Whirlwind July

I know, you thought I'd thrown in the towel with the blogging or something.  I'm pretty sure this is the longest stretch I've gone without posting since Ava was born.  To tell you the truth, I literally have not had a minute to post.  I finished my second year of fellowship at the end of June, and we were looking forward to recuperating in July.  Well, that didn't exactly happen.  Instead, I took my echo boards, we went to Mt. Carmel for July 4th, we flew to New York for a wedding, we drove to Indiana for Uncle Jimmey's funeral, we prepared to move our family to Atlanta for a full month, and finally, we made it to Atlanta!  What a crazy month it has been.  I have been taking a few pictures along the way, so this will be a whirlwind catch up on what we've been up to.

Independence Day - we spent it in Mt. Carmel with Aidan.  We hit up the downtown parade and Wabash County fireworks, then did a few fireworks of our own in Pawpaw's driveway.

We also made a stop at the city pool in Mt. Carmel:

Then we left Ava at Mawmaw's for the weekend and took Patrick to Upstate New York for Erica and Ahmad's wedding.

Yes, I brought some redneck to New York.  Brendan holding my half naked baby...at a bar... Hey that's where they had the rehearsal dinner!

In the airport on the way home, Patrick managed to poop a massive poop, annihilating his clothes, diaper, and toy.  Here he is after cleaning him up, so proud of himself.

Of course I had no spare clothes in the diaper bag.  So I frantically ran around the gift shops until I found a baby onesie to put him in:

A few days after we got home, Patrick hit the 9 month mark.  He has celebrated this by army crawling all over the house - generally as quickly as possible into something definitively not for babies - stairs, off beds, plastic bags, electrical cords, cat food, small inedible items...yep - he's all boy!  He's also learning to pick food up and eat it, and he'll eat just about anything.

Crawling on everything.

Beer run with Daddy.

We continued to have lots of impromptu sprinkler and kiddie pool parties in the neighborhood.

I got to go on my first field trip with Ava.  She was beyond excited (so was I).  Here she is with Addison and Claire:

Mawmaw and Pawpaw took us to the Cardinals game.  There were two big firsts at this game - it was Patrick's first game, and it's the FIRST TIME Jake actually wore red to the game (stinkin' Cubbie fan!).

Then I finally took my echo boards.  What a relief.  Fortunately I had lots of "help" studying:

Ava's nailing the management of primum ASDs.

Patrick, on the other hand, is just drooling on my book and stealing my pen. ;)

We've been putting Ava to work in the yard...

But it paid off because the sunflower she planted with Meme finally bloomed!

And that, my friends, is it!  We are now in Atlanta and are looking forward to a great month.  I'm sure I'll be working hard, but Ava has already decided that this is the "best vacation ever."  And that "we should do this more often."  I think it probably helps that we have a pool right outside our apartment door. :)