The Peanut

She's about the size of a peanut...my newest cousin, Stephanie. She wasn't due until this week, but she was born July 13th. She's finally home from the hospital, but still tiny enough to look like a real-life baby doll. In the picture is the proud dad, my Uncle Steve, who is by no means tiny or peanut-like.

Family Round-Up

I'm feeling kind of lazy tonight, so I thought I'd post some pics of the cousins from the latest family gathering in Chicago. With the birth of the newest addition this week, I'm now at 12 younger cousins on my Dad's side.

My grandfather, cousins (from left to right) James, Everett, and Madelynn. Everett can't decide whether he wants to hold his cousin James or stop his cousin Madelynn from messing with his feet.


Braden and Nathan (center) are at an age where all girls, even ones they are related to, suffer from a severe case of cooties. I hope to make a full recovery soon.

James hangs ten.

Fearless explorer.

Teenagers. Pfft.

Everyone Loves a Parade

Ah, the 4th of July. A time to spend with family, celebrating our country's independence. If you're from my family, you celebrate by getting up at 9 am, putting on an outfit of red, white and blue and driving to your Great-Grandmother's house in Niles, Illinois to watch the annual Niles Fourth of July Parade from her front lawn and then enjoy a classy afternoon of Boston Market catering and Bud Light. Here's Michael J. ("the J is for Jackson") Pierski setting up the obligatory red, white and blue lawn chairs for the parade.



The parade approaches...it always includes the marching bands, the clowns, the elected officials in shiny convertibles, the Shriners in their funny hats and bicycles, parade floats, and free candy and mini-American flags. We're Polish, so we love anything cheesy, like the parade, and anything free, like the candy and handouts.

My cousins are, by now, experts at this yearly parade stuff. They're saving their enthusiasm for the good stuff, the parade floats that throw out candy and cheap toys. If you look closely enough, you'll see that just about everyone's wearing the red, white and blue, and two of the girls are even sporting red-and-blue eyeshadow.


Everyone loves a parade...except if you're two years old, like my cousin Madelynn. She mostly preferred to check out the bugs in the grass.

Family Round Up Part 2

The second of some family pictures from the weekend cook-out, this picture basically proves that I have loads of cousins. If you notice that there are two girls pushing that yellow ball in the background, then you'll count 8 in this picture alone. There are 2 more who weren't in this shot but were there as well.