Leah, Scott, Elijah and Keira: Fourth of July at the Lake House, Part I -- Family Fun

I know that it's been a very long time since my last post. We've spent the last 3+ weeks busily looking into houses. We've spent many hours and full days at Dendi and Bapa's house talking to the sales consultant, looking at lots, looking at houses and we were even under contract for a while. The first house fell through, and now we are waiting to find out if our contract for a second house to be built for us will be accepted by the corporate office. We are very excited and hoping this one will be meant to be. I'll try to update the blog as we get the news about the new house. Keep your fingers crossed. For now, I'd like to try to start catching up on July...

We spent a sun, fun and family filled week up at the Lake House over the Fourth of July. Eli was over the moon spending time with so many of his favorite people. For Keira's part, she warmed up and even let some of the relatives hold her and play with her -- a huge improvement from Memorial Day.

As always, we ate well, maybe too well on our vacation. Brian set up a Google spreadsheet for all of us to fill in the food we intended to bring. That way we could avoid ten loaves of bread and no butter. It helped a lot and I'm sure as we continue to work out the kinks it'll become an integral part of our future trips. As I said, we all ate extremely well throughout the trip with home cooked meals and baked goods shared by all. I think this trip was the most baked good intense trip we've ever had, with Scott baking chocolate chip cookies, Seana making peanut butter fudge and carrot cake and Brian baking his cranberry scones. Yum! Eli got in on the fun and helped Seana bake her carrot cake. He got to engage in two of his favorite activities at once -- spending time with family and helping in the kitchen.

Eli spent many, many hours working on all of his puzzles. His favorite request was "adult puzzles" -- puzzles with 500+ pieces. Here Babo gets in on the fun.

Besides helping out in the kitchen and working on puzzles, Eli loved rough housing with all the relatives. A new discovery is that Eli loves being held upside down. It used to be a favorite, but then once after a particularly lively upside down session he threw up. For a few years, it was a no go. But now his stomach seems to have gotten stronger, and it's now a favorite once again. In fact, Eli started telling us who he'd want to marry yesterday. Once he figured out that he wasn't allowed to marry someone in his family, he paused, thought about it and declared that he could marry Ms. Kathryn because she carried him around upside down. Sorry Uncle Brian! Here Mr. Josh got in on the upside down fun.

While it wasn't surprising that Eli loved hanging out with his family, Keira spent some time with them as well -- which was a nice surprise. It was a welcome change from the Memorial Day visit where she spent most of her time glued to me. I think she's slowly growing out of her stranger danger phase. One of Keira and Eli's favorite play destinations this trip was the blow up mattress on the screen porch. We had a full house this trip, so Eli and Scott spent most of their nights sleeping out on the screen porch. Truth be told, Eli prefers sleeping on the screen porch anyway -- he loved the sleeping arrangements. As I said earlier, the mattress served two functions: sleep destination at night and play destination during the day.

One afternoon, Keira and Ms. Kathryn played with Kathryn's sunglasses -- Keira practiced putting them on herself and Kathryn while they lounged together on the air mattress. It was a sweet, close encounter. While the girls played together, Eli romped around with Uncle Brian. After the playtime simmered down I got them all to pose for a picture on the air mattress.