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My parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago and together with my siblings we decided to surprise them with an architectural river cruise downtown Chicago. It rained most of our cruise which meant we huddled together on the lower deck but it was still awesome to have the gang back together with Auntie Katy; my lil' sis, getting special props for flying in from Virginia for the occasion.  I'll take any excuse to see her! It was also Miss Annikah Joy's 7th birthday so we finally drank the koolaid/went to the dark side and allowed her to use her hard earned and saved stash of cash to buy an American Girl Doll. (Full disclosure: I love the books when I was a kid and always wanted a doll but never got one but I gotta say the store where you can pay billion of dollars to get your doll's hair done sorta makes me want to puke in my mouth a little.) We are planning on doing this in moderation fo' sure.  But her Molly doll has been a serious highlight of her life thus far and the daily clothes changes and reading the books shows no sign of stopping.

After our day downtown and some obligatory Mexican food we all headed to Lake Geneva and enjoyed the last of the summer weekends. It was great to spend time with family and celebrate Annikah and my parents.


paying with her stash-o-cash

the ladies

the rain (and the fact that we had nonrefundable tickets) did not stop us from getting our cruise on






I miss my sister! sniff.

and I love Chicago...even in the rain

Congrats on 40 years Mom & Dad! We love you!

The whole gang.
And the following are tubin' with Auntie Katy (did I mention we adore her?) pics that make me happy....
because when they are all having so much fun each picture how can I pick just one?
Here is to saying goodbye to the days of summer. We went out with a bang!