I mean, it is all of 80 degrees out there today. That signifies the end of summer here, which means the season has flown by with only a few lonely little posts from me. I could tell you how busy I was, because that would be true. And all you would need to prove it is to scroll down and check out the THREE (count em) blond beauties that I am trying to keep up with. But also, I just sorta felt the need to be quiet. To hang with my family and keep my head down low. We slowed down a little bit, took some vacations, played a lot, and tried to stay cool in this God-forsaken heat.

For awhile I thought I might just give up this blog. I thought I might post more on Facebook, but that sort of stresses me out because I always find myself trying to come up with something interesting and funny to say in my status update instead of just the boring old truth which is usually something about me trying to hold my head on straight in the crazy happy chaos of our life. So, here I am back at the blog. Dave reminded me that we started this when Ava was born, and it is pretty cool that she (and now the other two) will be able to look back over it and see what was going on at different points of time. So, I’m going to do better. Post more. Show you what we’re up to. I have a few posts I want to share, but first a brief update to get you up to speed.

Summer was good. Busy. Fun. Sweaty. HOTTER THAN A MOTHER*****R. We went to San Antonio. We went to Oregon. We visited friends and family, made new friends, and welcomed new family. We lost our cat Oliver. We got a new kitten named Lilly. We said goodbye to Jeff, while he headed to Afghanistan. We helped welcome his new baby daughter into the world with my sister (love you little MIss Charlotte Alexandra). We said goodbye to my sister who went to graduate school. We welcomed by little sister who moved into with my parents. We had friends get engaged, friends get married, friends have babies, and a friend get diagnosed with the return of metastatic cancer. We almost moved to Belgium, but didn’t. We spent lots of evenings at the beach, in our backyard, and at the park. We ate lots of BBQ and more than our fair share of smores. We lost some sweet old friends who had lived beautiful long lives, and celebrated birthdays of little ones who have lots more living to do. Speaking of birthdays, Ava celebrated the big number FIVE, and Olivia is now THREE (or 3 1/2 to her since she believes you always have to add the half onto your age).

So, here’s our video of the summer…