Family Time, Heat & a Big Birthday!

I want to start out by wishing our daughter a Happy 1st Birthday! We cannot believe that it has been a year since she was born! She is growing up so fast and reaching a lot of milestones and it is a lot of fun to have her around and watching her grow up. We won't actually have her birthday party until Friday, but we were able to get a free cake from Byerly's yesterday (her birthday) and share it with some family. One good thing is that we have more family around right now. The sad part about it is that Shannon's grandma passed away last week. She was 98 years old and had a wonderful life with a wonderful family. She was a faithful Christian servant and she will be missed. Shannon's brother, Chris, and his family traveled all the way from Colorado. He preached at the funeral and did a wonderful job. Shannon and her sisters and a couple of her cousins sang a couple songs and it was beautiful.

It is great to have the extra family around, but I feel bad for them coming in from out of town when it is so miserable here in Minnesota. We are going through a terrible heat wave. I walked out of the house on Sunday to walk to church and just about passed out! I thought at the time that this was about the worst humidity that I had ever felt and, sure enough, I found out later that the dew point for that day was tied for the worst in the Twin Cities' history. Of course we had to do a little better than that; so yesterday, the day of the funeral and Ava's birthday, we broke the record for the worst dew point in TC's history! I checked my phone at one point during the day and saw that the heat index was 122 degrees! And today is supposed to be about the same if not worse!! I told some relatives from Florida that they better fly back quickly to escape this Minnesota heat.

Ava with her cousin Caleb


Jack with his cousin Connor. These two are inseparable when they are together!


Ava having a fun time with her Byerly's cake