Summer!

Laura and Rachel with all their girl cousins :)

     First long weekend of the summer = love.

   It has certainly been summery weather here for the past few weeks (read: too hot to not live with a/c!).
Saturday we were planning to host a BBQ for the neighbours, so we hit up the grocery store as early as possible (for a family of 4 who sleeps in until 8:00am), and then came home and did a quick tidy of the house. Then we took off to the cottage for the afternoon for a swim. One of my cousins that we hadn't seen in four years was going to be up, so we wanted to make sure we got to see her and her kiddos! It was nice to have a quick visit with everyone, and we enjoyed swimming in the lake. Laura was a little unsure of the waves, but eventually decided she liked them so long as she was clinging to Mommy or Daddy like the baby monkey she is. :) Rachel slept in her carseat the whole time we were swimming. Bless her. <3
 We headed home in the late afternoon to finish up prep for the BBQ. Homemade chicken burgers from Weelicious.com (they're sooo yummy - we have made them several times now) and a crunchy broccoli salad I found on Pinterest that turned out to be delicious, as well. We sort of ended up commandeering the neighbours' house for the BBQ as they have a patio table to eat at and we don't. They brought some yummy treats for dessert and we had a good time sitting around and chatting while Laura and their daughter played in the yard with the toys and pool. That night everyone needed a bath, so we decided to bath the girls together for the first time. This was only the second time Rachel has been in the big tub, but she sure loves it!

 

    Sunday we were planning to go strawberry picking first thing in the morning (before it got too hot). Unfortunately, Laura has developed the charming little habit of trying to take off in the other direction if she doesn't like the plans you have for her. So, as Josh was trying to get her dressed for the day, she attempted this little stunt and he grabbed her arm to keep her put. She immediately started screaming like she was being murdered. She continued to complain about her "eye-bow" while fairly hysterical for several minutes. We decided to call the Big Al Hotline to see if he thought we should get her checked out for a dislocation. He said if she could rotate her lower arm, she was probably fine. She couldn't. She wouldn't let us touch it without more hysterics, and she was just letting it hang limply. So, we trucked off to the ER, really the absolute last place I wanted to be on a beautiful summery long weekend. It was probably around 9:00 - 9:30am at this point, but the waiting room was already hopping. When we arrived, Laura was in hysterics again because I had to move her arm to get her out of the car seat, and there were several people in front of us just waiting to be triaged. Siiiiigh. So we sat down and I tried to calm her. Once she didn't have to move her arm anymore, she was fine and began chatting with the lady waiting beside us. After we had been there for about 15 minutes, she seemed to have forgotten about it, and was carrying Pooh Bear around and using her arm normally again. I took her over to where Josh was sitting with Rachel and told him I thought she was okay now. Josh, once again, asked her if she could do this: *rotates lower arm*. She looked at him and flailed bother her arms around like she was drowning. lol. Yep, I guess she was okay! So, we happily left the ER and headed out to the strawberry fields.

Apparently it was the last day for picking, and it was pretty scarce out there. We managed to get about a quart of smallish berries, but they were still quite tasty. Laura was right into it, picking over-ripe, under-ripe, smooshed - there was no discrimination. :) Josh kept trying to explain to her which ones were good, and which weren't, but it seemed a lost cause. I was just glad she was having fun.
     We came home after that and washed and sliced our berries. I had wanted to try out this strawberry upside-down cake I saw on Pinterest with our berries, and got Laura to help me. She was pretty excited, as two of the ingredients were Jell-O and marshmallows, probably her current two favourite foods. We got the cake in the oven and put her down for a nap. We had wanted to go downtown to check out the Canada Day celebrations, but ended up running out of time due to our extra detour to the hospital. Two-and-a-half hours later, Laura still had not gone to sleep, so we gave up on naptime and let her play in the back yard for awhile. My mom came over for dinner and got to have a nice visit with Laura. I was wary of taking Laura to the fireworks since she would be up past her normal bedtime and had missed her nap, but she was a trooper and enjoyed every minute of it. We brought sparklers (which she only sort of liked), and glow sticks (which were a much bigger hit), and we tried this glow-in-the-dark bubble idea (which failed miserably). She was scared by the loudness of the fireworks, but we were sitting far enough away that it wasn't too loud, and she eventually came around.
     We were all exhausted by the time it was over, and so came home and went straight to bed. She slept in until quarter after ten on Monday morning. We went out for breakfast after she finally woke up (sadly our favourite place was closed so we had to go somewhere else), and then spent the majority of the day relaxing at home. We did, however, attempt to escape the mid-afternoon heat with a matinee showing of Brave. There weren't too many people there on a holiday Monday afternoon, but both girls were miraculously well-behaved. (That movie is scary, by the way!!)
     Those were pretty much the highlights of our weekend - hope everyone else had as an enjoyable time as we did!