Grandparents!

Lilie's Nana and Papa visited from Texas!  Lilie bounced up and down for about five minutes when I told her a few days before they arrived.

We picked her up from daycare and spent the next two very hot days hanging around the house and catching up.  Apparently Lilie was really looking forward to the fireworks on July 4th.  We were about ten minutes into the show when she gushed, "This is exactly how I wanted it to be!!"

Here are the photos:

Liliana grabbed the camera at one point.

...which explains some of the composition...

...and camera angles.

Pretty impressive self-pic, right?

We're thinking of giving her photography lessons, or a book, for her birthday ;)

She knows how to work with her subjects, though!

I'm sparing you - there were literally a dozen pics of Nemo.

And about that many pics of our living room. 

Loving on Papa.

It was indeed bright outside, but still...

...a pirate face *every time*?

We spent part of one day outside, believe it or not.

With shade, a sprinkler and popsicles, it wasn't that bad.

Liliana loved the water.

She shared it with the plants that weren't in range of her sprinkler toy.

Helping with breakfast...

The daily pattern: breakfast in back, afternoon in front.

Lilie wanted to prepare for the sprinkler.

Fireworks over Wentzville

Snuggled with her grandparents.

Papa let Lilie ride in "the big girls' seat" - from beside the mailbox to the driveway.

Post-visit coma

 Lilie did amazingly well with Nana and Papa's departure.  I was sure she would be a mess, but she took it in stride.  We had some lunch and then headed out on some errands.  Lilie insisted that Katie carry her at one point in Walmart.  The next thing we knew, she was asleep - during the middle of a shopping trip!  Try as we might to wake her, Lilie was all the way out for the next four hours!  You can tell she poured all of her energy into enjoying her grandparents while they were here.

Dad brought up some negatives from back in the day (okay, the 1970s and 1980s).  I had scanned a few family photographs once before; now I have five notebooks full of negatives to work with.  It's going to be interesting!  Here's an example - I'm on the left in this photo from a judo tournament in December 1981:

I'm looking forward to unearthing lots of family memories.

Thanks Nana and Papa!  We had a blast.