Bye, bye, Summer!!

I can't believe I did not blog all summer! Just a warning, I'm going to put our ENTIRE summer in this one post, so it will be long and contain a LOT of pictures. Just so you are warned... ;)

We had a really fun and busy summer. It actually started out pretty rough. Laurel was waking up at the crack of dawn everyday, which would be fine, except she was acting tired and grouchy ALL day long. It was not fun. I racked my brain trying to figure out why she was suddenly waking up so early when she was obviously still tired. Finally after a few weeks I realized our dogs had decided to start sleeping on the front porch and were waking her up at the first hint of light each morning. It is a long and boring story about how I figured it out so I won't go into detail. The important thing was as soon as we blocked off the front steps from the dogs, Laurel began sleeping to her normal 7:30am again. Thank goodness!! We were all having a hard time there for awhile!

We did so many fun things this summer.

We swam and did a lot water play of course. It was so hot there wasn't much else we could do outside for long.

My friend took this picture at a birthday party and it is one of my favorites from this summer.

Laurel did summer gymnastics which she loved.

We went to story time at the library every week and Laurel completed all of her summer reading.
We did a BUNCH of fun activities with my Moms Club.

Like dress up like a cow for free food at Chick-fil-a!

Like meet the tooth fairy and learn about brushing out teeth!

Like reading and sharing books (Laurel was my helper)!
Like getting to tour a fire station and sit in a real firetruck!

4th of July was really fun this year and we did a lot of baking projects and crafts in the week leading up to Independence Day.
Little cutie waiting on fireworks

First sparkler!
Playing after church in red, white, and blue. :)

The best part of the summer was our vacation to Florida to visit family. We spent most of our time at the beach or swimming in the pool. We even spent one day at Disney World! It was really fun and Laurel has been obsessed with going back to the "Magical Kingdom" ever since. Thanks to my wonderful Aunt Cathy and Uncle Danny for letting us crash their house!

Disney!!
Laurel loved having a pool "right in the backyard" and spent most of her time wet.
She even started jumping in and having her head go under, something she would NOT do last year.

Laurel also got to meet her Great Grandpa Fred who is in his 90s.

Laurel really enjoyed her first putt putt gold experience.

Another of her favorite parts of vacation was walking "Carlie" (really named Harlie but Laurel re-named her) every night.

At the very end of the summer my brother and his wife and their two kids came to visit. Laurel loved having her cousins stay at our house. She had someone to play with every minute of the day and she loved it. She really liked having her three year old cousin sleep in her room and they did way better than I expected and actually slept pretty well. I really enjoyed spending time with my little brother and sister-in-law. I was sad on the way home from dropping them off at the airport. We hope to see them again soon!

Laurel and Ari were fast friends. They had a lot of fun together.

They put on the cutest puppet show.

The Doss Family, one of my favorite families!!

Once my family left I had a week to clean up, organize, and get Laurel ready for her first day of "real" preschool. Even though it is still in the high 90s, summer is over. Laurel is in her second week of preschool and loving it. She goes three days a week for three hours each day. Don't worry, her first day of school will have a post all its own.

I must say I am really looking forward to Fall. Summer is not my favorite season. I used to love it when I was a teacher (since I didn't have to work!), but I'm not really a fan now. It is so hot all the time and some times I feel trapped indoors. I can't wait for the cool Fall weather and all the fun holidays and events that will soon be here. I can't wait to spend most of our time outside without feeling like we are melting!!

Goodbye summer, till next year.

Hello Summer!!

Laurel finished school last week and we are ready to have a fun filled summer. Lots of swimming (it is already so HOT), gymnastics, $3 kids movies, story time at the library, and lots of time with friends.

Speaking of school it seems like Laurel just started her first year and now she is all done.

Here she is on her first day of school last August in front of the doors to her school

And here she is on her last day in roughly the same spot. What a difference! She is such a big girl now!

I'm really looking forward to this summer and I'm praying we don't have any broken bones like last summer!

Mountain Vacation

Would you believe my new year's resolution was to be better about updating my blog? Yeah, I claim an epic fail on that goal! I AM going to be better about it though, starting now!

If you have read one of the two posts I did this year then you know that Laurel was sick on her birthday in January. Matt came down with the flu really bad on her birthday and was down and out for a whole week. He has never been sick more than a day since I've known him! Then Laurel got sick again and she was sick on my birthday in February. Then I got sick. Then Laurel got sick. You get the picture. It was a LONG winter. We were finally all well by the end of March. We decided to go on a little vacation to celebrate mine and Laurel's birthdays and Matt and my 8th wedding anniversary. We went to the mountains on our honeymoon so we decided to go up to Helen since it is a pretty short drive (Laurel does not do well for car long trips!).

We had a really good time and did lots of fun stuff.

No vacation would be complete without:

A visit to the Cabbage Patch General Hospital.
I used to go all the time when I was a kid and I was so excited to take Laurel. She loved it and did NOT want to leave.

She loved watching the baby being born and even got to give "her" a middle name. She named it Laurel. :)

A visit to the bear reserve.
The bear pictured here ate Laurel's bow. It fell off into his cage and he ate it right up. Laurel was very upset and was screaming and crying. It was quite the scene we made!

Once she calmed down she fed them some treats.

A visit to the reptile house.
Laurel loved the turtle and fed it lots of lettuce.

Matt liked the snake and Laurel also petted it. I took pictures and kept my hands to myself!

Pink lemonade!

Santa Claus!
Laurel wanted to know why he was not at the North pole.

Trains!
This was an amazing model train display!

A visit to see the beautiful river flowing through Helen

A little hotel bed jumping!

A horse and carriage ride!

Laurel LOVED it!

Ice cream!
Even when it is cold no vacation is complete without a little strawberry ice cream.

Lots of goodies!
We got some fudge and it was so yummy!

Making wishes!

Pictures that we can use to blackmail Laurel in high school!

Dinner on the River!

Breakfast in bed!

Swimming!

And...one more stop to see the Cabbage Patch kids!

It may look like we go on vacation a lot (since there are two vacation posts on the front page of my blog) but that really just shows how bad I am about blogging. This is only the third vacation we have gone on since we had Laurel. The first one was to FL when she was seven months old and between the seven hour car ride and Laurel not sleeping or napping, it was a rough few days. We took a long break and have recently gone on two vacations with Laurel. She is at such a fun age and even though she didn't sleep as well this vacation as she did our beach trip, she did great. She still talks about how much fun she had and will list all the cool stuff we did. She asks all the time to go back, but does not want to see the bears again!