M. Sullivan Photography

June 27, 2012June 27, 2012 M. Sullivan Photography Family, Photos, Weather

Piercing, Boating And Flooding

It’s been a wild couple of weeks. We celebrated Sophia’s birthday nearly two weeks ago, spent a weekend at Mike’s parents’ lake cabin and experienced flooding in our city and neighboring towns.

I will begin with the birthday girl who has been begging to have her ears pierced for the past two years. We finally gave in and took her to mall to on her birthday to have it done. It rained the entire day so it was actually nice to be indoors. We also did a little shopping while we were there which Sebastian benefited from. He loves his new Nike shoes. 🙂

Here’s the birthday girl after the first ear was done, but before the second one was finished. You can tell by her face that it hurt, but she was brave and didn’t cry.

Here she is after arriving home from having her ears pierced.

We spent Father’s Day weekend at the Sullivan cabin boating, enjoying the warm weather and the lake.

We have had our share of precipitation this year. We had a big snowstorm in March and many, many inches of rain this spring. We welcomed summer with over 10 inches of rain in a 24 hour period on Tuesday-Wednesday last week. Our house came through it okay, just a little water in our garage and laundry room and a small area of damp carpet in the family room. Others we know have had extensive damage with several feet in their basements and also friends in Superior with 3 feet of water on their main floor and over $100,000 in damage. Some roads have considerable damage, others are perfectly fine.

Here’s how it all started.

We ventured out in the afternoon after the water had receded a bit on Wednesday. Here’s a look at our neighborhood.

Below is the road that Sophia’s friend lives on. She was at Sophia’s birthday party just two weeks ago. Now they can’t drive out of their driveway. Photo from MPR website.

We didn’t have any damage at either of our workplaces and feel very fortunate to have come through the flooding with no damage at our home as well. We know many others that have a long road of clean up and rebuilding. Please keep them in your thoughts.

June 12, 2012June 12, 2012 M. Sullivan Photography Family, Photos

A STRIKE-ing Success

Sophia celebrated her 8th birthday early with a “friends” party on Sunday. The party was held at a local bowling alley. They bowled, ate pizza & cupcakes and played in the game room.

Her friends autographed a retired bowling pin for her to take home.

They played cosmic bowling with the music up high and the lights down low. Not great for pictures, but lots of fun.

The bowling scores were not that of league material, but no one cared including the birthday girl who had a 59.

Earlier in the day we baked bowling pin shaped sugar cookies. We frosted them with white chocolate and added red licorice to finish them off. We also made a few bowling balls frosted with semi-sweet chocolate and added Life Savers for finger holes.

They posed for one more goofy photo after Sophia finished opening her gifts.

The kids had a great time. Mike and I enjoyed watching the fun. The best part of the day was packing up and leaving the mess behind. Well, maybe not the best part, but you could say it was the “icing on the cake”.

June 11, 2012 M. Sullivan Photography Family, Photos, School

Recap

A quick recap of the past few weeks.

Mike chaperoned Sophia’s school field trip to the Lake Superior Zoo.

We went to the Sullivan cabin over Memorial Day weekend. The weather was cool and somewhat rainy, but that didn’t stop Sebastian from christening the swim season by jumping in the lake. With the air temperature in the low 60’s and the water temperature even lower, he didn’t stay in the water long.

Sebastian spent a day in the Twin Cities for his class field trip. They visited the Children’s Museum and History Center. He was very excited to enjoy the day riding in style. They took coach buses instead of school buses. It may have been the highlight of the day. No pictures, he opted not to take a camera with. The boy travels light.

Sophia finished the school year with a picnic at Chester Park. The kids played, hiked and enjoyed picnic foods for lunch. I stopped by for a bit to check out the fun.

I celebrated my birthday at the beginning of June. Mike and I took the day off from work and enjoyed most of the day outside on the deck. We did have to do a couple of errands in the morning. I renewed my driver’s license – nothing like waiting until the last minute. We also had to go to the grocery store. Mike informed me that for his birthday, he doesn’t want to spend time doing either of those things.

Sebastian’s class had root beer floats to finish off the school year. They also spent time signing each other’s yearbooks.

Sebastian headed to the bus stop for his last day of elementary school. He barely stopped for me to take a picture. He will be going to the new middle school in the fall.