August Daybook

(Sorry for my absense on this blog for a bit.  Here's my attempt at catching you up! Thanks for being patient!)

Am I the only one who is asking where this summer is going?!  August already? Really?!

Giving Thanks:

Honestly, I've been loving this summer.  The weather was cool in June, and got hot for the final days of July.  Just in time for my little girl to celebrate the two-week-mark post-surgery with a day at a waterpark. 

 I found this picture on my phone and it reminded me how far we've come!

my poor little baby recovering post-op with melted popcicles and water

And two weeks later here we are on our afternoon celebration at the pool!

Doesn't this just scream "summer fun"?!

Look carefully and you can see that the hat is reversible...couldn't decide which side looked better with her suit!

So, I made this hat.  I always pretend that someday I'll really be considered something of a sewist (no, that's a word. I know because I read about these things...because I want to be one...but am not really there yet.  At all. #keepdreaming).   Truth be told, the edges are really rough (I just hand-stitched the whole thing), but it looks cute from a distance! #keepsthesunoff

I sent my Mom on a Target run for this slushie maker on day 2 of "recovery".  I must have made a million slushies (because of course, Galadriel wasn't the only one who thought we had brought the State Fair into our own kitchen!)  No seriously--I made these for the neighborhood kids too!  

Grateful and excited:  Then...last Monday...the "men" showed up and gutted our screened porch.  Screened porches in theory are wonderful, but in reality, ours was just a catch-all for clutter and dirt as my kids trapesed in out of our backyard.  It always drove me nuts and we never made good use of it.

But it was a pretty large space.  And right off of our main living area.  So I always had to look into the mess through the glass sliding doors.

insulation...("what if that was cotton candy?!!" "Don't you DARE try it--it's poisonous!")

For seven years I have thought of enclosing it, and held off, wondering if we really needed or wanted the space.  With our children getting older, it just became more and more clear to me that this would be a huge blessing.

Then they framed it out and they say the walls are supposed to go up this week.

When it's finished, we should have a homeschool area that isn't my dining room! I can't tell you how excited I am at the prospect of not having to move bins of crayons and stacks of notebooks before I set the table for dinner!  This is huge.  (Huge.) #homeschoolmomlove

Learning lessons in over planning Grateful, again:  And because I'm SO very efficient a home manager, I was so lucky as to have both construction in the backyard, and a crew in the front yard digging up our old dying yew shrubs and putting in some new plantings and a crabapple tree (which I didn't get a picture of- yet- I'll get ya one!)

I love hydrangeas.

They added the stone, which is supposed to fade to a cream color.  It's a little white for me right now, but it does neaten things up!

Reina update:  Little pup got her first round of vaccines...here she is at the vet, looking out the window all unawares of the invasive temperature readings that were about to be taken.

 She's doubled her weight in the month we've had her, and she's getting much better about taking walks.  House breaking is super as long as we're paying attention.  If we are lazy, all bets are off.  So we aren't (lazy).  Or Mama isn't happy.

And THAT is pretty much what we've been up to!

Phew.  Summer: love it.