The world's largest pipe-wrench?

Cooper loves it when anyone comes to fix things at the house (and at 137 years old, that's relatively often!!). I had been asking the people that do things to our steam boiler to come and check the valves since we had the leak early last year (the one that resulted in a complete new bathroom with not much thanks to insurance as they said we should have done more 'preventive maintenance'), and to investigate the loud banging noises inside the boiler and radiators for about 4 years. I finally decided to phone them every day until they came and made it very clear to them that it needed to be done before hunting season when half the workers in Michigan vanish to the forests for weeks on end. After a couple of weeks Ed and Larry showed up. Along with a few other jobs from my list, they ended up cleaning out and re-packing ALL the valves on all the radiators as all except for possibly a couple had potential for leaks and installed a rather large tap by the boiler for me to drain the sludge out every month or so. Finally, things are much quieter - we'll see if it makes any difference at all in our bills over Winter or not.... We were amazed at the large pipe-wrench they needed to use to install the tap by the boiler - it took two men to lift it and to turn it!

A boy and his favorite mag - JPF

Cooper was quite a sight with the latest issue
of his favorite magazine!

I do believe he was a bit distracted from the task at
hand though.

Sometimes they are like such little adults, eh?

1st day at preschool

Today was Cooper's first day at preschool. He will be going Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9.30-11.30 (no that's not a typo, only 4 hrs a week and I think we both wish it was just a little more!!). The school is Immanuel Lutheran School and is an 8 minute walk up the road (for me that is, it's about a 25 min walk if my small friend is walking home!). There are two other children in his class that we already know from library storytime. Here are the photos.... we think they are very cute.

His teacher Miss Deb came for a home visit the other week - here she is talking with Cooper in his cubby-house which was of course the only room in the entire house that I had not tidied!!

A long and warm Summer (with lots of links to photos)

Well, this is a bit of a long one, so go and get a cup of coffee and make sure you have time to sit and relax so we can have a catch-up! V. x

We have had a lovely long and VERY warm Summer this year. I posted on 8th June just after we got back from England that Summer had arrived and it certainly has stayed with us with lovely hot days ever since. I can't remember when it has been under about 27 deg C (about 80F) and it usually seems to be around the early-mid 30's (and humid!). Sorry I can't upload pics from England as Jamie was using his new camera and they are all a minimum of 3MB each so threaten to crash-out Kodak Gallery. Maybe when he makes a few of them smaller.....??
The weekend after we got back we had our annual church camp-meeting. This goes over 10 days covering 2 weekends and although we don't stay out there we usually go for the weekends and stay nearby at Jamie's colleague George's cabin on the Friday nights for 2-3 nights. Here is a view of the lake the cabin is on - very peaceful (I think I posted a similar photo last year too). As there are thousands of people staying on-site and many more attending the presentations, children's programmes etc there are entire safety teams for security, emergencies etc so as you can see in the photo, Cooper insisted on wearing his own fluorescent safety vest like them a lot of the time we were there. The following weekend Jamie had to work, so we were home and by then it was July!

Over the long 4th July weekend we went up north to Traverse City during the 'Cherry Festival' (Michigan is known for it's cherries). We were there this time last year too but I think next year we'll make it the following weekend as Bay City has some of the best fireworks in Michigan and we always seem to be away. We met up with our friends Gordon & Shelley and had some cool times. The US Air Force 'Blue Angels' did an amazing Air Show and we managed to find a spot not too close to the other 150,000 people watching. Another highlight was of course a visit to Moomer's farm where they make what has recently been voted the best ice-cream in America. Here are some pics of the weekend..... The hotel we stay in conveniently has a toy shop inside it and a small person we know just NEEDED to have a policeman costume! Here he is when we got home. Despite it being very, very hot all week, the costume only came off for bedtime for many days and everyone around town here was quite amused.
Once we got back it was time for Maria's annual visit which kicked off with the American Cancer Society fund-raising cruise that we support. This was the 3rd one (see July posts from the last 2 years!) and Maria has managed to be present for them all! The guy that organises it works in Jamie's department and his main fund-raising idea this year was to get people to sponsor him (per pound) to loose weight. He lost 66 pounds and raised over $10,000 - his website is http://cuttingcaloriesforcancer.com/ and he has quite an entertaining blog there too. he has just launched into phase 2 to loose another 50 before next year. Here are the photos I took (again, Jamie took heaps more as well including this one of Maria and I with Cooper and his friend Josh). As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Great Lakes Tall Ships Fleet was visiting. The local band playing on board was "Under Advisement" which is made up of four lawyers, the Chief District Court judge and an operating engineer. They couldn't decide on a name, so they followed the lead of the judge when he can't decide, and...took it 'under advisement'. They play mostly classic vinyl and a few songs recorded after 1979. For some reason they just crack me up and thankfully this year the volume was a little more controlled than last year. It's also a bit weird to read in the newspaper "Chief District Court Judge Timothy J Kelly said...." when the only times I've ever seen him is singing into a microphone with his sunglasses on! As you can see in the pics Cooper and Bella enjoyed being part of the mix with them to the amusement of the other people rocking along on the dance floor! Here is a pic of when the ships were in - Cooper and I were standing up near the main bridge into Bay City and if you click on it and look closely you can see Maria riding a bike down below!
Towards the end of Maria's 3 weeks we had 4 days at Berkley which included some highlights such as shopping at Somerset Mall and visiting the Detroit Zoo. As you will see in these photos at the zoo on Kodak, Cooper's friend Elana met us there. Here is my small friend helping me clean the Berkley house!

