Happy 4th of July!

It's the 4th of July!! And what a great long weekend it has been. Thursday and Friday were spent unpacking and cleaning the house for Tommy, Carrie, Al, & Sherri's arrivals Friday and Saturday (so basically, Adam's entire immediate family). I was pretty pleased with how things turned out cleaning/organizing-wise, and it was great to see them all here.

Friday night we had dinner with C&T when they arrived, played, and relaxed. Saturday, Adam didn't have his first tournament game until 1pm, so I stayed back with Morgan while the rest of the fam (A&S had come by noon) went to Adam's game in the QCs. Morgan and I caught up with them after a hefty (and much needed) 2-hr nap (highly sparse occasion for Morgan as she usually naps about an hour and a half at best). Morgan and I headed home by 8pm since it was past her bedtime, she was a sweaty/sunscreen mess (my favorite kind of summer kiddo), and was in bed by 9pm...causing an 8am wake up (squeee!) the next morning. T&C left after lunch and Adam and Al went golfing. Sherri, Morgan and I stayed back and gave her new, bigger swimming pool a whirl (after I hauled out probably 30 of our biggest bowls of hot water to counter the freezing cold hose water) and our fish swam. She was in there for almost 2 hours and LOVED it. Her friend, Cooper, came down to visit and go for his first swim (he's 5 months old) and I was uber impressed that he tolerated the (not even close to bath temp) water. We plunked him in the bumbo seat and as long as he had as many toys as he could hold at once, he was a pretty happy camper. We had dinner at home that night after the guys got back from golfing, and had a relaxing night with ice cream. Monday we had a most lazy morning with Morgan asking to go swimming in water that had turned significantly colder over night but still loved. After a lunch at the Button Factory in town, A&S left for WI and Morgan, who didn't even make it home awake from lunch, took a nap.

What a great weekend so far! We have lots to do around here so honestly, I'm not sure if we're going to make it to the 5pm parade in Muscatine or not. :-( I'm hoping so. But the lawn is long again (ah! if we mow today, it will be the 4th time in a week! Ok ok, catching up from vacation still...) and the a/c is completely broken now instead of just leaking so hopefully Adam can figure it out after Morgan wakes up as the banging he was needing to do was making her wake up a bit.

Baby news - I am now, today, 16 weeks pregnant which means I suppose I could almost say I'm 4 months along. This scares me that I can now talk in months instead of weeks b/c it means we are that much closer (who am I kidding, we're still a ways off) to sleepless nights and TWO kids. Eager yet nervous...which I'm assuming is rather normal. I'm feeling fine save for the horrendous acne that has recently taken over and made me feel 14 again. Awesome.

Morgan news - She is now a regular 2-3 word utterance talker. Sometimes there are more and sometimes there are LOTS more but I have no idea what she said save for 2 or 3 of the words she spouts off. The other day I asked her to do something and, in her best teenager voice tone, she replied, "O-tay" and went and did it. Yikes. What else is she doing...she now can catch, and loves to, a soccer-sized ball. Smaller ones? Not so much yet. She asks for golf and tennis (thank you Wimbledon) on TV along with Dora, Diego, and Bubble Guppies. When asked if she wants something and she does, she usually replies, "Oh, yes." When asked what she wants to eat, she responds "tooties" (cookies). Instead of saying "Hm-hmm" for excuse me, she now says "tu me" or "tu me, Maddie" (when she's trying to get around the dog). She loves to tell, "here go, Daddy" and "see you soon, ___." She now knows "what do you say?" is followed by "please" (which is probably the only sign she still uses with the verbal word) and what do you tell should be followed by "thank you" which really sounds more like "saynu." Her vocabulary and understanding grows by leaps and bounds every day which never ceases to amaze us.

Off to hang out with the monkey (since she woke up nice and early from her nap, awesome) while Adam attempts to be the most handy husband ever and the house works towards 80 degrees (one degree to go). Wish us luck that we don't need a whole new system even though our current one might be as old as we are...or at least 15-20 years old....ugh.