Oh What Do You Do In The Summertime?

I haven't updated by blog for quite some time and I was just looking through the pictures on my camera and there's a lot that went on this summer that I never did blog about.

Let's start off with Whitey. He has found his own personal mud pit in the back yard and his favorite thing to do is play in it. We had to take the picture through the back door because of course, we weren't going to risk opening the door and letting a muddy dog in.

Next off, we got a new addition to our family. This is Lola. We adopted her from the animal shelter out here. Yes, we're crazy for taking on 2 dogs. Lola is a sweetie. The only thing wrong with her is that she runs or rolls over every time we go near her. We think that she may have been abused before she came to us.

It seems we have a little musician in our hands. He takes after his mommy. He has a little piano at Grandma Rowley's that he loves to play and he likes to "sing" while he plays it. You can imagine his excitement when mommy put him on her lap and let him play the real thing. One thing I love about Jace is that when he learns or gets to play with something new, he has to look around as if to show off his new exciting thing.

I just realized that I never did write about the 4th of July. I won't write too much about it because I know that people really don't care now that it's over, but I want to include the cute pictures that we took from the day. We took Jace to the parade that days. Then, after the parade, we went and had a picnic in the canyon up the street from our house. Then, later that night, we went and saw fireworks. One funny thing that happened during the fireworks was a guy came walking up the street right by us with a huge buffalo. It was maybe just a little scary seeing a huge buffalo walk right past us.

Jace didn't know what to think about the parade. Some things he really liked and a lot of it, he could have cared less about.

We took Jace to his cousin, Ireland's Birthday party and they had a pony there for the kids to ride. Of course, I couldn't pass up the chance to let Jace ride it. He didn't laugh or anything. For the most part, he only cared about the saddle. He didn't care about the animal underneath him or anything. One thing that we've discovered quite recently is that once Jace gets focused on one thing, you can't pull him away from that. With his crawling, once he sees something he wants, he is focused on getting it and nothing can draw him away from that. I could not, for the life of me, get Jace to look at the camera while he was on the pony. There were too many other things he wanted.

Last week, my whole family wanted to do something. I've been planning on taking my niece and nephew swimming for quite some time, so we decided to make it a family get-together. My brother and his wife brought their three kids, my other brother and sister came, and also my parents. We had a blast! We didn't take too many pictures because we were all having a lot of fun swimming. Jace even liked it. Dillan insisted over and over to go down the water slide. He absolutely loved that thing. Brynn absolutely refused to go down the slide. We didn't think my baby niece, Cambree, would enjoy the pool, but even she was kicking her legs about. It was just so much fun having something to do that the whole family was part of. Both of my parents were good sports and got in the pool as well. Lance decided that no matter what, he was going to take Jace down the slide. Poor kid. He didn't cry, surprisingly, but he was a little shocked about all the water in his face at the end. I don't think he liked it all that much. I decided that even though my foot was still a little sore, I was going to tough it out and climb up the stairs to the slide and go down as well. It was well worth it. What a fun family activity! After we swam, a friend from work brought his whole family over and we barbecued up some Sanpete chicken and had a couple salads and just had a nice dinner at our house. It's kind of fun being hostess and having people over to our house.

Anyways....that's about it as far as the pictures go. It's a little sad to see the Summer go by so fast, although it really shouldn't make much of a difference since neither Lance or I go to school. Jace is almost 11 months old now. It's getting that time to start thinking about his Birthday, not that I plan on doing anything big for him or anything. He continues to grow more and more everyday. He's still scooting around like crazy. The only thing he won't do is stand up long enough to walk or anything. He will sometimes stand up next to things, but he won't walk even if he is holding on to something. He knows how to pull himself up to things, but once he gets up, he looks down to sit back down. I think he's maybe a little lazy. He was lazy with trying to crawl and I can see it with walking as well. I see babies that are a couple months younger than him just walking everywhere and he won't do it. However, today, I went into his room and he pulled himself to a standing position for the first time in his crib. He just giggled when we went in because he knew that what he did made us happy. He really is such a cute kid. I enjoy him so much. I got the chance to change my schedule to work 3 days a week instead of 4. I'm so excited for it because that gives me one extra full day to be with my son and to just stay home and be a mom.

As for an update on me, I've finally got rid of the boot. I still don't walk well, but I know it'll take time. This week is the last week for my therapy and then my insurance won't cover it, so I'm all on my own! I know I walk with limp still, but I don't care because I'm without a boot! I actually walk okay with a shoe, but it's going to take awhile before I can go barefoot again I know.

Anyways...hopefully I can keep up on the picture and the blogging so that next time, I don't have to cram several things into 1 blog.