Summer Highlights

The summer is nearly over and I've hardly updated you!  Absolutely pathetic, I know.  There just never seems to be enough time!  Even while I'm writing this, I'm mentally making a list of all the things I still need to get done tonight, this week, this month...it never ends!  The summer has been a mix of highs and lows that corresponded directly with the temperature outside.  All that craziness culminated to the insanity of this past weekend where we celebrated Carter's 4th birthday, bought a new car, and started Carter in preschool.  It's been a hectic few days to say the least!

The heat of the summer really limited us with our normal activities.  We like to be OUTSIDE!  But with temps in triple digits, it's just miserable for all involved.  We exhausted our indoor activities pretty quickly so we had to get a little creative.  We built towers out of empty diaper boxes and smashed into them.  We discovered the "fun" of setting up dominoes and knocking them down.  We colored, painted, play-dohed, hopscotched, and summersaulted all in our home.  Some other highlights of the summer:

1. Carter re-enacting divers and sprinters in the Olympics
2. Nora pretending to feed her babies, and also remove boogers from their noses
3. Catching crawdads in the creek
4. Finally hearing Carter sing a song (that kid just isn't very musical)
5. Visiting Grandma and Pop and Grandma Lily in Kansas City
6. Seeing the new sea lion enclosure at the zoo

This weekend we had a nature-themed party for Carter's birthday.  I think he really enjoyed it.  He was so excited and really into everything.  I wish I could bottle that emotion and inject it back into him when he's driving me crazy.  After all that fanfare, Carter had his first day at pre-school today.  He's going 3 days a week at the YMCA.  We've been there before for other activities so he was already familiar with the place.  I think it went well, he didn't cry when we left or anything and when we picked him up, he was getting along fine.  Hopefully the trend will continue.

On top of that, today we traded in the Explorer for a new minivan.  It is so wonderful!  Honda thought of everything when they built that machine.  It is so much more convenient.  I think it has more storage space than the Explorer did, yet somehow it feels less bulky.  I'm looking forward to curling up with the owner's manual tonight so I can learn how to control all the doo-hickies and gadgets.  Can't wait for our first roadtrip in it!

Click HERE for birthday pictures.
Click HERE for summer pictures.