Summer, Summer, Summer, Will You Never End??

Devon recently reminded me that I get a bit, um, CRAZY at the end of the summer. It is becoming an annual thing, I guess. Could it be the combination of the warm weather minus an air conditioner? Could it be the softball tournaments that steal my husband for a whole weekend? Could it be the self-inflicted pressure to make Joe's birthday (August 24th) the best one ever? Could it simply be the extra long days, making bedtime feel further away than Christmas??

Whatever it is, my craziness has arrived. I can't really blog when I feel crazy, because then my blog would be complainy, and us blogging mommies don't complain, RIGHT??

So without complaining about the fact that my back and neck hurt from holding Max and nursing while multi-tasking, and without complaining that it took me an hour and a half to get Lucy to sleep this afternoon, and without complaining that I am trying to enjoy my quiet time while Max and Lucy nap but Joseph keeps telling me, in detail, about every toy weapon that he is playing with... Here are some various pictures of our various activities.

This is totally random. Lucy has a large doll named Sweet Pea, and it is bigger than Max, so Joe thought it would be funny to take a picture of the two babies together :) Joe asks me everyday if I've blogged about Max and his "girlfriend" yet, and now I can say yes!!

Joseph turned 11 last Monday, and we celebrated by taking him and his two best buds to Aunt Merry's house for a day of fun. They swam, played football, shot Merry's guns, ate burgers... Joe had a great birthday :) Perhaps the best birthday yet!

I cannot believe that Joe is 11 already! He was only 5 when I met him, and he was such a peanut! Last night Devon and I took the kids to the park, and I had a moment when I looked at Joe and all of the sudden he looked huge to me! It was as if he'd grown 12 inches at that very moment-- very strange!

The rest of us had fun at Merry's too.

For all of you Toddlers & Tiaras fans out there, could Lucy totally rock a swimsuit competition??

At one point during the day, Devon asked me if I was having a good time. I genuinely answered yes, and then he laughed and insisted on taking a picture because I literally had a child hanging from each arm! Lucy takes a while to warm up to Merry's pit bulls, and Max is sort of a permanent fixture, thus the hanging children.

Merry has a friend staying with her, and she is training him and feeding him for the upcoming Mr. Olympia competition. His name is Toney, and he is the biggest person I've ever met, so I thought it would be fun to get a pic of the biggest dude with my little dude.

I am guessing that Max is thinking, "This man is not soft and cuddly! What is under his shirt? It feels like nothing that I am used to!"

Just for fun, I thought I'd post a picture of just what exactly is under his shirt :)

Wow!

Lucy was super excited to ride Merry's horses. We were all curious about the fact that Lucy is scared of the dogs but not the huge horses... though I am not scared of a horse yet I am scared of a mouse! Hmmm... interesting.

Max and Merry

Joe requested that I make an ice cream cake, and blowing out the candles was really the only thing that could get him out of the pool at the end of the day :)

In other news, Lucy is now completely in a princess phase. We watch The Little Mermaid at least once a day, and she says, "Mom, I am Ariel." She wears princess panties (oh, the potty training is complete!), and she would just about do anything for a princess dress! So, last Saturday, I went on Craigslist and searched "princess dress" and I found a garage sale just a few miles away that advertised PRINCESS DRESSES! I threw clothes on over my pajamas and got into the car as fast as I could!! Joe and I returned home with 4 dress, a tutu, and numerous accessories that a princess would be lost without :)

Max is now 4 months old!!

He weighs 17 pounds and is 27 inches long.

I didn't really realize how big he is until we visited our new friend Emmett (born to our friends Kellen and MaryBeth).

Emmett was born on Monday, and currently weighs 8 lbs 13 oz., Max's exact birth weight! It is fun to see their sizes compared and know that just 4 months ago Max was that small!

Ah, my happy boy!

Okay, I am feeling a little less crazy and complainy now that I've finished this blog.

But seriously, Summer, hasta la vista!! Get outta here!