Say Goodbye to July

Well.  I took a brief hiatus from blogging and journaling to see if I could finally get some checkmarks on my "projects around the house" To-Do list...

Now one month later, I have several projects kind of started, nothing finished, and a whole bunch of blogging and journaling to catch up on.

Sigh.

I have started some fun stuff though, hopefully soon I can post some finished products and wow you all with my home-makey-ness.  But for now, let's get with some updates!  I have several.  So that's fun.  For starters, here are a few snippets of just the random happenings during July.

It rained (and I mean RAINED!!!) the entire month! We were stuck inside a lot.  We had to get a little creative for entertainment.  Luckily Brinlee has no problem in that department.

Babies change so much so fast! McKenna figured out crawling (more to come on that later) and in the last 2 weeks or so has decided that now crawling isn't enough.  She's pulling herself up to things and trying really hard to figure out the stairs.  Boo. Luckily she only got up 2 stairs before my little spy ran in and tattled on her.  She really is getting big, and wild!  Unless she's asleep she is not at all content sitting still, she's always on the move.  She loves to pull out and play with new toys, loves to get a hold of her sisters hair, loves paper, babbles and "talks" all the time, and she has perfected this really pleasant (read: ear drum shattering) screech that she proudly shows off often.  She loves to dance, loves to cuddle, and I'm pretty sure we're going to claim Mama as her first word.  She is a total mommy's girl and sure seems to know what she means when she makes that sound  :)

We found a sunny day and a rec center pool that will let you swim for 50 cents.  That's our kind of price range right there.  

Brinlee has gotten into bugs a little.  And by a little I mean a very little. She likes bees (from a distance), likes ladybugs, and loves ants.  We spent all spring trying to get to her to not panic every time she saw an ant, so now she crawls around the kitchen floor collecting "ant friends" and giving them names.  I found her in her room the other day with 3 ants trapped inside one of her plastic toy bins.  She was proudly showing them all her stuff and informed me that they love her, they wanted to see her cool room, and their names were Cute, Cutie, and Cutes.  

A couple days ago I pulled a bunch of lettuce in from our garden and with it came a "ladybug friend".  I had a stroke of genius and asked if she thought ladybug would like a home. She was in heaven. Brinlee kept it with her the rest of the day.  She was fascinated, and in love.

We live a block away from an elementary school, which has been nice this summer.  We can run up the street real quick first thing in the morning and get some running around done before it gets hot, and before McKenna is ready for nap.  

Tim's last day of his summer surgery program was on Friday.  Now we get him with nothing scheduled and nowhere to be for one glorious week!  We are all just a little excited about it.

We really are raising some very proper, dainty little girls. Hats off to us, we have obviously got this down.

I'm not very good about home videos, but I did remember to pull the camera out a time or two over the last few weeks.