July: The One Where Drew Leaves

Since I seem to just be doing monthly posts now, I thought I'd mix up the post names a bit and add on a Friends-esque title, because just calling it by the month isn't super informative when I'm going back through the archives. Speaking of which, it's been 12 years since Friends ended, which means I'm officially not young anymore. But that's neither here nor there.

So, July. We spent the first week getting in as much family time as we could before Drew left for a 8 week internship with the F.D.A. in Washington D.C.

We had a fun 4th of July, including a visit to the LBJ library at U.T., and some sweaty fun at the Round Rock Independence Day event which ended in sunset and fireworks.

 

Drew surprised us all with these cute maneki-neko as a parting gift before heading east for what will be our longest separation ever.

We are now close to the halfway point, or 4 weeks, and the kids and I miss Drew tremendously, but we've also been keeping busy and having lots of fun in his absence.

Here's Henry enjoying his favorite part of the children's museum.

And we've been beating the Texas heat by spending time at pools and splash pads.

I've been enjoying an extended vacation from work, and we've been finding out how much fun we can have at home. Also, we've watched a lot of movies. Singing in the rain is a favorite, and Henry often goes around singing "Moses supposes his toeses are roses," or however his 2 year old version of that comes out. Lilly has been a big helper, keeping her room cleaning, and even volunteering to help with dishes.

One day we braved a park, and then took sanctuary from the heat at a bowling alley.

We spent a couple days with friends in Fort Worth. The kids had a great time playing at home and at the lake, and we girls got to have a night out for gelato (and watching hundreds of people playing Pokemon Go in downtown Fort Worth).

We also got to spend a few days with Uncle Marc. He'd never been to Austin before, so we crammed in as much sight seeing as we could.

 

 

 

Between our visit to Forth Worth and my brother's visit, Henry shocked us all by deciding to be potty trained. I had no idea he was ready, but he has done great. We celebrated with balloons and cake. He pretty much thought it was the greatest thing ever. I'm excited to no longer buy diapers!

And when did this little girl get so grown up?!

 

On a whim, she decided she wanted bangs, so I cut them one afternoon. She loves it!

And to cap off this randomest of posts, here's some other random fun from the month . . . making cookies, a summer rainstorm, gymnastics, storytime and Shrek the Musical!