a few summer snapshots

Our time in Mt Vernon is soon winding down. 10 more days till moving day! We're excited, but it will be a little sad not to have either set of grandparents near by to go visit at a moment's notice. Julia is pretty fond of all of them, as well as her many aunts and uncles. She's speaking in full sentences now, and has an impressive memory for details. She remembers who sat where in the car several days back and delights in reminding us. She likes drawing circles now, and will fill a page with many small circles representing any number of things. When she eats something she likes, she says "oh, dat tasts good!! I nike it!!" She loves digging in her little garden spot. She planted sunflower seeds, but digs them up daily, so I can't imagine they will do very well. We go on walks to see the cows that live down the road, and Julia wants to be "runnin" instead of riding in the stroller. We compromise on that point, since she gets distracted from "runnin" by any number of things along the road and my patience eventually wears thin. She goes to sleep by herself in her bed in the room next to ours, but eventually wakes up and comes to crawl in with us. Pretty soon I'll make more of an effort to get her to stay in her own bed, but for now, I'm pretty pleased that she starts the night there without tears. In our new house, Julia's room will be down the stairs from ours, so we'll just have to see how that works out at night.

Julia got some sort of bite or sting over one eye. It swelled nearly shut, but today is looking better. She didn't cry at all when it happened, so we're not sure what bit her. 

she's been busy mothering her many dolls. 

and playing with the toys at Grandma Gini's too. 

she gets very serious when drawing.  

Gini gave me a treasure trove of canning jars. Some of them were the old blue glass ones with glass lids. I'll use those for storing dry food instead of canning. Very cool!  We've been picking lots of berries and a few days ago I made some of them into freezer jam that turned out quite well if I do say so myself. 

One afternoon we left Julia with Grandma Gini and went to see Moonlight Kingdom, our first "date" in over a year! 

Julia's been very happy to have Daddy around full time. 

we spent a day hanging out at the beach with Auntie Caroline. Julia was very impressed with the trains, airplanes and boats that ran by on all sides

Julia and Grandpa Dave heading out to the mailbox