Mom sent me this great photo of Dad with his Porsche from around 1965. He bought the car in Germany while stationed there in the Army and had it shipped back to the US when he returned. Great car and great suit, Dad! You’re looking very sharp! This photo was taken in Century, Florida, in 1975, during one of our annual summer visits to Mobile and northern Florida. That’s Debbie on the horse on the left, with our cousin Fran standing by the horse, my uncle Mabry, my grandmother, Mom, and me on the horse on the right. Fun!

Apologies, this is totally biased toward our Chicago readers, though in Australia you undoubtedly have a time advantage considering our Chicago readers (reader?) may already be in bed. What do the objects in this picture have in common? Rather, what story do they tell? My watch is only in there to show the time of day, 10:30pm, and the date, July 14th. The winner gets to take a late night bike ride with John and me on the lakefront, night to be determined. GOOD LUCK!!!  

We went to a performance at Millenium Park today of a theatrical group called Australia’s Strange Fruit. It was so cool. These 4 performers stood on tall poles and swooned all around, with a simple little story about love and some great music to tie it all together. Beautiful! Note to the West family–Thomas would make a fantastic addition to this group if they are looking for a child acrobat / performer. These performers shimmied up the poles to get into position nimbly, and we immediately thought of Thomas’s skills in that area! Liam took this picture of me. As…

We had a couple days of very intense rain last week. The only problem this caused was more general grief for our distressed roof. They still haven’t been around to fix it! Grrr. But the garden looks well with the good watering it got. Look at our oak leaf hydrangea!  We have a “pet” pigeon– a female pigeon who built a nest in the gutter right outside Miles’s window and laid an egg in it before I had a chance to get rid of it. She sits there all the time now. We weren’t sure how the nest would survive…

A great night with Vanessa and Will (who moved here from Sydney and are friends with Colette and Colman) as we caught up with their attempts to come to grips with Chicago over the July 4th weekend.  A couple of questions were answered emphatically, what’s the best tv show for news? No.  How cold does it get in winter? Extremely.  Great night, looking forward to seeing where they settle, ourselves and Margaret (pictured below) tried hard to convince them of the virtues of Wicker Park.  Lots of good fun.

Great fireworks at the lakefront.  Ourselves and the Groves headed down to just at the edge of the lakefront, down near Buckingham Fountain.  The first photo is just before the fireworks set off, the second is off the fireworks themselves.  Great night!

Exciting times at Liam’s soccer match this week, Obama and Michelle turned up, with Barak hanging around for a half hour to watch his daughters game, before heading off.  Funny it seemed like security was a lot lighter than it was when he did the same last year.  A local AP reporter posted a video of the event online, click on the link below and scroll down to read the article! http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/07/02/breaking-barack-obama-is-normal.aspx

Today we got a letter in the mail from the City of Chicago: We were caught on camera running a red light: The letter even encourages us to go online and view the video taken of our car running the red light! We aren’t able to download the video but if you would like to watch it, here are the instructions: go to www.cityofchicago.org/revenue click “View Your Red-Ligh Violation Video” type in our ticket # 7001222018 License plate # 9574240 You’ll have to copy a security code (just like when leaving a message on Colette & Colman’s blog) You may…