July 2020: a recap

I am SO CLOSE to being caught up to real time! I'm writing about July in August...that's not bad at all, right??

We wrapped up our homemade VBS during the first few days of July, followed immediately by a festive July 4th celebration, followed promptly by beginning school...so the first bit of July was really full and exciting over here!

Even though we started school at the beginning of July, we still made sure to continue plenty of summer fun. Popsicles have been a staple (obviously):

Usually we eat popsicles made in our freezer molds, but this was on July 4th, so the girls got fancy gourmet pops from Locopops.

Lots of creative play time (please read "creative playtime" as "I don't have the energy to organize just a whole lot of specific activities, but you have tons of toys and supplies, so go with God, children"):

We continued our weekly staple of pizza and a movie:

Homeward Bound

Dennis the Menace. Claire and Lily both covered their heads at this part because they were stressed over Dennis's antics. Brad and I could NOT stop laughing at that, especially since Lily and Dennis are such KINDRED SPIRITS.

I hauled out our huge Lego stash and let them take over the dining room for a few days of creativity:

We spent time in our homemade water fun:

And poor Lily took a hard fall along the way!

Our solution for keeping an ice pack on her forehead. She was really sad, bless her sweet heart.

I woke up about four times in the night to check on her and make sure she didn't have a concussion. I tried to rouse her and make sure she responded normally (per our favorite pediatrician's advice), and she simply refused to wake up at all. Turned the other way and scooted as far away from me as she could. Which was exactly how she would normally respond, so I figured we were good. This is a picture of her the next morning.

Also: my dad has been in private practice for 32 years, and in that time has developed a collection of maxims that he lives and practices pediatric medicine by. One of his most used is this: If it comes down to concrete or skin, concrete always wins. 

Lily is out to prove him right on the regular.

The girls continued to spend a lot of time with our neighbor and her dogs, which is such a symbiotic relationship, as both parties wear the other out (in a good and helpful way):

Brynn really waffles in her feelings toward the dogs.

Brad continues to be everyone's favorite:

Brad's been working a little more with our risk-averse eldest on her bike skills, as well as introducing Brynn to the balance bike (which has been a roaring success, incidentally):

I definitely used screens as needed:

And one of our biggest July updates was transitioning Brynna to her place in the big girl bunk bed situation:

Overall, it has gone pretty smoothly. Not entirely, of course, because that would be asking far too much. But I really can't complain.

I'll do a post soon about where we are in life and career, as much of that was hammered out in June and July. But there aren't cute pictures to accompany that storyline, so it doesn't seem to fit here. I reached 33 weeks at the end of July and was still not on insulin, for which I am very thankful. I've got really low iron and very high blood pressure but no insulin. I'll take it! There is a very good chance that I'll actually do an August recap in real time! How great would that be??