Maine! These photos are from our family trip up to Belgrade for a week starting with the 4th of July weekend. The kids had a great time with their cousins despite the insane heat. Fraser and Hammie got their new bikes from Grammy Lynn and Grandpa Don for their birthdays, and they were thrilled to pieces to ride them in the barn and in the driveway. Hammie developed a special love for a tiny (2 inch long) doll named "Sally" and pushed her around the house in a baby carriage and jumped up during dinner more than once to announce "Sally's awake!" and run to get her. Hammie and Lily got along really well and spent one very funny evening alternately dancing and hugging (as Lily directed).

Really though, the point of this post is to let everyone know that Eleanor started crawling this morning! She is still just figuring it out, and sort of waddle-crawls in tiny bursts swinging her butt back and forth, but she did make it all the way across the room a few times! Go Eleanor!

And, of course, what would any post be without the latest story of the havoc two small boys can wreak in an amazingly short period of time. So, about 45 minutes ago I was making dinner, Hammie was helping, and Fraser and Eleanor were playing in the playroom. Hammie got down off the step ladder to go play (which was good because he likes to touch everything when he cooks). We are potty training Hammie, so I probably should have thought twice about this, but in my relief to finally have a moment to finish dinner without saying "don't touch that, don't eat that, stay away from that" for five seconds, I didn't think twice. Two minutes later Fraser came rushing in to the kitchen yelling "Hammie peed on the floor!" Hammie comes in after Fraser, sauntering, looking like he doesn't have a care in the world. I say "Hammie, did you pee in your pants?" Hammie "Yeah." Me: "Well, take off your underwear so we can wash you off." He pulls down his underwear to reveal that he has not only peed, but also pooped in his pants. I try to grab his underwear, but I am too slow, and there is now poop all over his legs and the kitchen floor. So I grab Hammie and carry him out the door so I can hose him off with the garden hose. I wash him and then run back in to deal with the poop filled underwear, only to find our dog eating the poop out of the underwear. I yell at the dog, kick her out of the kitchen, pick up the underwear and follow the trail of poop into the playroom. There i find a large pool of pee which (because our house was built in 1850 and the floors are so warped you can drop a marble and it would roll for a week) has run downhill under the play mats and also formed a new pool in the middle of which was...Eleanor. I scooped her up and took her right upstairs to the bathtub, I washed her, put the poop underwear in the diaper pail, brought Eleanor back downstairs, put her in the living room while I got paper towels and cleaned up the poop trail and pee pools, took the play mats outside to hose them down only to discover that the boys had found a piece of broken glass and put it right on the stair to outside so I would find it, almost broke my ankle trying to hop past the glass at the last moment, hosed off mats, went back in to mop floor, found Eleanor eating a matchbox car, took away car, mopped, went back out to find Fraser had gotten his rake out to "weed" next to the patio, dug a giant hole and raked dirt all over the patio and both Fraser and Hammie were now naked and covered completely in dirt.

So, now both boys are outside, butt naked riding their backhoe in the driveway, Eleanor is still cranky I took away her car, and I am drinking a beer. For the love of Pete, is it Friday yet???