In mid-August, Cooper and I had a day-trip with some friends up to Camp au Sable which is a nature & wildlife preserve owned by the church here in Michigan. I hadn't been there in Summer, only in Winter before Cooper was born (see post from about Feb 2006). There are cabins where you can stay and a big log-cabin lodge. Jamie used to go there for Summer camp when he was a boy so it was kind of cool to take Cooper here. It ended up being another scorcher of a day but none of us had thought to bring swimming things so the children went in with their clothes on! Some of the photos are here

Cooper's friend Elana and her parents came to stay the following weekend (Aug 21st) and we had a lovely time. Sheila had just finished her radiotherapy (which was preceded by chemo and surgery) so we wanted her to get some rest and relaxation which according to her blog, was achieved! Here are Cooper and Elana at around 9.30pm having a snack of strawberries in his little house outside.

In August Cooper also started gymnastics which he is really loving. Here are some pics from his 2nd session of the 3 he went to. We've just booked him in for the next term which is once a week for 9 weeks.

Each year our church puts on a Vacation Bible School (VBS) for local children. For many of them it ends up being the highlight of their Summer holiday and they talk about it all year whenever you see them (most are people's grandchildren or friends of friends) and families plan their vacations away to make sure they will be back in time to come along. Thankfully I wasn't running it this year which I seem to have ended up doing by default the last 2 years. Cooper loved it although by the concert on Thursday night he was rather exhausted. The photos here are mainly of the singing, but they had other activities, treasure hunts, outdoor games etc.

Following that, Jamie had the weekend as well as Friday and Monday off and we went to stay at Berkley again (Maria, we missed you!!) and managed to fit in a lot of events. On the way there on Friday we stopped for The Wiggles concert. It was very cool and the three of us all enjoyed it! Here are some of the pictures.... Cooper was going to wear his Captain Feathersword outfit but got a bit shy at the last moment so ended up wearing an interesting combination of his orange VBS t-shirt from that morning with the Captain Feathersword pants!
We caught up with several good friends over the weekend and had some delicious meals including European Raclettes at the Toppenbergs (Margit is from Austria) and the best Indian food I've ever had in the USA at the Shah's (I rationed the leftovers they gave us to take home for about 5 days!). Cooper had a great time as both families have each have 2 boys close to his age. (Comment in the car "I'm so excited to go and play as they will have lots and lots of boy-toys").
On Sunday, our church pastor Jeff and his fiancée Stephanie who stayed with us every weekend we were home between the beginning of November and the end of May got married. It was a really hot day and we were grateful for time between the wedding and reception to stop for some iced frappe drinks at a nearby Starbucks! Here is a pic from the wedding for those of you who have met them, there were about 20 (or more) people in the wedding party and the bridesmaids etc wore a turquoise-blue. You may be able to link to some better pictures here on their photographer's site. This was the 2nd wedding we have attended within a month but we still didn't manage to get the 3 of us in a photo together so here is one of each of us with shy-guy in his suit! The wedding couple had an engagement photo-shoot back in May and it was interesting that photos of them in different places around our house appeared in both the invitation (the staircase shot here) and also in the wedding programme!

The final day of our long weekend at Berkley was doing chores around the Berkley house, having new blinds installed there and then dinner with friends Sam & Mark and their two boys before heading for home. On the way home Cooper was reading 'Go Dog, Go' and as it was getting darker we heard a voice from the back seat say "hey, I need some light back here", we tried to explain that we weren't going to turn any light on as it is more difficult to drive with lights on inside the car, when 'bang' the book was lifted up to turn on the ceiling light-switch and we heard an exclamation of "ah, that's better". Jamie asked for Cooper to read us some of the book and the reply came back 'no, I'm done reading, this is my com-pewn-ter (ie computer) now' (the book was sideways and he was typing on it); Jamie asked something about it to which the reply was "Daddy, don't tell me any questions when I'm online"!!

So, a busy Summer which has zoomed by, especially August. And then a big week this week just gone with the beginning of preschool on Thursday! I'll do a separate post about that (actually by the time you read this you probably will have read that first as these things post up in date order!).

(PS added Sept 8th: If you include the 1st day at preschool, there should be 8 different kodak-gallery photo albums to check out!)