Fourth of July

We enjoyed our Fourth of July tradition again in Wheaton, Illinois visiting AJ's sister. The little town has many festivities over the weekend but we mainly look forward to the parade.

However it started out with loud fire engines and sirens so it woke Lincoln up and Evangeline didn't like it since she was already nervous about loud noises. (notice the earmuffs-she sleeps in them during storms even)

But it was still fun and the kids picked up lots of candy.

This year Erin took us to a new park and pool. It was nice to have a shallow pool with a zero entry that way all the kids could play on their own.

 But after a while they were cold and ready for some pizza.

This park had a zipline, how fun!

The kids requested to come back to this same park one more time before leaving so they could do the zipline again.

They also enjoyed this gigantic hill...walking up and running down over and over again.

And of course we had to get a cousin picture. They love hanging with Owen so much!

4 months {Lincoln}

Little man is getting so big these days. He still eats every four hours and usually wakes up once through the night. He did have 3 nights in a row of making it 12 hours, but then we went out of town for a weekend and it threw him for a loop and woke up EVERY hour. So...once we got back home I figured waking up once was fine for me. I'm sure he could go all night but that seems to be more work at the moment :) 

I was surprised to see that he dropped down from the 25 percentile to the 15 percentile, even though he gained 2 lbs since his last check up. He is a whopping 12 lbs 10 oz now :)

He also grew 2 inches in the last 2 months which is keeping him in the 75 percentile for length.

He still gives the greatest looks. Those eyebrows are all over the place.

And he absolutely loves to chew on his hand. What?! He is our first drool-er and also our first to suck on his fingers. Actually...you have to be careful getting too close otherwise he will grab you and stick you in his mouth! Anything goes. (I'm starting to wonder if this is just a preview of what is to come when he starts to crawl *sigh*).

He also loves to cuddle. He prefers to fall asleep in your arms then be transferred to bed. Also a first in our books. He will fall asleep in his car seat and every once in a while in the bouncer, but he definitely prefers to snuggle. But one thing he does when you go to lay him down is grab hold of your hand like a Chinese finger trap. And then holds it ransom for "ONE MILLION DOLLARS". :)

He is getting close to rolling over. And now when he is on the floor he spins around.

I think it's pretty safe to say that he is mostly blonde now. The back is still darker but we will see what happens over time. He seems pretty happy with his new look :)

life has been crazy

We decided to redo our shed back in May. The whole outside was rotted and the doors were falling apart. The project was much bigger than we anticipated (naturally) but with the help of some friends we were able to get it put back together. There are still things left to do on it but other projects came up and had to be addressed. So June quickly turned in to a month of emergency projects. *sigh*

We had a near fire in our dryer duct and since we have already cleaned it out and replaced a part on the dryer it was necessary to replace all of the duct work and the dryer. We went a week without a dryer and during that our dishwasher had been giving us issues as well. AJ had disassembled some of it to try and fix it but that didn't help so we also had to replace our dishwasher.

And of course replacing the duct work didn't come problem-free, but thankfully AJ was able to figure it all out. When our dryer was finally hooked up I was so behind on laundry and planned to catch up on it all the next day. Well the next day came and at 8 am Evangeline informed me that our downstairs toilet was clogged. So I got the plunger and got to work. It wasn't working very well then all of a sudden everything decided to overflow and spew out all over the floor, flooding our dining room, hallway closet, and bathroom. A half inch of standing water came in those rooms in about a minute. AHHH! Our plumber told us that a clogged sewer means any drain could make it come out again so we weren't able to use any of our other drains. What?! Then Ari came to inform me that our basement was wet. What?! So I went down there to find it RAINING sewer water from the bathroom above it. All over our new dryer, the floor, and all of the laundry I was supposed to be doing. Yikes. Evangeline kept saying "This is an emergency!!"

So I called my mom and she came to the rescue. She knew how to clean everything up (it took 7 hours) and it turns out that it was only a one time ordeal so we didn't need to pay for someone to come out and unclog our lines. Phew!!

So in between all of our crazy house ordeals, we managed to sneak in some fun things. AJ has been playing ultimate frisbee and we love to watch him play. We also went to the local Strawberry Festival where the kids got to explore inside a fire truck and ambulance.

They also got to sit in this sweet rumble seat!

We walked over to the playground instead of playing in the crazy bounce houses. Other kids scare me.

Then we were able to let the kids get inside the basket of a hot air balloon. So cool!

And of course this handsome man was along for the ride.

 I love his facial expressions.

We had some friends stay the night and Ari was so sweet with them that morning. He and the little boy were snuggling on the couch and Ari picked his clothes to match his friend's. So sweet.

We finally made it over to the splash park.

It took Selah some time to warm up to the idea but she finally enjoyed some of the smaller sprinklers.

The kids and I took a morning walk one day. This was my view.

And of course I had to put this in there because this is just part of our every day. :) Ok, so she's not normally this messy but enough to keep me busy every meal.

Somehow I was able to get out with some friends for dinner so AJ took the kids to a new park. This was the same day as our toilet flooding and the kids did so well with the whole thing that I told him they deserved something special. They discovered that McDonald's has free kids cones so that was super special.

By the end of all this we were so ready for vacation. June was absolutely crazy but we are so thankful that we had the resources we needed to get everything fixed up. June ended on a happy note with vacation in South Carolina. And that was a great ending to some pretty stressful weeks.