On a side note I just realized NICK HAS A LOOSE TOOTH. Sorry for shouting, but my tiny baby boy HAS A LOOSE TOOTH. I hope tomorrow he doesn’t have plans to start driving or get married.

This Summer has been nuts. A couple weeks ago we went to Illinois for a long weekend and had a wonderful, if not action-packed visit. I didn’t take many pictures because we were running around a lot but there was a lot of this:

And also adorable smiling grandchildren, this one wearing her new July 4th dress (made by her wonderful Grandma Liane) and eating my birthday cake:

I wished I had a picture of their new chicken “coop.” Really a more accurate word would be “barn” or “condo” or “luxury avian comfort gated community roost.” My dad built it and those are some VERY lucky chickens!

Three days after we got home Mike and I jetted off to New Orleans. In July. Mike had a conference there so I tagged along and did LOTS of sweating. Walking around there can be brutal, but if I didn’t I would never have seen the classiest Arby’s South of the Mason-Dixon line:

I stopped by the Aquarium to pet a stingray and see an IMAX, it was awesome.

Hmmm, how ironic.

We rode the ferry over to Algiers, and then promptly back again. Turns out “walking” and “sight seeing” are not things that interest us that much.

Beignets though, yes please. But they need more powdered sugar.

What was really fun was taking the St. Charles street car over to the garden district for some great Thai food and even better ice cream! I had seen this place featured on the Food Network the day before so we knew it would be on our to-do list. Good thing too… the White Chocolate and Pink Peppercorn ice cream was dy-no-mite!

A 2-scoop waffle cone and 10 (yes, TEN) mini scoops later we kind of wanted to die but it was so worth the pain. How can you choose with flavors like that?

We walked through a cemetery and I was a little creeped out by the fact that the walls are made of tombs. Walking outside I had no idea I was passing by rows and rows of dead people.

We flew back Wednesday, which also happened to be Bastille Day and my 32nd birthday. To celebrate Mike gave me this:

Wrapping skills, no. Fortunately good husband skills, yes.

And my mom got me a lovely chocolate cake from Whole Foods. People, they do not mess around. Please come help me eat it or we’ll have cake in the fridge for weeks!

Ok, the end for now. I forgot to tell you I updated Karrmedia before the trips, and now I put the rest of the pictures from NOLA there as well. Go have a look!

And while things are getting done we’ve taken up residence in our dining room. Not so bad actually.

We went to Mission Days and once again I got a terrible sunburn. Every year, honestly! Will I ever learn? I took this picture for the sake of posterity but I think I’ll be submitting it to Photobomb instead.

And then of course there was the Birthday Party. Whoo! If only I was more on the ball there would have been some pictures. I’ll put the few I have on Karrmedia at the end of the month, but for now let me share the awesome (I’m a little proud of these).

And the boy got a Hot Wheels bath ramp jump water toy thing from the Grandparents (Hi Dad and Liane!) that the kids LOVE. Nick completely put it together himself and I took a video of all the muttering for two reasons:

1. The muttering is hilarious

2. I thought it would be fun to have a video of the way he talks now to compare to later in the Summer after Speech therapy. Oh yeah, that’s happening. At his evaluation he tested at the 99.7th percentile for comprehension and the 4th percentile for intelligibility. Yep.

I have to say, just in case this post has made little to no sense at all it is because I’m laying here on my couch, sweating with fever and hopped up (down) on Tylenol with Codeine. It’s strep throat again! Because I didn’t get enough of that the first time.

He really got into it and although he seems to get his athletic ability from his dad (ha!) he has a good time playing. Now flash forward to Saturday and his first game. Keep an eye on the one in the dress, #7. What do you mean he’s not a youth size large?

He did pretty well at first, then began to skirt the edges and fall behind. Then he threw himself on the ground and sitting on the sidelines wasn’t far behind. He began to get a look like a deer caught in headlights, trying to follow the pack and looking tired and disheartened. Mike says it was the same for him as a child — the feeling of being overwhelmed by the pack of kids all tangled up and not being able to find your place with them. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Even with that he still had a great time, and they won 3-2!

(Go check out Karrmedia, it’s got new pictures!)

We had our older model child upgraded to include hearing and clearer speech. We had to remove tonsils and adenoid, which came standard but we never cared for them. All in all I’m really happy with the addition of the ear tubes but I guess we’ll see when we get the bill

So excited for surgery! Afterward he was heard saying “I thought I would like it but it turns out I didn’t.” At least he got to drive a little Jeep before they knocked him out.

We had a rough several days with him but he did really well and only needed Tylenol for a week. Brave little dude. In fact the worst thing was trying to give him the GOOD drugs which he hated, Tylenol with Hydrocodone. He had no idea how many people would gladly take that for him! Also: ear drops. 5 doses = $40. That was our COPAY after insurance. Crazy!

Next up we have the last big snowstorm of the season, hooray! We got about a foot of snow real quick-like so Mike took the kids out to build a snowman. It was pretty gigantic!

After it was built they got in a pretty good snowball fight — can you guess who did all the pelting of his children with wet snow? Nick took refuge up by the front door which really just made him an easy target.

The aftermath.

We came back in and had some delicious hot cocoa. It warmed up a ton and in just a few short hours things had melted so much the snowman’s head fell off.

24 Hours

48 Hours

To finish things off completely we had another snowball fight in t-shirts and 70 degree weather. Let me tell you that snow was still plenty cold, especially when I got hit in the back and it slid all the way down into my undies.

Next up is Easter. Not much to say there, pretty much all the standard festivities. However the Bunny looked FABULOUS.

I wish we had a picture of the dude bunny. He had a matching sequined VEST. We did and egg hunt and had some ultra traditional Easter pizza for dinner. Everybody does that right?