July miscellany

July should have had lots of posts, but so it goes.

After the trip to the lake, the next week was spent getting ready for VBS.

many trees were sacrificed, and my girls played with friends a few times so I could do VBS and keep my head above water at work

The grown-ups weren't the only ones tired out from VBS week!

We spent one afternoon at the house of a college friend; Alasdair & Adara made good use of the slip & slide.

We spent a Friday evening at a Laconia Muskrats baseball game with friends from church.

I dislocated Adara's elbow (grabbed her arm as she was running away from me during church), so we skipped the sermon for a little adventure to the ER, where she charmed everyone with her sweet chatter and sweet determination not to move her arm at all despite their best coaxing.  Her arm was resting at her side, and the resident tried various things to trick her into moving it.  ("Where is your pinky?" - Adara pointed with her good hand to a pink polka dot on her dress.  "How many fingers do you have?" - Adara looked down at the part of her hand that was visible and said "two.")  Despite her pain, she barely cried, and even walked herself most of the way from the car to the hospital door.  My tough little cookie.

Granny came back for another visit.  Pretty impressive that she saw Alden three times in three months given she lives 7 hours away!

While she was here, Alden & I spent a day in MA with my dear friends Annabel and Jackie, during Annabel's visit to the states from Jordan.  (I didn't manage any pictures of the girls!)  That night, GG came over for dinner to meet Alden.

Alden came along to my women's book group every Wednesday evening.  This group had been running since the winter, but it was still a highlight of the summer.  I love these women so much and have no idea how I would be raising my children without them!  

(sound asleep in the other room while the ladies talk)

The main thing we did in July was to spend as much time as possible at the pool with friends.  While life felt a little out of control and I was behind on everything... the pool was my happy place, where I never thought about all the things I should be doing and instead felt like we were really doing summer.

Summer is tiring. :)

If you've been around Adara any time lately, you've heard about "Efan."  I didn't know 2 year olds could have crushes, but Adara sure adores Ethan, our friends' very sweet 10 year old son.  Tonight I asked the girls what their favorite part of summer was and Adara said, "playing with Ethan in the sunshine."  

And of course, we tried to remember to gaze at this precious little boy as much as we could in the midst of it all!

 

  

Emily's developed a bit of a phobia of trees falling down, which began with having seen some downed trees at Westport and developed into such a fear that the tall tree in our side yard would fall down that she refused to swing on the swingset.  Our many attempts to explain that trees don't usually fall down were counteracted by three times in a week being in places where tree limbs were being cut with chainsaws (neighbor's house, two different playgrounds), driving home from the pool in a thunderstorm and seeing many downed trees and then finally on another drive home in the pre-storm gusty wind, glancing up just in time to slam on my brakes as a large branch came falling out of a tall tree and crashed directly in front of our car and blocking the road.  What are the chances??

Writing this all out is making me feel nostalgic for summer, and it isn't even over yet!