July blitz!

July has been packed with so much stuff.  Here is a summary of all that happened. But first the kiddie updates...

 Julian labors over his Legos all the time and also loves to build booby traps.  His new favorite word is awesome. He is an awesome builder and builds with his small and big Legos, his blocks, and now his little planet thingies that his uncle Kirk gave him.   

Gretch is doing great at communicating with us and using her words to ask us for what she wants.  A couple of weeks ago she asked daddy "more please" at dinner time.  That was exciting and she has been calling a lot of things by their name.  Gretch she has also been putting pencils and anything else sharp she can find in her ears:(

A few weeks ago we went to the "beach" with some friends and had a blast. 

 Summer is passing so quickly I am afraid it will be gone before I know it but we are trying to take advantage of it while it is here.  We have worked on lots of little projects and have enjoyed getting those things done.  Eating a cucumber a day seems to be our daily custom right now and everything in the garden is getting so big.  So far it has been a really great year.  I made it a goal this year to eat all of our garden veggies or store them so we have tried some new recipes to do that and it is going pretty well.  My favorite so far has been chard raviolis but we have been eating a lot of fajitas (with tomato and bells), stir fry with broccoli, anything with chard or cucumbers, and now lots of blackberries.  I just finished canning a bunch of pickles too.  I feel like we are doing better than usual and am trying to keep up on these veggies and fruits.

Aaron and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary by going to my favorite restaurant on the planet where we just ate a delicious dinner while sitting under beautiful trees and lights and listening to lovely live music.  My favorite part was sitting and just chatting and enjoying our food uninterrupted for hours:) I also loved my gifts from my very thoughtful husband and I am so grateful for the wonderful man that he is:)

We enjoyed taking it easy on the 24th and ate barbecue with Aaron's bros and our sister in law and then spent the evening at the reservoir again.  It was such a lovely relaxing night. Gretchen is absolutely fearless and could not get enough of going down the super tall slide and Julian was apart of the adopt a  family program where he adopted no less than three families in one evening of  playing:)

After that things got crazy when Julian rolled out of bed in the middle of the night and starting crying really hard.  After a visit to the ER it was confirmed that he broke his collar bone (in two pieces).  That plus Gretch's three teeth coming in at once has turned Aaron and I into zombies.  But Julian is doing much better now and so is Gretch.  That was last week and Julian just takes Tylenol from time to time when he asks for his medicine because his shoulder hurts.  I felt so bad for him and thought it might slow him down a bit but it seemed like the opposite has been true. He hasn't slowed down till this week (just to prove me wrong I think) but he really has been a good sport and likes to wear his body wrap when we go to meet up with friends because it looks cool:)  

The day he and Aaron got home from the ER was the day of Aaron's parent's farewell so I cut off the sleeves of one of Julian's Sunday shirts and away we went to say farewell and hang out with them and most of the fam.  It was a lot of fun and we are so excited for them and their mission in Micronesia!

Since then we have had docs and dentist appointments and all the other random summer things like pool parties and get togethers.

 

And surprisingly lots of rainy days,

  I'm just glad that our kids are doing better and have been enjoying all this rainy weather we have been having.

Here are a few more random pics...