July 4th

At the end of June, Ella and I headed to Orlando for the annual Society of Actuaries Health Meeting. Yes, it was as exciting as it sounds. My mom met us there and watched Ella. It was a nice hotel and nice to see my mom again. That made it 4 months in a row I got to see my mom! I somehow did not manage to get any pictures of my mom or myself or Ella in Florida but I did catch some lightening and fireworks from our balcony.


Brad and I spent another holiday apart this year. Ella and I were in Dominican Republic and Brad went camping with Hal for the 4th of July. Here are some pictures of Brad's trip (they were roughing it in Hal's RV watching movies on Netflix):




In the DR Ella had a great time with her cousins Adeline and Darton. We were also able to go with them to their 20 week ultrasound where they found out they're having a boy! It was pretty fun since I have never seen an ultrasound besides Ella's.
My brother gave of a tour of the gold mine where he works. On the drive up there we followed a truck which had a set of guys along to hold up the power lines that were too low:


Bikes like this are everywhere:





On the back side of the mine is a very small village which had one piece of wire tacked to a poll for it's electricity:


To get to other towns the villagers had to cross a river which had no bridge so my brother helped plan and design this one for them (on the right, not a good picture):


Here's their Clomado which is the Dominican version of 7-11 (and which I'm sure is not spelled right).


This lady really wanted me to take her picture and thought it was funny when I showed it to her:


Here's the building where they do their cooking


And here's almost all the contents of the "store"


The next day we spent at the Arboretum




We never could get a good picture of all three of them together





For the weekend we went 3.5 hours north east and stayed at a nice place near the beach (Ella LOVED the water)





We had a beautiful dinner by the beach







This picture of Ella cracks me up




Man these are UGLY sunglasses!

Catch Up

Before Ella and I headed to Florida and the Domincan Republic we spent an afternoon at the Farmer's Market downtown. Ella had fun waving to the doggies and smelling the flowers.









Then we went to Quest to say high to Uncle Mike



I'll post more about our trips soon...

Dad's Latest Adventures

I figured Father's Day would be an appropriate time to give a summary of Brad's week. Last weekend he went dirt biking with a friend and ended up spraining his ankle. By Sunday morning he couldn't walk on it so we found a friend who had some crutches he could borrow for a couple days until he could walk on it again. He still limps a little but it's much better. Then on Wed he came home from work feeling sick, went straight to bed and I didn't see him again until morning. Then on Friday he was in the garage working on a new rack for his dirt bike which involved grinding metal. I was upstairs when he walked in with this annoyed look on his face and said he had a piece of metal in his eye. He was even wearing his goggles (I saw them on before I went upstairs). He tried some more to get it out in the mirror and then I called the nurse hot line who said to hang up and call 911 right away. Ella was asleep and Brad didn't want me to wake her up so he insisted on driving himself to the ER. Thankfully he made it there and back safe and sound and they were able to get the piece out of his eye. He was fine as soon as he got home, I am so thankful to God for preserving his eye!

Anyway, on Friday he also went for a ride with our neighbor in his plane. He snapped some nice pictures.





Here's a picture from his trip to Seattle over Memorial Day