Summer recap and Fall happenings!

*Be prepared for lots of rambling and lots of pictures!

I cannot believe its been so long since I've posted! Looks like I took the summer (& then some!) off, so I really wanted to update my little blog and do a quick recap!

Life with four kiddos is BUSY. We are constantly going, going, going.

We had a really great summer...Grant has therapy 3 mornings a week (2 speech sessions and 1 hour of OT), so as you can imagine, the driving back and forth as well as the therapy time itself takes up a lot of time. Almost every Monday of summer break I took the kids to the library and they picked out a few books to read while we were in the waiting room. And of course we have our weekly Target trip and a grocery store/errands morning too.We usually spent most of our afternoons swimming at my parents pool and trying to beat the heat!

4th of July!

In July we had our family vacation at Great Wolf Lodge in Charlotte. We wanted to stay somewhere closeish to home (aka little travel with a baby!) & we wanted something that would work for our WHOLE family, and Great Wolf Lodge was PERFECT. Its an indoor water park resort that has areas for the whole family. I spent most of my time in the kiddie area with Grant and Clara while Kane and the boys hit up all the water slides. It was surprisingly relaxing for me-Grant had a blast playing in the baby/toddler area and since it only goes to 1.5 foot deep, he could navigate the whole area without me having to follow him around. Clara and I sat in the zero depth area and she splashed away! Kane and the boys would always swing by & come check on us every 45min-hour and I would go on a few rides with the boys then too. The best part was that our hotel room was just down the hallway from the entrance to the water park so I could go back to the room with the babies whenever I needed! That was great for when Clara would get cranky and needed a nap & Grant needed a snack or something. We would leave and go out to dinner every night, & then return for late night fun at the resort arcade and bowling area. The last day there, we left that afternoon and stayed at a different hotel in Charlotte so that we could take the boys to visit a few landmarks. We went to the Carolina Panthers Stadium & we toured the Billy Graham library (which was so cool!! so much history there!). We had SUCH a good week & made so many wonderful memories with the kids...we are already planning to go back again when we can!!

After being home for ONE day from our vacation, me and Kane turned around and went back to Charlotte for Kane's annual meeting with corporate. He spent the morning and early afternoon in a meeting, and I had a glorious day shopping and eating lunch BY MYSELF, which never ever EVER happens. I missed the kids like crazy (esp Clara since it was the first time I had ever left her), but it was so needed. I really needed that little break. Once Kane got out of his meeting, we went back to the hotel for a few hours and then headed to a cookout at the president of the company's home on Lake Norman.

The first week of August brought the start of football for Carson! Harp decided not to play this year (he would rather play on the playground with the other kids), & that has taken up a huge chunk of time. He has improved SO much since the start of the season, so its nice to see the hard work pay off!

The end of August means back to school time! Our summer felt like it went by SO fast, but even so, the boys were ready to go back and to see their friends. They both love school SO much, and we all enjoy the routine school brings! Carson started 3rd grade this year and Harp's in 2nd! They both have amazing teachers this year and I am SO excited about that!

Our Clara girl is growing so fast! She is just two months away from her first birthday and my heart can hardly stand it. Her (big) personality is really starting to show! She is such a friendly baby with a streak of sassy with a little drama thrown in. ;) I'm told it a girl thing, ha! She started crawling right after our trip to Great Wolf (I could tell she wanted to while we were vacationing...she almost took off a few times in the hotel room), and shortly after that she started pulling to a stand & now shes cruising around the furniture! She loves to clap and her favorite song is "If you're happy and you know it." She can wave (at herself, ha!) and can say "hi" and "dada." She loves to dance and follow her brothers around (mainly Grant), and her newest favorite thing to do as of late is pull all the books off the bookshelf in her room. I can't even express how much joy she has brought to our family!

8 months: 

9 months:

I wanted to jot this down for future purposes, but Grant is doing SO wonderful lately. He is really developing and his hard work in both speech and OT is finally starting to pay off. He still has a way to go, of course, but I just wanted to mention how excited I am for him. We spent the summer working on preschool stuff & he mastered identifying all of the alphabet, & identifying shapes (he already knew colors & numbers for a long time now ;). In OT he is working on pre-writing skills & using scissors, which has been trickier for him-he has fine motor delays (VERY likely due to his poor eyesight). It has been a long, long road with lots of tears and prayers. My personal goal for him and my main hope and prayer is that we can get him caught up to where he needs to be by the start of kindergarten. We have so much ground to cover, but I really think it can be done!

Well thats all for now! Hope to start blogging again more regularly! :) Check back in a few days for pictures of my girl at 10 months!