summer fun

Well, summer is officially ending and I've got a lot of catch up to do! We had such a fun summer this year! I've already blogged about our trips to Ohio and Oklahoma and our 4th of July holiday, so here's a rundown of some of the other things we did:

-obviously, we spent a lot of time in the pool. Emily was crazy about her puddle jumper! Once she got the hang of it, she didn't want us helping her in the pool at all. She's a little fish! Addie loved all of our swim days too :)

-we attempted a few park days over the summer, but for the most part it was just too hot! We're excited for the weather to start cooling down a little bit so we can enjoy the parks more!

we love the baby ducks!

-mid-summer, the zoo had a snow day! We got excited and decided to go check it out. It was a bit of a let-down :( They had a little patch of snow and Emily was too freaked out by all the kids to play in it (and they didn't let parents go on it with them!) We still had a good time at the zoo though, despite the extreme heat!

it looked like the chimps had partied a little too hard the night before ;)

worn out after a fun day at the zoo :)

-In early august, we took a quick, overnight trip to galveston with some of my family. We went to schlitterbahn the first day. Emily loved the lazy river (even the part with the rapids, surprisingly)! That night we went to the rainforest cafe for dinner. The next day we hit the beach (Emily's first time) and went to moody gardens. We didn't think the girls had enough energy to do all of moody gardens, so we just did the rainforest pyramid. It was awesome!!

hotel tradition!

don't let that smile fool you... she was not a fan of the 4D movie!

-we celebrated Grant's birthday when we got back from galveston. We went to a new restaurant that serves chicago style pizza and had an ice cream cake for dessert. The weekend before, we went on a double date with some friends to top golf. I've been promising him that I'd go for a long time and finally did it. I had a lot more fun than I was expecting! We'll definitely be going back!

-Emily started a new tumbling class and it's so much fun! She's doing it with some of her best friends and her teacher is the cutest! She pretends all week that she's being the teacher and helping her friends do "tricks." We love it!!

-Our ward did a week long vacation bible school that I volunteered at. It was awesome! I was a little worried about how Emily would do in the nursery all week and how Addie would be missing her morning naps, but it all went so smoothly. Addie was definitely feeling it by the end of the week, but she was such a trooper the whole time! Emily had a blast! They took the nursery kids on "field trips" to some of the different shops and they got to meet Mary. Emily talked about it for a long time after!

-Grant's dad came to visit for a weekend and we had a great time! He and Grant fixed our dishwasher and the girls had some great bonding time with him. Emily warmed up to him much faster than I expected her too and still talks about his visit :)

had to take a break for story time!

It was an awesome summer! We loved every minute, but I'm super excited for fall to get here. It's my absolute favorite time of year! Can't wait!

8 months

Yesterday was Addie's 8 month birthday!

(disclaimer: her stats could be completely off! when we first measured her height, we got an inch shorter than last month and we got different numbers for her weight every time we tried, so we took the average:)... we'll be going to the doc next month for official numbers!)

-Addie has learned so much this month! She skipped over the army crawl phase completely and went straight into full on crawling. She is all over the place! She'll follow us from room to room and LOVES being able to go wherever she wants to. She's always exploring and investigating. A whole new world has opened up to her! She's also playing a lot with the idea of pulling up. She can sometimes pull herself up to her knees. She also likes to put her hands up on something, stand on her feet, and then let go with one hand. I'm not ready to have her standing up! She's growing too fast!

before she learned to crawl, she would experiment by pushing up on her hands and feet

she's learning the art of carrying things in her mouth so she can crawl with them

she can sit up now, and it's so fun greeting her when she wakes up! (time to lower the crib mattress!)

-We started some baby finger foods this month and Addie is a huge fan. She's giddy whenever I pull out the puffs. I have to spread them out on her tray because she'll grab a whole handful and try to stick it in her mouth!

-We have another dancer on our hands! Whenever the music starts, Addie will bounce and swing her arms all over the place. I volunteered at our ward's vacation bible school a few weeks ago and whenever it was time to sing Addie was practically jumping out of my arms she was so excited!

-Emily is still Addie's best best friend! Addie is so happy that she can now follow Emily and get to the toys that Emily has. Emily doesn't always love this, but usually she's good about playing and sharing with Addie. Mostly she loves being the big sister and seeing how much Addie looks up to her. They're very fun to watch together!

so fun being one of the big girls!

they're starting to cause trouble together!

-Addie developed a little bit of mommy separation anxiety this month.  She was still fine with other people or even playing by herself, but if she saw me leave the room she would scream! Then she was fine when I came back. She's been a lot better for the past week, so hopefully she's over it now!

-This little girl is STILL not sleeping through the night :( I'm feeling a little humbled because I used to always brag about what an awesome sleeper Emily was and I thought it was because I had trained her so well. I do believe that the training helped Emily a lot, but I'm doing all the same things with Addie and she's still up every single night! At least she's finally at the point where it's consistently only once a night. Hopefully it only continues to improve!

she's started sleeping with her bum in the air!

-Addie's happy place is at the park on the swings!

outtakes!

Addie's nursery

I'm finally getting pictures up of Addie's room!!

But first... I need to show you guys what this room looked like when we bought the house:

It was blinding!! We covered it up with paint to match the rest of our house and turned it into our workout room.

When we found out we were having a girl, we decided to go with coral, teal, and mustard yellow. Emily had the pink so we wanted something different ;) After we (finally) agreed on bedding we liked, I started gathering pieces to put in the room. Grant painted the room back in the fall and we've been slowly adding to it since then. We love it!

I had all of this before Addie was born and it took way too long to actually get it all up!

Emily had to help tape, of course!

The finished product:

my mom and I (mostly my mom) made the crib skirt and valance :)

a monogram for her door :)