July Fun!

For whatever reason, I'm having a really hard time keeping up with the blog this year! So I'm going to cram the whole month of July into one post. We've been keeping very busy...as you can see from the pictures below!

Laura's Gigi (great-grandma) came to visit for a few weeks at the beginning of the month. We had a great time...especially at the lake for the 4th of July.

We participated in the July 4th parade...well at least we tried to! We had the date wrong so we ended up walking around the neighborhood by ourselves singing patriotic songs. Laura looked at us like we were crazy half the time -- but we still had a lot of fun!We all went out on the boat to watch the fireworks over the lake. The big display was beautiful -- and one of the most fun parts was watching all the smaller, individual fireworks displays all around the lake as we rode home. Laura said her favorite were the pink ones!

The last highlight of Gigi's visit was taking her for a ride on the jet ski (Laura just sat on the ski for the picture). She had never been on it before and really enjoyed it, I think:) We always get a 4 generations picture when Gigi is in town, and decided the jet ski would be a great place to do it this time!

Another big development in July is that Laura has finally (kinda!) learned how to ride her tricycle! We have been working on this for almost a year! She is thrilled and very proud of herself and told me after we went inside that she wants a "big-girl" bicycle now. I think we need to master the tricycle first!!
We have also spent the better part of the month at the pool. We joined the same pool as 3 of Laura's best friends and we have had a blast. Laura is a fish! And I have enjoyed chatting with my friends while the kids play.

Laura's swimming (or "fimming" as she calls it) was getting so good, we decided to enroll her in a week of swim lessons. She learned to swim underwater, get rings from the bottom of the pool, and started learning how to breath while swimming (using a kickboard). She was so excited to go every day and was very disappointed when the week was over.

As you can see...we've had a very busy month and August started out with a bang! Shawn's whole family (16 of us in all!!) came out to the lake for a family reunion. I'll blog about that in the next few days...hopefully:)