June wrap-up

The month of June tends to be one of the busiest for Chris at work and one of the slowest for me. We had gotten into a school year groove with preschool and morning activities which gave us some structure with the babies. Now we suddenly went into having all our time to ourselves in June with no structure at all and it has been hard! I am trying to do my best to enjoy summer, but it is hot, and very hard to do things this year with so many kids so small. I am hoping this will be our hardest summer and that things will just get easier from here, but I'm not so sure.

The girls decided to papier mache a balloon the other day. They apparently saw this on Creative Galaxy (an Amazon show - don't let your kids watch this. I am finding half-finished "craft" projects all over our house now and it is a glue-sodden, glitter-strewn mess). They then used this craft as a pinata and I was finding stamps, bead necklaces, and loose beads all over the house.

Chris and Eleanor made a robot together out of things from the recycling bin. I'm not sure why, but she has been asking to make a robot all the time and says she wants to be an engineer when she gets bigger.

We've been going to the park in our neighborhood in the afternoons.

The babies have started interacting, which has been sweet to see. Mostly they ignore each other still, but sometimes they look at each other and smile or laugh and I love it!

I put Ben and Rosie in the church nursery for the last month and change. Rosie does fine and Ben has had an awful month. There is just so much going on in that room, so many babies, and this needy little man just does not get the attention he needs. We end up sitting together in the service or walking the halls.

I took Eleanor and Rosie to a friend's memorial service this month. Eleanor wanted to hold Rosie - it was so sweet!

One day the girls decided to make lunch by themselves because they were tired of waiting for me to get the babies down for their naps. When I finally got Ben down, I came into the kitchen and saw this. There was jelly all over the floor. They did eat their whole sandwiches though.

I've been using the trails behind our neighborhood with friends in the evenings after putting the kids to bed, but we've also taken the kids on them, too! This was on a 3 mile loop.

Rosie after a long day.

I had an appointment with Ben (thankfully at our house), and this is what Eleanor and Jane did in the meantime.

Grandma came down to visit.

Eleanor decided to color on the screened in porch one afternoon and had to clean it off as punishment. Someone taught her tic-tac-toe so she tried to play it on the wall.

Jessie and her boyfriend Henry came to visit on a trip through to visit his parents. It was the first time Jessie met the twins and the first time we had seen her since August before she went to France last year.

We made crayons out of a bunch of old broken pieces one afternoon.

There was a rainbow on our ceiling inside one day that the girls thought was pretty cool.

The girls have been taking swimming lessons with a friend! Eleanor is about where she was last year in terms of being able to jump in and swim whatever distance she can do underwater holding her breath, but hasn't figured out how to get her head up to breathe yet.

We found another turtle in our driveway after the rain one day.

Ben and Rosie attended their first movie - Storks, one of Regal's $1 summer movies. They were into it!

Rosie has continued to protest the bottle, but Ben held a bottle for the first time the other day.

I've been hiring one of my friend's daughters to help as a "mother's helper" during appointments one of the babies has at our house. She is great at distracting the girls so I can focus on the babies' needs!

We have been taking care of our neighbor's chickens while they're out of town. They have 6 and between them all they lay an average of 4 eggs a day. We are watching them for 8 days so we got a total of around 30 eggs! They also have a little garden we water and fish in a koi pond we feed.

Eleanor continues to come out in the evenings when Chris is gone to "do that thing where we chat on the front porch."

I (and Chris!) finally won HQ trivia! I am now $0.13 richer, and Chris is $0.12 richer.

We went to see a juggling show at our local library.

Eleanor spent a week at day camp doing fun things like learning about chess and pointalism, making catapults, playing sports, and learning songs.

We survived the entire month of June with the heat, and I'll be honest, it actually went a lot better than I predicted it would! It was just as hard as I thought it was going to be, but I guess my expectations were set appropriately low because it went decently! Onward to July.