Blog? What Blog?

Two truths I have learned this summer. (Well, I hope more than that, but two I will write here.) One, there is a direct correlation between the amount of stain pre-treatment solution I use and how happy my children are. And two, the more a person has to blog about, the less time a person has to blog. I guess that can lead readers to the conclusion that we have had a busy, messy summer. Pretty good way to sum things up.

We are currently in the middle of a move, building a house, and completing various projects for said house. The house isn't quite done yet, but we had to be out of our rental August 15th, so we are kind of in limbo, living in my cousin Brad's basement, but then we decided to take a quick (6-day) visit to my family before summer is really over. Recently I had to get a prescription filled and the technician wanted to verify my address and I technically could have given four, but really none of them were accurate. Needless to say, we (especially the kids) are feeling a bit displaced these days, but lots of support from friends and family has made it all a pretty good adventure.

This has definitely been a summer of cousins. Last June we got a visit from Chelsea and Tyler's family and got to show them around our little town.

Ellie insists on taking anyone who visits during the summer to ride on the merry-go-round and then play at the nearby splash pad. She earns "Abraham Lincolns" (pennies) to go on the carousel, which is a great motivator for her anytime a visit from family is pending.

We also had to show the boys the park closer to home. I absolutely love this shot. Ellie throwing her head back, Ben and Tommy caught in a moment of (ahem) brotherly love, and Jon so diligently looking at the camera.

The whole summer has been one countdown after another; first Tommy will come visit, then Grandma, then we'll go on a trip to see more cousins, then we'll come home, Grandma will come again, then we'll move, then we'll go live at Catie and Carley's house, then we'll move to our new house . . . On the one hand a lot to take in, but also a lot of adventures for a three-year-old to look forward to.

Just as we were getting ready to take off on the big trip of the summer--Colorado for Andrew and Margo's wedding (that's another post), Ellie got sick. Siiiick. Like fever radiating out her feet sick, asking if she can just stay in bed all day sick (!).

Luckily it was just a virus (which Charlie caught a couple days into our trip,  but not as bad) and we only had to postpone one day. In other news, Charlie is learning to be a ham for the camera. Sometimes.

At last we went to Colorado. Ellie had been dreaming of this magical place for months, ever since Brady went there for a conference last April. So we drove, and drove, and drove, and finally reunited with so many cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. Most of us stayed in the same house together.

So many three-year-olds in one house. And babies. Ellie and Charlie were in heaven.

The evening we got there we had a cousin talent show. I mentioned to Ellie a few times beforehand that this would be happening and asked her if she wanted to sing a song or learn a poem or something. She changed her mind every day or so on what she wanted to do, so in the end I never really practiced anything with her in all our preparations for the trip. I think we'd been out of the car for less than an hour when showtime arrived and Ellie enthusiastically volunteered to perform this little number (she takes a bit to get going and mumbles a bit, but really hits her stride by about G or so):


ChickaBoomBoom from Vimeo.

And I had been worried about her being shy around family we hadn't seen in a while. I think we might have a showboat on our hands.

We had some other fun outings with the cousins, only one of which I took pictures:

 Charlie is turning out to be our water baby. He was usually somewhat ambivalent about the splash pad at home, so after a while in the sun I put his shirt back on him. Then, of course, he got soaked, running through the fountains chanting, "water-water-WA-TER---WATERRRR!!!!" Now he will stay in water until he is blue and shaking all over, crying for it as I pull him away to get warm. He was kind of the same way warming up to ice cream when he was smaller.

So we enjoyed all the wedding festivities, but never enough play time with all the family together. Alas, we had to head home to get ready for our move two weeks later. And, boy, were we tired. (Wish I could say they did this the whole way home, but we did get a couple hours of simultaneous napping.)

So then we packed and cleaned and packed and cleaned and packed and cleaned (thanks to Grandma and my niece Gracie for coming to visit a few days and entertain the kids to give us a huge head start). And now we have been waiting and waiting for our house to be ready for us (some our fault--we added the finished basement after building was underway--some not our fault--the city marked some of the utilities wrong and we had a geyser in the front yard when they tried to hook up the water, etc.).

During some of that waiting, before the school year picked up again for Brady, and to give these over-generous cousins a bit of a break from us, we sneaked in another trip to visit more cousins. Not quite as much driving this time, but two-year molars coming in, so kind of a toss up for road trips.

Ellie wanted to go to the zoo again. It's becoming something of a Labor Day weekend tradition, I guess. Charlie was pretty unimpressed with the whole thing, except he really liked the giraffes.

He liked being out and with lots of kids, though.

Ellie's continued plight as "one of the boys." I noticed on this trip how people didn't even bother to distinguish, "the boys and Ellie," anymore. It was just, "go tell the boys to come in for dinner," or "tell the boys to start cleaning up the toys," etc. It was funny. One of these days Ellie is going to catch on and tell the boys that it means she doesn't have to help because Grandma just said "boys."

We did some good swimming.

And some good grooming. Both kids got their first haircuts this summer. Don't worry, we cut less than half an inch off Ellie's, just smoothing out the ends. She still has her curls. I had to have someone else do it, though, just to keep the idea of cutting her own hair far off the radar. I gotta try to keep a step or two ahead of her in at least a few areas ("Who can cut our hair? That's right. Only Emili. Not even Mommy . . .)

Also, Brady caught the fish. Super exciting. He hadn't been fishing since before Ellie was born, just with how busy things were with his internship, moving, dissertation, job hunt and interviews, etc. So, yay for fishing!