Family Picnic - 2008

We made it up here to Chicago yesterday afternoon and stopped by Jon & Em's new house on the way. They use to live behind us in Peoria and were transferred to Iowa a year ago and then transferred again just this past month to Chicago. The kids got along great, as if they had never been apart and we didn't end up leaving their house until 9:30pm.

We are now at my mom's house, which is only 15 minutes away from Jon & Em. Today was my yearly family reunion in Indiana. The kids swam all day (while I alternated between playing life guard and swimming myself) and we stuffed ourselves with so much food that it'll be a few days before any of us can eat again.

I have to tell you that I am truly proud of myself. Quite a few of the people at the reunion today were smokers. Even after 7 months, 1 week and 2 days of being a nonsmoker, today wasn't easy. At first it smelled good and many times I thought about how great just one would taste. And how easy it would be to just bum one. No one would ever have known, but I didn't. I just tried to keep my distance from those that were smoking, which wasn't easy since I was able to smell it everywhere. I hung in there and eventually the smell really started to turn me off to the point where I really did NOT want one anymore. I'm really excited that we'll be taking our first smoke free vacation to Florida a week from now. We won't have to worry about where we can and can't smoke at. Our kids will definitely appreciate that the most.

Ryan and myself before leaving for Indiana this morning.

Ashley brought her friend along with us this weekend. They watched a movie on the way to Indiana.

The kids in the back on the right side of the pool are my kids -Ryan's swim lessons are really starting to pay off - he was really starting to swim today!