Summer, Shiners and Sailing...Sort-of :/

I told myself after uploading all of these pictures: 'If I just committed to blogging once a month even, it wouldn't take me 2 hours to post a blog trying to catch you up on the last 3 months!' Oh well. Here we go...

Our summer started by saying 'bon voyage!' to "Hap" Ami & the boat in early May! It was so sad to see them go, okay okay, mainly because I was losing my babysitters, little selfish. I know.

Not long after, we dove into our list of summer projects. Teddy's (one of many) was to touch up the front yard. Not necessarily relandscape, but it definitely needed some lovin'! We laid some pavers (aka, stay the heck off our grass bricks) along the street and then laid sod right up to them, where formerly resided...mud. It looks so good! Such a small change made a huge difference! This is Reese helping Dadi lay the sod!

Of course, where the grass meets the driveway is kind of uneven. While handing Teddy another piece of sod (okay, not really) while stepping off she took a nice spill, face first, into the dirt. Licked the sand off her lips and kept on going...not sure it really phased her.

If anything it made her a little hungry as she came in for a snack not long after the spill.
Food = the cure all.

And here they are putting the final touches on some dry areas of grass throughout the front yard. We also transplanted a few liriope from the yard to line the driveway with. We need to transplant a few more to make it fit all the way to the front door. (mom and dad, we have no idea what happened to your liriope while you were sailing, must be a coincidence...)

Now...on to MY summer project. Yep, just one. A good friend of ours suggested before we even moved into this house that I turn the under the stairs closet into a play room. Its definitely big enough. So over Memorial Day Weekend, while Teddy was in Boston on one last guys trip I decided to tackle the playroom! SO glad I did...


We started with a 6x9ishx5ish (its very oddly shaped since its under the stairs) room that needed a piece of drywall patched. I totally can't take the credit for this part. Teddy did patch the drywall before the guys trip...

This is the odd corner that runs under the stairs, perfect for little kiddos. Step one (for me) was finding a new home for this extremely unorganized pile of randomness. Christmas decorations, weights, etc.

Then the fun began! This is after 2 coats of chalkboard paint on the bottom 5 1/2 feet of the south wall, 6 (yes, 6) coats of magnetic primer on the west wall, and then just regular primer on the top part of the south wall. I'm also mapping out where I want the vinyl wall art to go...

After 3 days of painting and drying this is our final product!
A great corner for her toys! Yay for them not being scattered all over the house anymore!

A very fun chalkboard wall! The top is actually a light gray with violet vinyl words, a lime green grass border and some small white vinyl flowers growing out of the grass. Hard to see here...
This might be her favorite part. She has stood here for hours before just 'writing' on the wall... took some training to keep it on this wall only, but she gets it!

The magnetic primer is just that, its a primer. You paint over it any color you'd like. I chose a light purple/violet to tie in with the bright violet wall art. The violet/gray/black theme came out really good! With a few touches of lime green.

Writing on her chalkboard wall...looking forward to having a little sister to play with in here!

The summer is really upon us now!
And just like Momi, its time to start ordering those latte's iced!
Decaf, of course...

And since its June, that means little Myla Rae will be here next month!! This is me @ 34 weeks! Now currently almost 37...wow!

Another exciting moment (of course, while Dadi was away...) was that Reese got her first shiner! She took a great spill in an Old Navy shopping cart, smacking her face on the metal pole on the way down. She freaked out a good bit... This is the best picture I could get... Oh! and this is also during her 'I refuse to wear a bib' phase that lasted about 3 days...still working on those stains! Errr!

Finally, we just got back from our one last trip as a family of three! We decided, very last minute, to pay a visit to Hap and Ami in Charleston last weekend! When we got word of the motor replacement project, and found out that they would actually be in the South Carolina area a lot longer than expected, we decided to take advantage of this last available weekend and go on a little road trip! So fun!

We got there just in time for the US/England soccer game on Saturday. So we ducked into a little sports bar to watch the fun. Sunday we went to a great church right in downtown Charleston and had lunch at Pagoons! We walked the city, Market Place and just before passing out from the 102 temperature, we found ourselves at another brewery watching more soccer! Monday we went back into the city for a little driving tour. I'm serious, it was HOT. We had lunch at a great little deli and then decided to head home :( The plan was to stay one more night and head home Tuesday, but the other plan was to not go into preterm labor from dehydration! :)
Again I repeat, it was HOT.

Reese's love/hate relationship with the dingy ride. No tears. But no smiling either...

She loved exploring every inch of Morning Glory...

Even the ones she couldn't reach on her own...

In front of Cook's in Charleston. A really great cookware store!

Crossing the street with Hap and Ami.

We've gotten right back into the swing of things with Reese's swimming lessons since coming home from S.C.. She really has come a long way since her first lesson, take a look...

And so I leave you with this....
Oh, and I'm pretty sure I mention it in the video itself, but just moments before this she 'swam' to the edge, shimmied her hands over to the steps to climb out by herself and then slipped off the second step right under the water, looked like a toddler water birth, eyes wide open looking up at us from under water! She took in some water, but surprisingly, stayed pretty calm. Anyways, that will explain the slight fussiness the second go-round! Enjoy!