July

I really have been a terrible blogger, but I need to keep track of what we've been doing this past month for when I eventually upload this all to blurb, so here goes...

4th of July activities:

"Marching" in the Ralston Children's Parade with friends:

Watching the "big" parade:

Justin's usual pose with loud noises:

Hmm...

We had a great 4th. Still one of our favorite things about Omaha. This year we changed up our usual favorite spot where we watch the Ralston fireworks and we walked down onto the golf course to watch them....it wasn't roped off this year. Awesome. And of course we got to watch the equally awesome fireworks shows that all the neighbors set off. Yay for their illegal transport from South Dakota and Missouri! And yay that Adam didn't have to work this year on the 4th so he didn't have to see nearly as many kids' blown off hands and arms. Yuck. Sorry that's kinda morbid, but well...it's our life.

Camping with Daddy at Mahoney State Park 7/2/09--yes, he took BOTH boys!!

Atop the lookout tower at Mahoney, a view of the Platte River:


Visit from Grandpa Smith:
We put Grandpa to work helping Adam build a fence on the unfenced portion of our property. We see why it wasn't fenced...quite the slope...and hassle! But we're SO grateful Grandpa was willing to help us. Now the boys have a place to run...without running into the street in the front yard!! We enjoyed our visit with Grandpa and enjoyed taking him to Texas Roadhouse for steak. Yum. Hopefully he wasn't too terribly wiped out when we sent him home!

We also took Grandpa to see the Kanesville Tabernacle across the river into Council Bluffs (where Brigham Young was sustained as prophet.). Glad to get a shot with all the boys together:



Visit from Grandma Smith:

After Grandpa went home, Grandma came out to visit! We had a busy house for a couple weeks! Since Adam put Grandpa to work on his visit, I put Grandma to work on her visit. We went to the cannery and worked on some more food storage. She was wonderful to help with that! Grandma also watched the kids so Adam and I could go out a couple nights, which was so nice. She brought all sorts of fun goodies for the kids and they were in heaven reading books and playing with Grandma. Grandma was able to go one of Justin's baseball games too!



Justin's Baseball season:

Team Pizza Party at Valentino's. Justin was excited to get another trophy to add to his collection! We saw lots of improvement in Justin this season. He's excited to start soccer in a couple weeks!

Other points of interest for the month...

Adam started moonlighting in July. OH, how NICE! That's why we could build our fence that we've wanted for 3 years! YAY. We went up to visit Adam while he was moonlighting and went swimming at his hotel's indoor swimming pool and then out to Applebee's. Not sure if we'll be able to do that every month when he works up there, but it's nice that it's not quite the same as when Adam has "regular" call...it's more, well, real life-like radiologist call. Like he's a real radiologist or something. Ha. It's weird that he has a "real" unrestricted license now.

I've made the decision to cut down my hours at work, yeah, that's actually possible...even though I only work 8/week right now. It'll get hard when Adam is gone for a month working in DC and I won't have a place for the kids when I'm working, plus, it's just getting harder in some respects for Adam to get every Wednesday off. So starting in September I'm just going to work 4 hours a week. It'll be hard to get everything "nursing-ish" done in those 4 hours and I won't get to know my patients as well, but I feel it's a good decision at this point. So I'm looking foward to that. Ooh, and speaking of DC, the tickets are bought, YAY! The kids and I will go out and visit Adam at the end of his time out there so we can see the sights. It'll be tricky I have a feeling trying to do the metro with a stroller by myself with kids and luggage and other things, but it'll be fun. Yay for something fun to look forward to!!:)