Anna's B-day

Anna turned 14 this week. To celebrate, we went go-karting and bumper-boating with some of her friends. Yes, that's Amaya pushing mom into the sprinkler!

Back to School

School started back up this week. Joe is going on the same bus as Anna, which means he has to get up earlier, and that Amaya is on her own later bus now. Lydi was very bummed out to see all of her sibs going away (those are tears in the picture).

Blown away in the Windy City...

Here's some photos from our vacation. We took the train from Toledo to Chicago. The train was awesome! (but the schedule was a little weird) Here's everyone at 4:30 am waiting for the train. After sunrise, we lounged in the 'sky car' and had a snack. It was a luxurious way to travel.

Here's Lydi at Lake Michigan, and Tia Karyn and Ruby and Alli. The water was great. Lydi was full of explorer spirit that day. While the other kids built a sand castle, Lydi and I combed up and down the beach.

Here's Amaya and Joe washing windows outside the Hancock tower - the 2nd tallest building in Chicago.

Here's Linda with 'Sue' the T-rex at the field museum.

We went to the Lego store at Nordstrom's which has life-sized models of Star Wars characters, and 'play stations' where you can build things.
We went to the Navy Pier. We made all of our travels by bus and El-train (that's spanish for "the train").

Joe with Chicago in background at Adler planetarium. The girls went to American Girl store.

We ate vietnamese, indian, italian and junk food, among other things. We had an exhausting, fun, educational, luxurious, sunny, wet time.

Mars Cousin Camp

This weekend the Mars Clan gathered at Mom and Dad's to celebrate Mars-ness. How to describe what happened? Bonding (hung out at Great-Grandma T's), Fun, Exhausting, Explosive (rockets), Competitive (1K cousin race!), fashionable (custom T's!), artsy (Jan brought us clay), campy, tasty (Dan's dutch oven), historical (we visited a local site where a Mastodon was dug up some years ago). We didn't get around to everything we planned, but we sure had a great time on the things we did.

Here's Amaya learning how to throw a tomahawk.

Anna and Sarah singing the Moo song (note Udder milking gestures)...

We attended the sportsfest put on by the Portage County Field and Stream club. Here's Anna nailing a clay pigeon. Anna turned out to be quite the sharp shooter.

Alli making clay sculpture with Tia Janis.

Tio Chris building his rocket. Four rockets are in foreground from other cousins. The lauch was a huge success, and quite entertaining. Aaron got the prize for most surprising launch. The engine in his rocket was not secured, and broke loose. His engine shot straight through the rocket body, knocking off the nose cone, and leaving the rocket on the pad, and shooting off into the sky.

Grandpa surprised everyone with lightsabers, and there was a mass "Clone War", as all of the cousins dueled.

Campers stayed in a city of tents in the back yard.

We dropped in on Grandma T, did a few chores, ate lunch, hung out.