July in a nutshell...

July has been a crazy month!!! I apologize for my lack of blogging, but hopefully I'll get back into it in August. We'll see...

We started the month off with a great 4th. Some friends from college came into town and we had a little get together.


Nick and Sarah live in Ann Arbor and spent the weekend visiting Sarah's brother Grant in Oak Park. It was great to see them and it gave us an excuse to throw a little bbq.


The boys had a great time!

They both loved sitting at the little table to eat dinner! After dinner, we walked down to the beach for the fireworks. The weather was a little cool, but beautiful. Of course, Owen wouldn't keep his jacket on at the beach!

Thank goodness we just keep the sand toys in the stroller.


Who knew it was so fun to play at the beach at night?!

Whenever any of our three groups of guests asked what they could bring, I just said, "Oh, whatever sounds good to you..." We ended up with 3 different potato salads! And, they were all very different and delicious! So much leftover potato salad, though :o)

That weekend, we also had a fun family trip to the beach. Owen loved playing in the water

and getting buried in the sand!

I loved watching the boys play and being the photographer. The water is still pretty cold, and usually I am the one who gets to chase Owen in and out!

We also had a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo with Em. It was so much fun! We wish she had a job where she had a regular weekday off once in awhile. Oh, well. I guess we have to take what we can get! Owen had a great time. He especially loved seeing the monkeys and still talks about it and does the "monkey walk" (it is very cute, but it takes him sooooooo long to walk up the stairs that way...) We also got ice cream and played at the playground at Oz Park. It was a great day!

Here they are checking out the zebras...

And the newly hatching chicks...

I don't have pictures because cameras weren't allowed, but Mike and I went with Emily and Jim to see Billy Joel and Elton John at Wrigley Field July 16th. Em and I both had birthdays that week, so we thought it would be a great way to celebrate. The show was awesome! It was so nice to be outdoors at Wrigley, too. It wasn't hot, either! A perfect night!

I bought Owen some "Choo Choo Thomas" underwear at Kohl's because they were on sale. Don't quite know if he's ready to potty train yet, but we're thinking about it. He was so excited about those underwear! Doesn't he look so cute?!

A silly wiggle worm, for your viewing pleasure...

I found him sitting in the drawer of his crib the other day. He was playing with the diapers...

Here is some "soup" he made me for lunch a couple of weeks ago. He is quite an ace in the kitchen!

And a serious moment... He loves truck books right now! He'll even read them by himself!

Last weekend, the boys got to go to Omaha to celebrate Grandpa Jimmy's 50th birthday. I had to stay here to work and study. It sounds like they had a blast!


They got to go to the farm and the zoo and Owen even got to swim in the kiddie pool with Auntie Liz.


Owen got to drive the tractor,

the three wheeler,

the combine,

and the four wheeler.

They even let Mike drive a tractor, too.

Here Owen is, up close and personal with a big cow! He looks a little nervous!
And, quite possibly one of the biggest highlights of the trip, a cow peeing. When I talked to Owen on the phone, the first thing he told me about the farm was, " I saw a cow poopin!" Yes, we're in that phase. A big thanks to Mike for not taking a picture of the cow poopin'!

I got some studying done in our way to quiet house and had a girl's evening with Emily on Sunday night. We hadn't done that for a long time! It was very nice!

And, here is Owen's latest... climbing out of the crib!!! He started this business on Tuesday morning and was oh so proud of himself. He spent most of Tuesday climbing in and out of that crib. Honestly, I'm surprised it took him so long to do it. He climbed out of the pack and play at a friend's house last October, so I really thought we'd have been dealing with this much sooner. We decided it was probably just best to lower the rail, so he could climb in and out with ease. He really hasn't climbed out too much, much to our relief! He did come out on Wednesday night after he'd been "in bed" for about 45 min to say hi! Other than that, he hasn't gotten out of bed except for when he's done with his nap or up for the morning (unfortunately, he's been climbing into our bed at 6:30 instead of calling for us around 8:30.) "Owen waked up," or "I all done sleepin'" is how he greets us! It is cute, but I think it's going to take awhile to get used to my earlier wake up call. I used to think that there could be nothing more annoying than waking up to "Sid the Science Kid" on PBS, but whatever show is on at 6:30 is pretty rough, too. Oh, well. We ordered a toddler bed from Walmart and it should arrive sometime next week... We'll see how that goes!

In other news, things are going well. Baby #2 is moving like crazy and the ultrasound is scheduled for 8/13. Still can't decide if we want to find out what it is or not! Also, we are fairly certain that Mike will spend the 6 months following his finishing his PhD as a post-doc at Northwestern. We are so excited because it means we will still be in town for the arrival of our new baby and even have a little time to adjust before we move on to the next adventure, whatever it may be! I know it is prolonging the inevitable to some extent, but I'm okay with it for right now!