Remember that one time when I fell off the face of the earth?

That's how I've been feeling lately. After our trip to Utah I think my mind went on permanent vacation. I just liked having nothing to remember, nowhere to be, nothing to do... so I slipped into a permanent vegetative state. In the past 24 hours I've learned about TWO parties I was invited to that I totally blew off, and I've called nearly every one of my piano students to have them remind me for an eighteenth time when we were scheduled to resume lessons. On the bright side, I guess I've been having a pretty relaxing summer! Maybe too much so.

Travis deliberately left me his computer today because he wanted me to catch up on our blog. (I keep complaining about the home computer, which is in Troy's room anyway and he sleeps a lot.) You know things are bad when even the husband calls you out on your terrible blogging record. I have all these little "events" I keep meaning to blog for the record (because otherwise it feels like it never happened) but it gets to a point where I don't know where to begin. I've started feeling like a slacker as a mom. I'm always building up guilt over not taking enough pictures or not taking my kids on enough creative outings or not reading to them enough. So I think I mentally just checked out. You know, kind of like when that one kitchen drawer or that one (let's be honest) room gets so messy you just finally call it a day and ignore it until that illusive future date when you'll tackle the whole thing at once. Unfortunately children don't work that way - you can't put off building a childhood until you find time to tackle it all at once!

ANYway, catching up on a bit of blogging might help me feel a little more organized, so here it goes. I'll try to make this as concise (um... from this point forward) and as painless as possible. Way back in the beginning of July, my mom and my two youngest brothers came to visit for a quick weekend before we all whisked off to Utah for three weeks. We spent the 4th of July here as well. It started with a ward breakfast at our church. Oh, here we are:


Then we came home and Travis made us some of his famous snow cones. Didn't know one could be famous for snow cones, did you?

We didn't really have any daytime plans, so Travis really wanted to take my brothers and go canoeing on Little Seneca lake. So they did.

When they got there, though, they realized that it was free fishing day! Jackpot! Of course none of them had brought fishing equipment, but no matter. They hit up the park's tackle shop. And bought a pink princess fishing pole.

They actually caught three fish, by splitting the line and using oars so they could all three fish at once. And in fact... the fishing line and hooks caught all the fish, and the pink princess pole caught zero. Go figure.

That night we really wanted to visit my grandpa's grave (my mom's dad) in Arlington National Cemetery before the fireworks. It made for a tight squeeze on time when we were finally ready to park ourselves somewhere to watch fireworks, but we were glad we went.

(our family self-portrait taken with the camera timer balanced on top of the car)

As per our tradition, the kids left nickels for him

We ended up watching the fireworks near the Pentagon. We'd never seen the DC fireworks except from the Mall, so it was a nice change to be a little more removed from the crowds.

Um... and I finally blogged the 4th of July.
Check.