Well I have done a terrible job of blogging. Hopefully I can redeem myself and catch up a little bit. Chris is now back teaching school. It has been so fun having home this summer. We have been so busy but also had so much fun. Nixon just started preschool one day a week and he loves it. Maddy broke her wrist - and she just got her cast off! Read more about how by the picture of her cast. I am running again. My friend, Laurie, and I just ran a half-marathon last Saturday. We didn't run it super fast by most runner's standards, but we did better than our usual 10 minute miles (by 15 seconds a mile :)). It took us 2 hours and 8 minutes. It was a lot of fun. We are training for a marathon that takes place in November. So far our long run has been 16 miles. We have had a lot of fun!!!! I did a quick recap of our summer below.



My brother's wife had their son, Falon, a week earlier than expected (she had actually scheduled a c-section for 2 weeks earlier than her due date. Cameron needed to study for his boards (which he passed - yea Cam!) and Rhiannon could not do any lifting and needed some rest until her mom arrived. So we took Kymry and Bryton for the week. They missed their parents a lot, especially little Bryton, but we had a fun time! Kymry was a great entertainer! She did water Olympics, sprinklers, pool, etc with them. The boys loved it. We also went to the park several times. It was great to watch them! We always had to do our water sports while Maddy was napping because she is impossible to keep out of the water and her cast could not get wet!

I was pretty impressed at Nixon's chalk drawing. He drew Sponge Bob with no help from me! The kids had fun drawing on the sidewalks and Maddy had fun eating chalk.


While the cousins were here we did some major cookie decorating. Nixon put so many sprinkles on the cookies that he used an entire jar of sprinkles. The cookies were a little scary looking! Unfortunately Nixon had made a "bad choice" that day and couldn't eat any treats for the day, but he decorated about 15 cookies and managed not to even lick the frosting or throw a tantrum. I was pretty impressed.

Nixon has become obsessed with Spiderman thanks to Chris telling him zillions of bedtime Spiderman stories and buying him Spiderman books, costumes, figurines, pajamas, backpacks, and the list goes on.
Okay, so Maddy broke her wrist and had to get a full arm cast. You know that trampoline that I convinced Chris to get because none of my siblings ever were hurt on our tramp? Well...the phone rang, I ran inside to get it, zipping Maddy in the tramp (with our net enclosure). I didn't clip it, so that it absolutely could not be opened, thinking she did not know how to unzip things. Well literally less than a minute of me getting the phone and coming out with it - she had unzipped it and walked off the tramp. She seemed okay, but whimpered a lot that evening, woke up crying in the night, and fussed the next day. I took her in to be checked out and the doctor said she was fine. Again, Chris took her in the next day (I worked) because she wasn't using her right hand and she was still fussy and they did x-rays. It broke on Monday and she didn't get her cast until Friday. It was on for almost 3 weeks. She didn't even notice it. She was still trying to climb everything, even Nixon's bunk bed. She is such a little monkey.



We went blackberry picking with some friends in August. It has proven to be our kids' favorite fruit. I think Nixon looked about like Maddy did when he was her age in a stroller. We made blackberry cobbler later that evening! Yum!
In August we took a family trip to the coast. We spent 4 days there and had a blast. There was so much to do - bumper cars, carousel (below), bumper boats, running on the beach, playing on the beach (our kids' favorite thing to do).
On the way home we stopped at the cheese factory and the Air Museum, which was really cool. It had tons of planes. Nixon loved it! He was such a button masher when he got in the cockpit of a fighter jet (below).
Part of the fam at the air museum. Chris has become the picture taker in our family!



In July, Maddy had her first birthday party: Grandma Dee & Grandpa Pat, Great Grandma Elizabeth, Nana Karren, Nixon, Maddy, and me
Maddy downed the cake at her first birthday party. She sure knew what to do with it, although she got sick of it within about 5 minutes. She wanted her hands cleaned off...
Down and dirty

In July, this was my father's-in-law wedding which also was our 11 year anniversary. Nixon enjoyed playing with his cousins, Marren (left) and Savannah (right). Bottom are: Andrea (Dee's daughter), Dee, Chris (Dee's son), Rachael is hiding, Pat, and Chris.