Our new bathroom!

Finally, our downstairs bathroom is complete (well, we still need the trim painted and the fan installed -- almost complete!). We've moved all of our gear into it while the work on our upstairs bathroom goes on. I have a gorgeous white, chocolate brown and blue shower curtain and matching towels but I'm not putting them out until this bathroom returns to being the "guest" bath -- I want to keep the new stuff as clean as possible, and you all know our filthy crew! Today, we found what appeared to be dog poop behind Andy's ear -- how did this happen????

Lunch, Hair Cut and A Fountain!

Today we headed to U. Village to play and get a hair cut! Monica and Elisa joined us for lunch and some fountain fun.
Post-hair cut, the kids were back at the fountain in their diapers!

Memorial Day weekend in Michigan

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Michigan. All of Shawn's family flew in for the weekend, including his sister Risa (from American Samoa) and Uncle Gary's family (from Portland, Oregon), for Grandpa Erkki's memorial. It was wonderful to reconnect with everyone, and for Andy to get a chance to spend time with his Grandma Sirpa, Auntie Risa, Great Grandma Helvi, great uncles and aunt, many cousins and friends! [unfortunately, we got no pictures of much of the family - Sirpa, do you have some??]

Risa and Andy exploring at the lakes near Sirpa's house -- the same lakes that Shawn snorkled as a kid himself!Sirpa's neighborhood is like a park! Shawn and I kept marvelling at how much space there is - in Seattle there would be 40 homes on this piece of grass.
On Sunday, we went to a party for Shawn's Uncle Gary's 50th at Uncle Ray and Aunt Bev's house (& farm). Andy loved feeding the horse and goat!

Ray and Bev also have a trampoline -- perfect for tiring out (or at least starting to tire out) an active boy like Andy!

With cousins Kirsten and Nikki and Oscar the guinea pig!

Gretchen and Chris

Chris & Gretchen's

On our last night in Michigan, we visited Chris and Gretchen's for barbeque and catching up while Andy slept and slept (a 4 hour nap?! Jet lag: a good thing!). Chris and Shawn took the opportunity to jam, but once Andy heard the music from the basement, he wanted to join in! He started with the rain stick (ordering Chris to "play!" when he paused on drums between songs) and then he asked to play the drums himself. Turns out, he's pretty good! He immediately started drumming a constant beat, switching between drums and the cymbals like a pro, and then I heard him softly singing to himself "nothing can go wrong-0, I'm in the Congo, nothing can go wrong-o, I'm in the Congo..." from Raffi's Joshua Giraffe song. That's our little musician!

Peter's visit

Peter was in town just before Memorial Day weekend. We spent a lot of time playing music, as the photos below show! Andy had a ton of fun with "Tito" as we call him (to distinguish from our other Uncle Pete) and is still talking about him...