End of Summer Photo Dump

In the three years since I started this blog, I don't think I've ever gone through such a long dry spell. I have had no motivation to blog at all over the last few months. Sorry about that. Instead, I'll just show you all my pictures at once. You're welcome.

These guys are my best friends. And they're really cute. And they're funny. Last night we had a long conversation about family members (They were really struggling with the concept of uncles), death (Where will my eyes go? What about my arms?), resurrection (And my eyes will come back in my head?), and Heaven (Who does Jesus live with?). One of my favorite things ever is to watch them learn. They're so curious and so thorough, and I love answering their questions and being able to watch them process the new information. They crack me up and melt my heart at the same time.

The week before I started back to work, I was in charge of watching the twins for the day so my mom and dad brought Nalon and Holden and met us at the zoo. I'm not gonna lie. I loved it. It was fun to take the twins myself and have their snacks and water in my bag and take them home afterwards. I felt a little bit like a little girl playing mommy with her dolls, except I'm a big girl playing mommy with real-life children who are not mine. Maaaaaaybe that's a little pathetic. Regardless, we had a lot of fun and we were all pretty exhausted by the end. When we got back to the car, Campbell thanked me for taking them to the zoo which made me want to adopt her immediately. Then they both fell asleep on the drive home.

Waiting for the dog show to start. Great grandparents, right?

That lion back there sat there and stared at us the whole time we were looking at him. The tiger was a lot less interested.

One of my friends brought me some extra sweet corn from his garden, and I devoured it. I think he brought me twelve ears and it was gone in two meals. One night I had six ears for dinner. Six. Nothing else. Indiana sweet corn is the BEST.

At the beginning of August, we had an adults-only dinner (if you count Micah as an adult :) ) downtown to celebrate August birthdays, including my grandma's. We went to McCormick & Schmick's, where they apparently customize menus! The food was super yummy, and I loved, loved, loved hanging out with my family. We were just missing Thomas.

Afterwards, we walked over to the circle and hit up the South Bend Chocolate Company for some after-dinner treats. We each got something different and shared our desserts while we chatted a bit. It was such a fun night, and I wish we could do nights-out like this more often.

I just have good-looking sisters, right? 

They have these random pianos out for use all over the circle. I've heard about them in NYC and just last week I saw one in Ogden, Utah. I'm not really sure what the purpose is, but it's pretty cool. I played a few notes but I haven't had anything memorized since "Raiders of the Lost Ark" back in my piano lesson days with Mrs. Rowe. Micah memorized a song I wrote when I was twelve, though, and it's apparently all she has memorized so she played it for us. It's fine if you think I'm cool because I've had an original piano piece played in the heart of a sprawling metropolis. You'd be completely justified in believing so. This is me fake-playing and Micah real-playing. Probably why I was able to look at the camera while she was not.

My parents left pretty quickly after we had dessert, since my grandma was getting tired and they had an hour-long drive ahead of them. Micah wasn't ready to go home, though, so I offered to get her home the next day so she could stay and play. Except Isaac and Tessa went to listen to some live music at a place you have to be 21 to get into, Jacob went home, and I had to run up to Whole Foods before they closed at 10:00 to get a few things for a detox I was starting. So Micah and I went to Whole Foods and Target, then came home and watched a movie. While at Whole Foods, we found this very large bush which was a perfect size for someone who might be trying to stalk someone else.

Lately, Cooper has been my best little buddy. He almost always is happy to see me, gives me hugs when I get home, saves me seats wherever he's sitting, always has a billion things to ask or tell me, and always wants to be close to me. I'm gonna be honest here. I love it. It helps that he's really, really cute. Don't be fooled by those closed eyes. He was only pretending to be asleep.

He looked like this the rest of the time.

Every once in a while, Campbell lets down her hard exterior and joins in on our snuggle sessions.

This summer I also hit up two concerts: Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer. They were both great, of course. It was my fifth time seeing DMB, I believe, and my third time seeing John Mayer. Or maybe fourth. I can't remember. I was really into concerts there for a while and hadn't been to one in a while. These pictures are both from John Mayer at Klipsch Music Center in Noblesville.

The summer here has been amazingly mild, so the kids have spent a lot of time playing outside. One of their favorite things to do is color big splotches on the patio with their sidewalk chalk, then get it wet to form paint. Then they paint themselves with it. They're very into tattoos.

This girl kills me. All I said to her was "Smile!" and this was her reaction.

A couple of weeks ago, I came upstairs to see this: they all had out a different scrapbook and were looking through them right before bed. They love to look through these books and the younger two always have tons of questions about who the people are and where they were at this time. They're usually quite certain that any baby or toddler is them, even if that baby looks exactly like Jonah. :)

School started three weeks ago, and that has since taken over my life. It's already feeling better than last year, though, so I'm feeling optimistic. Maybe I'll even have some positive things to say about my job this year. We'll see.