Considering the last post was entitled "Summer Starting Line" calling this the "Finish" seems appropriate.
This was a summer of long, lazy days. We spent our time together doing everything and nothing. No major trips or fancy vacations - just time together. After a particularly exhausting and draining school year, this summer of hibernating with my little family was perfect.
Cousin time at the beginning of the summer:
Lexi lost another tooth - this was just as dramatic as the first time around, except this time Paul was here (not in Canada) to witness.
Emma is really really into matching right now. She LOVES to match what she is wearing to what Lexi is wearing: clothes, accessories, nightgowns - even underwear! One night, she wanted to match Daddy. Luckily, we have a few coordinating Newman University t-shirts.
We found out in June that Emma is allergic to Penicillin. She had managed to get a full upper everything infection in late May/early June. It was disgusting: a total snot-splosion! She had gunk coming out of her nose and eyes and visible goo coming out of both ears. When I got her into the doctor, the prescribed her amoxicillin which really took care of the problem. It took about 8 days before the medicine caused her to wake up with a disgusting rash that made her super puffy and covered in red welt-like hives. She is allergic.
For Lexi's birthday, all she wanted was a tree house. ALL SHE WANTED. Being that she has her daddy wrapped around her precious little finger, he caved on building her a swingset pretty quickly. It arrived in three large boxes that contained approximately eleventy billion pieces. He spent a day and a half constructing the new playset and the girls love it. They don't love the bugs that also live in the backyard, but they love the swingset . . . and the daddy who built it for them.
Emma had her first trip to the dentist this summer. I did not have high expectations. Lexi squealed and screamed the first time I took her and she had been the same age as Emma is now. Emma Jo, true to form, surprised me. She was perfect - letting the hygenist clean her teeth, floss, and of course she charmed her way into getting to play with the "slurpee" tool for most of the visit.
Paul remodeled our downstairs bathroom which was in terrible need of TLC. When we bought the house, I affectionately referred to this bathroom as 'Hunter's Hideaway' because it was festooned with brownish-grayish wallpaper featuring mallard ducks and various ugly duck habitats. We tried to peel the wallpaper, but it wasn't budging. Eventually it was painted over but the seems were extremely visible (as were my attempts at patching and puttying over the seams). The paint color I picked to cover the ducks was an awful mud brown, too.
Thankfully, my husband is handy and he was able to texture the walls, paint them a beautiful shade of linen white (Woodrow Wilson Linen, to be exact. I like my paint to have historical names. WWL goes nicely with Churchill Hotel Wheat and Betsy Ross House Moss, my historical home color palette).
While we were painting, we went ahead and replaced the light fixture, vanity top, and got some new artwork to finish the space up. It's beautiful and I love it.
Finger nail painting party:
Haircut day: Lexi's 'makeover' wasn't super drastic. She got a few dry inches cut off but it is pretty tough to tell she had anything done. This girl has long hair and she likes it that way.
Emma's little bob was a huge change for her! Since she is starting preschool this August (and refuses to keep her pigtails in) I needed her hair to have some type of deliberate look to it. She loves her new do and frequently flips her hair and says, "don't I look great?"
