Mike's home for a visit

The weekend of June 25th, we headed down to Richmond to see Mike. He was on a pass from his current deployment in Afghanistan. I just went through all of my pictures and realized I don't have one single picture of him! That's terrible! I blame it on my illness, I was super sick when we went down there, but I wasn't going to miss seeing him! We all hung out and had lunch and some dessert then let the kids play in the yard with Aunt Jen's new sprinkler toy. Allison adores spending time with her big cousins and it's funny how they all pair off to play with each other. Allison and Jessica are definitely a dynamic duo who in the future will see lots of trouble together. Thank goodness we have Natalie and John to monitor their "great ideas!" We did have some anxiety of seeing Mike and wondering if he would be "different", best thing about him is he was exactly the same. No change! I'm sure the issues and challenges he has faced in Afghanistan has impacted him but when it comes to family he was good ol Mike. Which was very comforting! It was nice to see Jen and the boys finally complete with Mike around. It has been a tough and long deployment for all of them, but hopefully his time abroad is winding down by now. His sacrifice is greatly appreciated and respected.

Red Sox Game

Midway through our crud, Brent and I made our annual pilgrimage to see the Red Sox. Usually we head north up to Baltimore, but this year we were lucky enough to get tickets for Nationals Park. I took the metro into the city--after taking out my driver's side window, nice, and met Brent at his office. Then we went down to meet Brent's brother, Steve and his wife Misti. After a nasty bout of traffic (the Booker's are know not to have any patience especially when it comes to traffic!) we parked our car and headed into the ballpark. Brent and I had never been there before and we were quite impressed with the festive atmosphere! It's hard to beat Fenway, but it's a really nice stadium. The Red Sox beat the Nationals, it was close to start but by the 3rd inning Big Papi was back in form and it a 3 run homer. Sweet!


Unfortunately when I woke up the next morning, I felt as if I had been hit by a bus and that my chest felt it was in a vice. Start round 2 of the crud.........but the Sox won and Papelbon got the save! Go Sox!

The Zoo

We went to the zoo with our friends Luli, Fiona and Jen back in June. This was before the illness marathon. Looking back, I wasn't feeling 100% at the zoo, so that was definitely the beginning of the crud.
The girls had a wonderful time at the zoo and it was nice for Jen and I to spend some time catching up on all of the latest details.
Jen is a much better blogger than myself and actually I can't remember all the details of our zoo trip, so check out her blog and the scoop on our trip. Her blog is familia santiago!

Crud, crud and more crud

The Booker's were hit hard with a nasty bout of springtime yuckies. It all started with Allison's runny nose and cough. These symptoms later turned into a fever and then she decided to share with Mommy and Daddy. Mommy was then lucky enough to pick up strep throat that was just too much fun to keep to herself so she passed it along to Daddy. Then Daddy was having too much fun with strep that he decided to up the game and get the flu. Daddy then shared the flu with Allison and last but not least Mommy. We kept the Minute Clinic in business! And our pediatrician! Looking back on June, I just remember fever, reality TV and Tylenol every four hours. What a blast.....It honestly took us a month to eradicate the bugs and viruses. Now we will be more selective with our sharing!