Beautiful beautiful beautiful. Beautiful girl.

Our dear, dear friend Jessica (aka Aunt Jessie, owner of "Aunt Jessie's White Car" as Lyla so fondly and frequently pointed out as we drove in said car while in San Diego) snapped these lovely pictures of Lyla during Jenny and Shane's wedding reception.

Thank you Jessie for taking such beautiful pictures of our daughter.

I love Bay View!!

I wanted to post more pictures from our trip. I love Bay View, our time there was great... a little emotionally overwhelming due to how much BV means in my life, my desires for it's continued importance in Katherine's and Lyla's lives, the need to coordinate between many interested people to invest in BV's future, the amount of work, time and money needed to restore/expand for growing families (our house in BV was built in 1896... that's old). Those are a few of the emotional threads that defined our trip. But I would not trade time spent there for anything.
Here are pictures:

The Schalk children and me tromping around the backyard:
Family portrait:
Lyla thinking about crawling (cute shirt Lyla!! thanks J.W.!!):
Lyla practicing standing (and giving Dad an opportunity to showcase the living room):


Lyla helping dad work:

Lyla's bathtub didn't fit in the car so we improvised:
Mmmm... carrots.... hrrummpphh. not enough teeth. dang it!
Lyla, all tuckered out after a walk:

Visiting Kevin's other family (on the left is my Aunt Natalie, she's my maternal grandmother's sister and thus my grandaunt. She and her husband, Uncle Homer, bought their house in BV in 1973 which is one block away from ours. On the right is my Aunt Hope, Natalie's daughter, my mom's cousin, my first cousin once removed and Godmother). I was really excited for Lyla to meet them because they're the closest living relatives to Lyla's grandmother and great-grandmother.


Yay Bay View!!!

Off to Bay View

We're heading up to Bay View in a couple hours. Bay View is a community in northern Michigan that my grandparents bought a house in back in 1975. I spent every summer there from birth until the age of 16 and it's one of those childhood places that when I go back to I get an overwhelming feeling of being home. I'm really excited to take Lyla up there because of how much Bay View means to our family and all the great memories we have there. I really hope that it can be as special in her life as it's been in mine. We'll be there today through the following weekend so it will be a long trip. Yea Michigan summers!!!!