Happy July everyone! Okay, I know it has been an unreasonably long time since I managed to post an update, but the last month or so has been a little crazy here. We had Fraser's third birthday party in June (Happy Belated Birthday Fraser!) complete with backhoe cake, which I do not actually have a picture of that I can post. (Yes, my family took a ton of great shots but I am just too damn cheap to pay to download them off snapfish, so you'll have to take my word that the cake was really really cool).

At the end of June we went to stay with my in laws in Maine for a week. Fraser and Hammie's cousin Lily was there too and they had a blast creating as much absolute chaos as they could. It does make me appreciate just how acclimated I have become to the sheer volume at which our daily lives our now conducted when you suddenly have to appreciate how shocking it must be for someone like a grandparent or uncle who just hasn't had a chance to adjust to the constant yelling (happy and not) that begins at 6:00 a.m. and really doesn't wind down until they finally pass out well after 8:00. Add to that the fact that we were frequently trapped inside by the near constant rain, and you can bet my in laws were doing their best to conceal their relief when we finally pulled out of their driveway. The boys had a blast going on the tractors and the boats though, and they were even crazy enough to go swimming with Andy in the freezing cold lake. Fraser is now telling random people he sees all about the tractor festival in Maine and how Daddy and Grandpa Don took the Super H.

We were home for 3 days at the beginning of July so I could go to my doctor's appointment and I could take Hammie back to UMASS for his pre-surgery appointment (surgery is scheduled for next week). I was happy to be home, but we had the floor in the playroom replaced while we were gone (stinking wall to wall carpet and old barn board underneath with possible lead paint had to go) and the dirt and dust everywhere was gross. Of course when I started to scrub the walls big chunks of the paint starting coming off (sweet) so we scrambled to find a painter to come in and repaint the walls while we went back to Maine for the 4th of July. The end result, however, is the playroom looks freakin awesome now and is by far the nicest room in the house. My nesting instinct makes me totally gung ho to have the rest of the inside of the house painted, but luckily my practical side is still in enough control to convince me that creating total upheaval in the house 3 weeks before the baby is due to arrive, is probably not the best course of action.

Speaking of being due to arrive, my sister in law, who was due two days after me, gave birth to a baby boy last Monday! Jackson Garrett Marshall arrived 4 and a half weeks early but is perfectly healthy and already home. Now I won't deny that there is a part of me that is definitely a little jealous that Denise has her bundle of joy and isn't enormously uncomfortably pregnant the way I am right now, but considering that when she had Jack I still had not gotten any of our baby items out of the attic or washed any of the 6 garbage bags of baby clothes we just received as hand-me-downs, or really done anything whatsoever to prepare for the arrival of our baby, it is probably just as well that I will no doubt be growing ever larger until the assigned c-section date.

We also had an especially funny trip to Walmart this week which I definitely have to mention. We went to buy storage bins for the baby clothes and to get to the bin area we had to walk down the vacuum cleaner aisle. Hammie is completely obsessed with vacuum cleaners right now, and when we entered the aisle his entire face lit up and he started bouncing up and down in the seat of the shopping cart, pointing at each vacuum and yelling "vacuum! vacuum! vacuum!" Well, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than taking him to Disneyland.

Fraser, meanwhile, has pretty much mastered the art of peddling his tricycle, see video below for incontrovertible proof...