Summer!

It's been a very busy and fun summer, and it's far from over. Alexis has missed several therapy appointments throughout the summer because of various scheduling conflicts, but she is as healthy and happy as ever. She can't crawl yet, but she still scoots around enough that you can't take your eyes off of her for long. In the blink of an eye she will vanish from the middle of the living room floor. I've found her under the coffee table,

(how did that bib get so filthy?? Aunt Paula must have fed her!) and under the piano,

and so the baby gates will be going up very soon.

Our family went on vacation to Tennessee last week with some friends and their family. I was hesitant to go since I didn't want to intrude on a family vacation, and because the cabin that they were staying at was at full capacity. But our friend Scott assurred us that we were welcome and his dad told us that we could tow their camper down for the week and stay on the property with full access to the cabin. Thank goodness we enjoy our friends so much and their family is such great fun to be around, because the trip to and from Tennessee was, to be frank, a nightmare.

On the way down, we overheated for the first time outside of Cincinnati. To keep a very long story short, our 7 hour trip took about 14 hours. We are lucky to have 3 incredibly well behaved children who can be entertained by something as simple as a straw wrapper. And incidently, spending 4 hours as a McDonald's is not my idea of fun.

Thoughout the course of the week Jason spent many hours on the car. In the end, he decided that whatever was wrong required taking the car to the dealership for repair. The last day of his vacation was spent inside a dealership while the kids and I spent the day playing everything from Bingo to Bendaroos in the camper. (We had to move to a campground after the first 2 nights because apparently they don't like campers parked in the neighborhood. BIG bummer.) We decided to leave on Friday night instead of Saturday just to avoid pulling a 7000 pound camper in 95 degree heat. Unfortunately, we didn't even make it out of town that night before the Durango overheated again. We swapped out the camper for a pontoon and it was no better. So we crashed at a motel, Jason took the car to another dealership on Saturday morning while his brother Josh (my hero!) drove all the way from Kokomo, IN to rescue us. The Durango and the family made it home safe and sound with Josh pulling the pontoon behind his truck. It could have been worse. No one got sick, no one was injured, but I've never been so glad to unpack.

A few days after returning home, our dear friends from Florida arrived. They usually come every year around the 4th of July and we travel to see them every New Years. But with Alexis being born and her hospitalizations, we hadn't seen them in a year and a half. They were very excited to meet Alexis and she's been entertained since the day they arrived.

As usual, we cooked out for July 4th at my uncle and aunt's house and spent most of the day in their pool. The rest of the time has been spent on the reservoir. Here are Blake and Nick with Trisha, 10, Eric, 6, and Cameron, 16.

Blake is loving going tubing. We are highly amused when he stays on the tube for hours, laughing and smiling and obviously enjoying himself, but then afterwards walks up to us, shoulders hunched, lower lip pouting, and saying in his low monotone voice, "I didn't have fun on the tube. I hurt my finger." Of course he's all ready to go out again the next day.

Alexis has been out the last 2 days, is loving floating on the water and helping daddy drive the boat.

And Nicholas is loving having his buddy Eric around. Eric is only 2 weeks older than Nick.

We were very excited yesterday when Nicholas decided he wanted to try skiing. He's always been hesitant to try in the past and we haven't pushed him. But he finally was ready and it was a success! We were so proud, as was he. He loved it and skied again today. He plans on doing it tomorrow as well and now Blake says he's going to try it too. We'll see...

We are loving having our friends here. But this is by far my favorite picture of the week so far. On their first day here, Debbie started blowing kisses to Alexis and almost immediately, Alexis reciprocated. She will rarely do it for me, but the minute she sees Deb, she puckers up.

I'm not sure who will be the saddest to see them go this Sunday, but let's not think about it.