Well hello there!

My poor neglected blog!! I seem to have forgotten about you....let's see if we can play catch-up quick, shall we?

Back on June 18th Natalie turned the big 3! We had a Garden Fairy theme, which was so much fun to decorate and prepare for. She had a blast!!


About a week before her third birthday I finally broke down and brought her in for her first haircut. She did very well and didn't move a muscle the entire time (probably helped that they had a little TV with "Cars" playing!).


We made our way up to the lake home for a second trip (first being Memorial Day weekend) over the Fourth of July and it was HOT!! There is no air conditioning up there so it can get pretty bad, but I suppose that's part of the charm of being at the lake home. My sister and her family were up there as well (my brother-in-law's grandparents have a house on the neighboring lake), so we all met up to go mini-golfing and go-karting one morning. The rest of the weekend was spent trying to keep cool with lots of swimming and boating.





The entire month of July we fried. We had a couple of weeks of 90+* weather and I can tell you that was not much fun for this pregnant lady. I tried very very hard not to complain about it since I'd much prefer the heat to the bitter cold, but it was hard because of being pregnant. I had high hopes of getting a membership to the local swimming pool because we had so much fun with it last year, but I couldn't manage because it was so hot! We did make it to the beach a couple times, and Andy took Natalie to swimming lessons at the local community center. We also got a nice pool for the back yard which we got a lot of use out of.


For me, one of the highlights of our summer was getting our driveway paved. We had planned on having it done this summer, but then back in June my car went to pots and we decided that we should just get a new (to us) one. (I'm so lucky, now I get to drive an SUV! I didn't think I'd love it as much as I do, but the space is so super nice!) With that extra-large expense we weren't sure if we should go for the driveway after all, but eventually decided that it was time. Now that we have a nice blacktopped driveway, we have lots of space for Natalie to ride on her little cars, color on with chalk and just play on. One of her favorite things to do is to wash her cars and play in buckets of bubbles and water. She'd stay entertained with 2 buckets, water and bubbles for hours!



When we lived over in St. Paul we were super close to the Como Zoo so we'd go there quite often. It has been over a year since we moved and we hadn't been back since, so we made it one of our goals for the summer to get out there again. Of course we picked the busiest day ever to go, but we still had a great time! The zoo is a fantastic size for small kids--we were able to see everything and by the time we got to the end Natalie was still going strong. There is a little amusement park attached to the zoo, so we stopped there before heading home. Natalie was so excited and proud to go on one of the rides all by herself for the first time ever.



Over the summer my grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. A few weeks later she fell and broke a bone in her pelvis; my grandpa was unable to take care of her so she was placed in a nursing home. She's still there today and healing well, but the Alzheimer's is taking its toll on her and it doesn't look like she'll be going home :( We haven't been able to make it up there to visit her so we made her a get-well card with a photo:


A couple other photos just for fun and because they're so cute :)