probably cleaner than Detroit, but we also thought the animals were harder to get to, so we've decided we prefer the closer zoo. We had great weather, and it made for a really nice trip. We even bumped into our Tawas relatives, Ericka and Chase who were down visiting the zoo with one of her friends and her daughter.

Trips to the Splash Park

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Since the last post, Jake's been to the Plymouth splash park twice! The first time, Michele took him with GnGT and DLCnM - D. They went a week ago Monday while Dan and I were at work. Both Colin and Jake seemed to have a blast. Then, today, Michele went back to the same park with several of the teachers she works with and their kids. Jo and Elle went along this time too, even thought they don't appear in any of our photos.

Last weekend also brought Jen and Bret into town. Melissa threw a surprise birthday party for her husband Steve. The party was a joint party for Steve and one of his buddies who was also turning 30. After the party, Bret and Jen crashed at our place. We had a fun night with Chinese food, wine, and a couple of old scrapbooks. Then, on Sunday, Melissa and Steve brought Jack over. Jake and Jack really seemed to play well together during the brief time when one or the other wasn't asleep.

Jake has progressed rather quickly from standing to walking. He can take 3 or 4 steps now before he decides to lunge at whatever his target happens to be. He can also stand up without using furniture or anything else to assist him. I think he still gets a bigger kick out of that than the walking itself. Thankfully he's making all this progress now because he returns to day care next week. We don't want them to think we've been stunting his development all summer. Michele feels like this is the last week of summer since next week she'll be returning to school to start getting her classroom in order. I think we're going to try to pack a few more summer events into this weekend. Then, after that, we have a few weekend trips, and she'll be back to school full-time. Don't feel too sorry for her though, she's had a great summer and enjoyed every second spent with Jake (at least the seconds where he wasn't refusing to eat or drink).