Lately...

I haven't been awesome at blogging lately, due to a combination of having too much to blog about - and having too much fun playing and making more memories to blog about. But here are some things that we've been up to lately:

--We've been reading some really good books lately. David's done with the Jack Ryan series and is working his way through the Jack Jr. Series. I read Brandon Sanderson's Words of Radiance in less than two weeks (which is no small feat considering the size of the book and the amount of time I have to just sit and read) - because there was a waiting list of people behind me and I knew I wouldn't be able to renew it. We enjoyed several evenings sitting on the couch after Lydia went to bed, reading together. That's one of my very favorite things.

--Jenna and Camille came to visit for several days and we loved it!  We were pretty laid back, and thank goodness they were willing to come with us while we ran errands and such, but we did make it over to the farm. We absolutely love these girls, and already miss them!

--I really needed to shower one morning, so I left Lydia downstairs watching a Super Why. A few minutes later she came upstairs into the bathroom and we played "put your hand on the shower door so our hands are in the same spot" for a minute. I told her that I was going to rinse the conditioner out of my hair and that she should go get a book to read from her room. As I was getting out of the shower, she came back in carrying her "HippoOpposites" book (her favorite right now), and I looked at her for the first time, gasped as I saw a large bump/gash on her forehead, dropped to my knees by her and said "Oh Lydia! What happened to your forehead???" Her smiling face immediately dropped and she started crying as she leaned into me. I think that I scared her by my reaction because she hadn't been upset before. I have no idea what happened, or whether it was before or after we were playing at the shower door - but this poor girl has another scar to add to her collection. It wasn't bleeding, and wasn't really deep enough to warrant stitches or anything, but it's another "head wound" to add to the list. She now has four scars within three inches of each other - all on the right side of her forehead/eye. I held her for a while, then she asked for some pretzels and a Super Why. She cuddled on the couch for a while, but didn't seem fazed other than that! I can't even imagine what happened, poor girl. 

--My baby brother Jacob graduated from High School! David had work, so he couldn't make it to the actual graduation - but it worked out for Lydia and I to be able to get a ride up to Morgan with Matthew so that David could just drive up afterwards. It was nice to be able to celebrate with Jacob and spend some time with family. The next day we celebrated my Dad's birthday and hung out.  

(Cousin bath time! Lydia loved it.) 

--Ashley and I love dressing up Elsie and Lydia in matching outfits, and even though they had no interest in posing for pictures - I still love these pictures of them (they even have matching hair). 

--Lydia is just really cute - and David is such a good dad. He brought home this notebook from work for Lydia to color in. I just love them both.

--This is one of our favorite games, one that we've played since Lydia first started walking and long before she started talking. Lydia hides on one side of my cedar chest and I hide on the other side. Then we take turns "rar-ring" and running to the other to "catch them". I love it so much. We finally got some pictures of it, and I'm so glad. 

--We planted a garden! And by garden, I mean we hauled in a bunch of topsoil to fill the back flowerbeds where the dirt settled, added some garden soil, and planted two zucchini plants, some pumpkins, and some watermelons. It was a ton of work and just a few plants - but we are starting small and will work our way up over the next several years. (You have to start somewhere, right?)  

So the story continues when we proudly turned on our sprinklers to make sure that all our tiny little seeds would get water and then walked back around the side of the house and saw water gushing from somewhere underneath the ground. David went to turn off the water while I frantically searched for the source of the water with my hand. Turns out... with all the settling dirt, the brown pipe for our plants had kinked (and we may have hit it with a shovel while we were moving the dirt around) and there was a hole in it. Just our luck - it was nighttime (we were finishing up after we put Lydia to bed) and David was headed to Fargo, ND for a work trip in the morning. But I headed to the sprinkler store the next morning, showed the guy a picture of my problem, got all the parts I needed and came home and fixed the sprinkler myself! It was awesome. There are a couple of different ways to finish it off, so for now we still have a lot of extra pipe and a random hole in the ground - but it's functional and I'm very proud of myself.  

--I mentioned that David was headed to Fargo ND for a work training. That meant that Lydia and I headed to Morgan to play with Grandma, Grandpa, and Dante (and Jake, of course). We went to the splash pad, the park, played with Dante all day, and then headed up to Idaho Falls on Thursday to celebrate Jenna's birthday. We had a fabulous time! 

--Last weekend we made it to our third annual Orem Summerfest. We love fun parades and boutiques and everything about summerfest-type things so we try to make it to a couple each summer. Randomly, we've only been to the Lehi Roundup once, but we've been to the Orem Summerfest every year since Lydia was born. It just seems to work in our summer schedule a little better. We don't usually eat there, but this year we had $20 that had been given us as a "date night" and we decided to use that to get some hamburgers, spiral potato-fries, and a snow cone to eat while we watched the parade. We had such a good time walking around the booths, then eating our food and watching the parade. I even ended up with a super pretty sun hat that I've been wishing for all summer. I love this little family of mine and am excited about the thought that next summer there will be four of us on our summer adventures. 

--We've had a great summer so far - so many wonderful things we've been able to do. I have two more things written down in my planner to add to this post - but I don't have any pictures yet, so you'll have to wait to read about the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point and our new Nursery chair.