Summer {a recap}

This summer goes down as one of my favorites ever! There have been exciting things that have happened in summers past (getting married, overseas trips, having Lauren), but there was something that made this summer so wonderful. I loved getting to sleep in. I loved how easy it was to be a stay at home mom. Sure, there are challenges to that, but compared to working and being a mom...staying home, for our family, makes things SO much easier and less stressful. I loved spending mornings drinking coffee from a real mug while watching The Today Show. I loved getting to be home every morning when Lauren woke up - the extra time and snuggles were wonderful! I loved exercising almost every day (and I'm SHOCKED I said that). It is over, and we're back in the swing of things. Things are still good, but are much more busy. It is our current life season, and I'm trying hard not to wish it away for something different.

Our summer started off with a fun party! We celebrated Lauren's 1st birthday at my parents' house. We had tons of guests and I didn't take any pictures! Thankfully, my BFF and cousin are excellent photogs and were willing to share their pictures with me. I didn't go overboard with much.

The cake:


I made two cakes - one for her to smash and one for the guests to eat (well, I made three cakes, the first one wasn't baked in the middle - even though the tooth pick came out clean). It was goood cake. Lauren did a pretty good job with the smash part.


However, once she started throwing the cake around the kitchen, we took it away and gave her the serving spatula, and she was in heaven.

The next weekend was also pretty exciting. We decided that since Lauren was one and because we didn't have any food allergies that we would give her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. I jokingly told Brian that I wanted him home because I didn't think I could handle a trip to the ER alone if she had a reaction. I'm SOOO glad he was home, because, sure enough, she had an allergic reaction. She looked like this...and the picture doesn't do it much justice.

Her eyes were really swollen and puffy and she had these pimple looking things around her mouth. We went to urgent care and they gave her a some benedryl and an oral steroid. Within 20 minutes she looked back to normal. We left with a prescription for an Epi-pen and a referral to see an allergist. It was a scary experience - but she was ok, and we weren't truly fearful for her life - since she continued to breathe ok and act pretty normal through the experience. I, of course hadn't showered or done anything with my hair before I fed her - so I went to urgent care in my pjs with no makeup and wild crazy hair. I was glad I remembered a bra. We were pretty scared to feed her after this. Peanuts are in lots of things and we have to stay away from any foods that may have had contact with peanuts. This means she can't have ice cream from an ice cream place (no sonic, no dairy queen, no frozen yogurt - poor kid) because we just don't know if what she's going to eat may have had contact with peanuts. We read lots of labels and are careful. We're not so scared anymore, but I'm afraid for school. She'll have to sit at a special table at lunch. She won't be able to eat birthday treats that other kids bring to school. She's going to be THAT weird kid. And she'll be a kid...she won't always know what to do. I'm afraid other people will give her food because they won't know that it could kill her. The world wide community isn't too friendly towards people who have allergies. I'm thankful we have a few years before school. We've been to an allergist and she has a moderate allergy. We don't know, however, if that means she could go into anaphylactic shock next time, or if she'll just break out in hives. We will just pray that we will never know.

A few weeks later, Brian and I went to a wedding of a co-worker of mine. I had a blast!


I don't have any photos of the bride and groom, but I had fun with these two ladies. They make life so fun!

The rest of the summer was pretty boring, and it was nice. We celebrated July 4th by eating with my parents and listing to our neighbors blow stuff up - hoping it wouldn't wake our sleeping kid.

We spent lots of time with this little boy, Caden and his mommy, Melissa (in the blue dress above). They are three weeks apart in age...and he's SEVERAL inches taller than she is!


We made lots of messes and she 'helped' me around the house every chance she could!


We spent several days at the pool. She loved splashing in the water...which felt like bath water most days.

Near the end of the summer, she got hand, foot and mouth disease. That's quite fun. She's sick here in this picture. She doesn't look so bad, but she was on the couch and didn't move for a long time, let me rock her to sleep, refused to eat for days and was up a lot in the middle of the night miserable from her fever.

After Lauren started feeling better, I got sick. I thought I had hand foot and mouth too, but the doctor said it's really not common in adults and he didn't think I had it. He diagnosed me with strep throat. A few days later, however, my throat culture was negative. I had a sore throat for 2 weeks. I'm pretty sure it was mono based on my symptoms - thankfully it was pretty mild. It seemed like sickness was running wild in our house right up until when I had to start getting ready to go back to school. We did have to fit one more thing in before I went back though. I had to teach this little one how to drive!

This little car has been the hit toy of the past few weeks! It also converts to a walker push toy. Right now she can only go backwards - so I've got a bit of teaching left to do!

Well, there you have it, our summer in review. If you made it to the end, congrats!