catching up

i want you to know that i have 5 drafts of blog posts sitting in my list of posts, waiting to be finished and published...i haven't forgotten the blog.  however, i have felt stuck at june 16th, feeling the pressure to blog about ben's birthday yet not been able to muster the effort to do so.  having had my first report cards with my new job due at the exact same time as i was planning ben's party AND then going off to oregon for a 30th birthday girls getaway the following weekend - blogging felt like too much work.  and everytime i sat down to blog, i thought of my poor project life that is slowly getting left behind in the dust that is life!

so june was a great but busy month and july has been too full of sunshine to sit down at the computer!  gotta love that.  so instead of trying to back track blog, let's just move forward from this slump and think about the highlights of the last month:

>ben is 3!

> avery is crawling!  around 9.5mo, she started moving very slowly and as of today (having just turned 10mo), she's is a speedy girl when she knows where she wants to go!

> oregon was amazing - i had a lot of laughs, tears, food, and walks with my favourite girls.  i loved oregon and am most definitely going to go back next time with tim and the kids.

> age 3 has brought on more tantrums than we've had in total in the last 2 years so that's been an interesting development.  i'm learning how to spot one coming and how to sometimes avoid them.
> avery's dropped one of her three naps so having her on two naps a day has had it's pros and cons but overall, she's a very happy little girl.

> tim got to go on a fishing trip with a buddy (the weekend after i was in oregon) which was the first in years!
> attended the abby canada day parade and festivities with the kids by myself!  a feat of strength but we had fun.

> a trip to duncan on vancouver island to visit our camping friends - this time we skipped the camping and just stayed at their place doing day trips.  ben all loved playing with each of their three kids and there was always someone to hold avery.
>construction on the shulba's new addition started which meant that ben got to try out the digger AND see a cement truck pouring cement in the backyard.  very exciting!
>managed to break my camera while on the island...though i think it was a result of having dropped it in the sand in oregon.  "lens error"...i'm hoping to take it into a camera place and see if they can clean it and hopefully that fixes it.
> have i missed anything?  probably.

the state of my dining room table - trying to catch up on project life. augh!

oh yes - and ben went fishing with Pop and caught two!

the typical scene in our backyard in the sunshine