Rob & Lisa in town!

We really enjoyed having my brother's family in town for the summer.  The girls liked playing with their cousins, and Drew and I enjoyed visiting with the parents.  Plus, my sister-in-law, Lisa, saved my butt a few times by babysitting the girls during a couple of my weekly non-stress tests and sonograms. She also watched the girls one evening so Drew and I could go out on one last pre-baby date.  We saw one of our favorite comedians, Tom Papa, at the DC Improv. 

While our family was in town we enjoyed multiple dinners together, during one of which the kids found some caterpillars on our hanging plant.  The named them Fluffy (Lainey's bug) and Captain Crunch (Logan's bug).  Liz put the caterpillars in a bug house and watched over them for a couple weeks, cleaning their cages and refreshing their food multiple times a day.  Luckily Rob and Lisa were visiting with the boys while the first butterfly emerged so the kids were able to experience it's release together. 

 

Rob's boys and my girls played well together (they are born within months of Alaina and Ellie), but we noticed that Gabrielle and Logan (Lainey's age) seemed to particuarly enjoy each other's company.

Other fun things we did with Rob and Lisa's family: cousins slumber party, Yards Park (first time there for us), swimming pool, spray park, National Children's Museum, and Great Waves water park.

4th of July

We watched this year's firework display from one of the Pentagon parking lots with some family friends.  Good view, good company, decent drive home.

Ellie fell asleep during the car ride to the Pentagon so we just opened both van doors to get her some air.  Surprisingly she slept through everything--kids loudly playing near her, fireworks, everything.  I wasn't too surprised though, because we had had a long day.  Drew went to a Nats game while the girls and I saw a movie in the morning and went to a water park in the afternoon. 

 One of the moms brought Pops for the kids.  They were thrilled.

Liz and her friend, Spencer, threw their Pops at each other.  Eventually Liz exhausted her supply, but Spencer still had some which he kept throwing at her.  Some hit Lizzie's face and she completely freaked out.  Despite being in the middle of the adult chair circle (and our calls to her to stop), she quickly whipped off her flip flops and chucked them at Spencer.  He ducked the first one and it hit Lainey.  The second shoe got him.  Yeah, Drew and I were horrified. . . . So, other than the shoe incident (and it's inevitable consequences) the evening was quiet nice. 

 

 

Summer before baby:

It's been two months since my last blog post for a myriad of reasons: stress, lack of sleep, random distractions.  Towards the end of my pregnancy I entered my crazy, anxious stage where I regularly went to bed at 2 a.m. (sometimes 3 or 4 a.m. actually) and/or woke in the middle of the night and stayed awake for an hour or so counting baby kicks.  I was tired and stressed and just plain worried that the baby wouldn't make it to delivery.

After the birth, I meant to get back to our family record here, but was consumed with the normal newborn distractions and family visits.  Plus, it's hard to type while nursing and it seems that is what I mostly did the first month. 

Anyway, before I get to the birth and subsequent month, here's the pre-baby part of our summer/end of the school year:

The little girls and I enjoyed a couple "field trips" before Lizzie's school finished up (the one pictured below is our visit to the "Play, Work, Build" exhibit at the National Building Museum):

We enjoyed some ice cream:

Since I was at an uncomfortable point in my pregnancy when summer hit we ended up doing a lot of stuff at home.  When the girls really wanted some outdoor time and I wanted to continue with my AC time I sent them out to the deck with play dough, popsicles, and/or our "bean box" (sensory box).  In the shot below they are "painting" the deck and plant stand with water.  I love that it can be just that simple sometimes:

 Drew and I took the two little girls to see the Playseum (Liz was at a playdate):

 

 

We tried out the National Children's Museum at the National Harbor.  Turns out there was some bicycle event outside of the museum so we went to that before going in and scored some free bike helmets.  If you notice in the following pictures that my girls are on bouncing around on balls with lollipops in their mouth balls, you won't be at all surprised that until we got these freebies my girls didn't have bike helmets.

Andrew repaired a leak in our foundation.  This meant he got to dig a very deep pit father's day weekend.  Turns out we have a lot of clay in our soil and that's hard to shovel over your head because it sticks to the shovel.  It was a lot of work for Drew, but I'm very glad he did it because it rained for about two weeks straight after he finished the project and we had no flooding.

 The little girls and I enjoyed some more ice cream:

 

We went to baseball games.  My first game ever in the new stadium was rained out before it ever began:

 

So the first game I actually saw there was with my family and Drew's coworkers (Liz saw a few more this summer and Drew saw even more):

 

 

 We also spent a morning at a local gun show (it was for Drew--the ladies in the family alternated from being bored to completely freaked out), Lizzie and Lainey did a week of VBS, we spent time with my brother's family, and we checked some stuff off of our summer "to do" list such as #3 Make Jewelry and #29 Go to the movies.  And through it all I continued to grow a big, prego belly: