My little sister, Carrie, and her boyfriend travel all over the country for their jobs, working in different cities for several months at a time. This week, between their last gig, in Boston, and their next, in some city in Florida that escapes my mind right now, we got the chance to see them. Such visits are pretty infrequent — we get maybe four a year.

Oliver loves his Aunt Carrie. He has a little photo book and he likes to point at the picture of Carrie and Eli in there. So when the couple showed up in person this week, his face just lit up.

Carrie and Eli watched the boy on Wednesday while we were at work. They even took him to the local school and played on the playground — that is, until the principal kindly asked them to leave (they didn’t realize St. Charles has year-round school, and they didn’t question why there were dozens of kids running around the playground I guess).

Anyway, Carrie and Eli loaded their car back up and left today for their next destination. We’ll see each other on Skype several times over the next few months, for sure, but it’s not the same as being together in person. Next time we see her could be this fall, or maybe even around Christmas. We all look forward to it. In the meantime, below are a couple pictures we shot last night. I wish I had taken more, especially because Oliver’s eyes are closed in the second one. Oh well. Enjoy:

Been behind in my blogging, so this post should catch us up. I’ve been meaning to share some photos from our recent trip to Springfield, Mo., to visit with my parents and grandma Carol. We had just a wonderful time. Below is a slideshow from our day at the Springfield Zoo. Oliver just loves looking at animals. The weather was borderline hot, but at least tolerable. Enjoy:

We spent the Fourth of July weekend in Springfield, Mo., with my parents and my Grandma Carol (who was visiting for a few weeks). What a fun time. I’ll post some more about the visit later, but for now, I’ll share some details about our holiday outing. My parents’ house is just south of town, so we headed out a couple miles to nearby Battlefield, Mo., to watch fireworks.

My mom insisted we get there early, and early it was. I think we had just over two hours to kill before the show started. Oliver spent most of it running, with his head down, back and forth across the sidewalk, through the playground area and in/out of the crowd. It was really tiring chasing him everywhere, and he was extremely stubborn about being redirected back to our spot on the lawn. However, just before the fireworks he was pretty tired, as seen here in this photo taken shortly after we gave him a bottle as he watched the band play:



The fireworks were actually pretty impressive, though the show was a bit short. Honestly, it was one of the better firework displays I’ve seen in my 33 years. While watching, I had my camera and tripod set up to try and capture a few images. Here’s one of the few firework pictures that worked:



After a while, I turned the camera over toward Sarah and Oliver to capture the picture below. It was actually almost pitch black by that point, so I had the camera set to capture as much light as possible. This shot also was aided by the light of the fireworks. Here’s the pic:



Overall, Oliver really seemed to enjoy the fireworks. He sat and stared at them calmly, though it was about two hours past his bedtime. By the end, he had turned around and put his head down on Sarah’s shoulder, but he kept twisting his head around and opening one tired eye to catch a glimpse. It was pretty cute. Next year should be even more exciting, since he’ll be talking and all that fun stuff.

Anyway, to wrap up this post, below is a YouTube video I shot and cleaned up (mostly reducing the darkness). You can tell my mom was enjoying herself, from her enthusiastic, booming voice! Oliver was just calm as could be. Enjoy: