Ben and Linda Bonanza

Ben and Linda came into town from Idaho Falls for a whole week, yay!  Ben presented at the American Nuclear Society's Annual Meeting in Chicago, which worked out great for us as that meant a nice long visit home.  We love having these guys here, it is the best!  Luke loves spending time with his aunt and uncle too.

Before B&L got into town on Friday, on Thursday night we had a last minute visit with the Richardson's as they headed through town again in their summer of travels.  Isabelle gets cuter everytime we see her!  We went to one of our downtown Lake Forest Thursday night concerts and had such a fun evening. 

Luke was very cute with Isabelle, I have visions of them playing together when they're a little older.

Ben and Linda stayed with us over the weekend and we packed in some fun activities, as usual.  On Saturday we had a nice breakfast out, then went to the Botanic Garden (they had never been except in the winter).  After the gardens Luke took a nap while Ben and Matt rented kayaks at the beach and paddled all the way down to Fort Sheridan and back.  Linda, Luke and I met them at the beach for a little while, too.

How many adults does it take to read a bedtime story?  Apparently, three.

"Psst...Daddy, are you sleeping?"

"OK, I'll sleep too."

 On Sunday Donna and Emil hosted a party so that the extended family could get a visit with Ben and Linda. The party was on the day of the Downers Grove local festival, including a pretty extensive car show.  It was SO HOT, but we walked all around the festival and had a great time.  We had to cool off with Luke's first snow cone:)

In Luke news, we have switched up his bedtime routine.  Since we had Dr. Joe Richardson, new dentist extraordinaire, at our house on Thursday we happened to learn that it was not good that we were still allowing Luke to drink milk right before bed.  Our routine was:  bath, milk during books to create milk drowsiness, bed.  Luckily we remedied our mistake before all of his little teeth fell out from the sugar eating them away all night long.  NOW the routine is:  milk during stories, bath, brush teeth, drink of water, books, bed.  He switched the milk order cold turkey, which was good, the bad news is that it extends our bedtime routine by like 10 minutes.

Other than that, what else to report?  Hmmm.  Well, Luke cannot get enough of being outside, seriously he is hardly ever inside.  He also is sort of anti-clothes these days, since the heat had gotten so bad.  He runs around in just his diaper and sun hat every chance he gets. Sometimes he'll let you put a shirt on him, but hardly ever allows shorts and/or shoes without some protest.  In our efforts to help Luke try to talk, Linda suggested helping him sound out words.  So these days before we give him what he is pointing at we try to get him to say at least the first syllable of what he wants (for example "watermelon" = he must try to say "wa").  It is a start, but he really is not interested in saying much.  He has to really want it, otherwise he shakes his head "no" to saying anything and then just gives up on the thing he wanted.

I'll close with a couple videos.  One is of Luke swimming with his new "puddle jumper" water wings.  The other one is of Luke "laughing" to the Hey Diddle Diddle  song again.  It never gets old to me:)

Noodles are more fun out of the water than in!

My first ear of corn.  I LOVED it, and actually ate too much of it (2 whole ears!) and had a stomachache that night.