friends and family

As most of you know already, my mom was a great help to us during our vacation. Without her, I'm not sure we would have had clean clothes (she took our laundry home almost every day), let alone a trailer to sleep in! Mom also had sleepovers with the kids pretty much every night we were home - her pop-up trailer was right next to our site. Thank you for EVERYTHING mom!




I was really bad about taking pictures of Jim's family this vacation. I think it's because we spent so much time with them I just figured I would take pics of them later - I don't know...that's a lame excuse, huh? I'll take the blame..... Here is a pic of Ashley and Liv & Ally, Addison and I, Kris and Kammie, and Carol.

Again, Libby Lu's ROCKS!







Jan and I just before our night out. We had so much fun catching up on life...and then there was the pub crawl.....I definately miss downtown GR and all there is to do there.






These next group of photos were taken at Wahlfield Park in Comstock Park. Jim's parents put together an awesome picinic and invited all of our friends and family. This was supposed to alliviate us from traveling place to place to see everyone....well, that didn't work out exactly as planned but it was probably the best we spent back home AND we saw people we probably would not have seen otherwise. Thank you Eckert family!!








Jim and his high school track buddy, Eric.










Um, yeah....this trio is definately trouble! Brian (long time friend of the Eckert family - they go waaay back to diaper days), Jim, and Terry (Jim's brother).









My high school friend, Tracy and I. We used to get into lots of trouble together....just kidding! No, seriously..... " ) I think at least two or three people at the picinic thought she was my sister. Must be the freckles! As beautiful as Tracy is, I took it as a compliment!





Here is Jim with his old "Peidmont" pals. Mark and Christine, with their spouses, Mark and Christine (crazy, right? I know). Mark told Jim he'd hire him on the spot if he could...apparently they just can't get good help in Michigan " ) Jim was flattered by the offer, but we are afraid the Air Force has dibs on Jim for the next few years.




This is just a fun picture of all of the kids playing in the spicket, filling up water balloons and having a ball getting wet and keeping cool (it was like 95 that day.....not a norm for Michigan). It's funny because we are used to the heat and now the humidity that comes along with it. We had to laugh everytime we heard a complaint about the heat. What's the big deal?? " )





Here is Jim's mom and dad at the campsite. Daisy (our dog) was rarely found outside of Gale's arms. It's funny to see such a tiny pip-squeek of a dog in the arms of such a big guy. This picture was taken about an hour prior to the funnel cloud forming RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS! We had no idea there was a storm brewing and when the cold air came barrelling through the only thing we could think of was having to pack everyone into the trailer to eat!



Here's Terry and Cora...Cora is expecting baby #2 on Christmas Day! Terry and Cora were gracious enough to let us stay at thier house on many occasions during our visit home. To express our thanks to them for their awesome hospitatlity we took them out for lunch at my favorite restaraunt, Friday's....and then we did some fun shopping (wink wink)








Here is my awesome grandmother of 99 years, Lida Johnson. Grandma Great has 4 great grandchildren and 5 great great grandchildren. Grandma always tells me about my heritage when I see her. During this visit I was reminded that I am related to one of the past Harrison presidents (she doesn't remember which one, though). Grandma wasn't sure who we were when we first got there, but when she did figure it out, she sure was glad to see us! We haven't seen grandma in about three years. I still can't believe she is 99 years old! Tell me she doesn't look good for 99!!









There's still more pics to be shown! But for some reason it's taking a long time to upload them... so I'll be back at it another day!