This is why I have an I-Pass

This is my brother and his family. They live just south of the Wisconsin border in a northern suburb of Chicago, just far enough to go through two toll booths!


Me and Jim, together again to celebrate his birthday at the annual summer pool party he's been hosting at his house for the last six years. I missed the first one because I was in Iraq, but I've been the official photographer for this party now for the last five years!


Jim took this photo of me with his lovely wife, Lisa.


Lisa with Hunter, who also has a June birthday so this is his party too.


Hunter is also an awesome big brother to Ryan and Madison.

Party Central

I can definitely see why they bought this place. It's on a cul-de-sac so it has a huge back yard with a pool and plenty of room for a play area.


I took these pics from on top of the playset at the back of the lawn area, and they still have woods behind here too!


The inside of the house is totally set up for entertaining, and everyone who comes to this party brings something to add to the buffet table here.


Lisa always gets everyone's favorite chicken and pasta catered in from a local restaurant too.


Ok, my debit card gets a workout on these trips too .... this is just what I bought to bring home because we don't have these awesome shops here in Green Bay!

Professional Party Planners at Work

Jim is a lot younger than me, so he still uses an electric leaf blower to clean off the deck. He said he aspires to be like Mark and hopes to soon own a gas-powered model!


Meanwhile Lisa and I are hard at work in the kitchen preparing fresh sangria.


Just for the record, it was Jim's bright idea to use a disposable styrofoam cooler for this concoction.


We found out how well that worked now, didn't we?!?!?


Thank goodness we had a Dippin' Dots cooler from last year that was still clean enough to mix drinks in!

We all scream for ice cream!!!!

The Dippin' Dots were all the rage the last couple years, but the novelty has worn off and I think even these kids realize we're in a recession now. They were perfectly happy with the generic "frozen novelties" from Dominick's this year!








Oh yeah, we had some "adult flavors" of the cold stuff too!

Could they possibly get any cuter?!?!?

At this age the girls are still pretty willing to smile for the camera ...


.... but good luck trying to get a serious shot of the boys!