Party! Party!

We have been partying a lot lately. Last Sunday my dear friends from school hosted a sprinkle to celebrate the upcoming arrival of Miss Josephine Claire.

Unless something radically changes our minds, that is the name we have chosen for our second daughter.  

There are Josephines on both sides of my family (my mother's and my father's) and precious Wellie just told me last week her brother's wife in Cuba was named Josefina.

It was simply meant to be!  

Susan and Marinda hosted a wonderful event and G and I were twinsies.

I bought these matching tops a few weeks ago in Owensboro, therefore officially becoming someone I would have made fun of just a few short years ago.

Alas, I also just purchased a 2019 Honda Odyssey Minivan in sleek silver, so matching my kid wasn't too far of a leap.

I'm officially embracing "Betsy, mother of 2, and no longer that cool."  Not that I needed to have children to ever prove that I wasn't that cool.  

Don't worry, my top isn't maternity, I just stretched it all to hell.  So that means you'll be seeing it in the future!

The theme was welcoming Llady Llopez, a llama theme, since I do love a llama.

The cake was adorable and G enjoyed opening up presents, even though they weren't for her.

The following week we were ready to party again.  G turned 6 on the 14th.  That was hard to stomach.  I've been very emotional lately about her growing up, and I'm actually relieved to be headed back to the baby stage.  

I'm writing that down so I remember I thought that when it's 2 a.m. and I'm miserably attempting to boob feed my newborn.

On Saturday we hosted a sparkly unicorn trampoline party at SkyZone.  It is located about 1 mile from our house, and I was not about to host something here.

The birthday girl waited by the door to greet her fellow jumpers.

Charlotte, Liam, and Georgia were the first friends to arrive!

Next to arrive were the two Roberts.  

Both in jeans.

I told my brother that he was nuts for coming to a trampoline party wearing jeans and stuffing his baby into straight leg little baby jeans.  You all know how I feel about jeans.  They aren't exactly conducive to jumping.  Or breathing.  

G quickly ushered friends over to the bleachers to sock it up.  

Caroline arrived with her Tennessee bestie, Audrey Jean.  

We got the group together for a quick picture before the jumping commenced.  

Robby and Robby started to regret their choice of dungarees.

Unlike moi, my kid is always up for a challenge.  She likes to try to fling herself up this wall and to do the obstacle course.  

The party package included one hour of jumping and then one hour of party room time.  

After one hour, the kids were on the draggin' wagon.  We're talking red-faced, sweaty little buggers.  SkyZone has crazy rules, so you can't carry in water bottles.  I kept telling the children to visit the water fountain until we could get into the party room.  Later I discovered Bob was buying Icees from the snack bar for the poor dehydrated children.

Geesh!

That's why these girls had blue lips by the time we got to the party room.

He was also handing out dollar bills for the claw machine.  

The party package included pizza.  G passed out the unicorn horns that we wore for Robby, Caroline and Katie's birthday extravaganza  at the Hibachi Grill last January.  

This table included the 6th grade unicorns.  If you read Sweet Valley Jr. books,  Jessica Wakefield was a member of an ultra exclusive clique that called themselves the unicorns.  Just some trivia for you.  

Tara's baby Leo was fine with his horn.  

The present opening was a highlight for G.

We then moved on to the cake.  

It was quite majestic.  It was so majestic that although I ordered a sheet cake to serve 30, it easily could have served 50.  

After everyone departed, we tortured our child with an obligatory family photo.  

I couldn't even get a kiss after paying for the entire event and sweating my tail off even though I was not jumping.  Jumping would have resulted in either an accident or a birth.  

We plan to lay low now for the next 2 1/2 weeks until Josephine arrives.  

Kindergarten!

I've clearly lost a lot of steam when it comes to writing on this little old piece of the interwebs.  I've lost a lot of steam period!  I'm now almost to 36 weeks and I have some backtracking to do here to try to catch up.

On August 7th, our sweet girl started Kindergarten!

The cute clothes stay in the closet and the uniform is now our daily staple.  I can't say I'm thrilled over that, but it does make getting ready each morning a bit more simple.

As expected, G hit the floor running that morning and not a tear was shed.

By her.

I cried all of the way to school.  

I'm thrilled and proud of her confidence, and her willingness to just push ahead, despite being nervous.

She was greeted by our priest, Father Steve, on the first morning.

She quickly hung up her belongings as #12 in the class, 

and got right to work puzzling.

Roughly one month in, she has not lost her enthusiasm.  Every day is reported to be the "best day ever!"  She loves her specials classes, eating lunch in the cafeteria, and computer time.  She has fully embraced her catholic education, and we have dubbed her our resident Mother Theresa.  She attends mass every Wednesday with her classmates and now knows lots of prayers.  She asks us tons of questions about God and Jesus, and I'm worrying that my once a week Sunday school learning will soon be rendered obsolete in keeping up with my little theologian.  They have religion daily, so she may surpass me soon!

It has been fascinating to watch her soak it all up.  

We participated in what was likely our final swim of the summer with Robby about two weeks ago.  

They continue to just adore each other, while Robby mostly ignores his Aunt Bee or responds effusively with "no" to every request/attempt of communication that I make.  

Sweet T turned 42 on the 28th of August so we celebrated with his parents and Aunt Shirley in Owensboro.  

G continues to sit next to Shirl for extended periods of time to receive "creepy mouse" attention.  Shirl scratched her arms and legs with her fingernails and G practically falls asleep.  Shirl did this with Trinity his whole childhood and he always said Shirley could relax and soothe him so easily.

Shirl time is like taking a xanax only without the fear of addiction! 

Her sister Patsy proves to be quite the opposite.  Abby is as highly energetic as ever.  She flitted around making sure everyone was set with food!  Our social butterfly loves a soiree!

The candles were finally lit, and we sang to our birthday boy.  

On Sunday G got her birthday gifts from Shirley.  

We had a great visit as usual.

September has flown by so far and G's birthday is coming up on the 14th.  

I'm 3 1/2 weeks out from Lady J's birth!

I'm going to try to keep up a bit better.  We'll see if I succeed with that.  I'm usually sleeping, teaching, or peeing these days!

Science and Swimming

Genevieve's summer adventures continued with a week at Camp Invention. It is a camp that focuses on science, technology, and math.  My school hosts it every summer, and it is open to incoming kindergartners.  I wasn't sure if she would be into it, but our repeated readings of Ada Twist, Scientist and Rosie Revere, Engineer clearly have inspired her.  

I'm all about the fairy tale princess fun, but I like to balance out that nonsense with violin lessons and math. She had a ball and could not wait to go each day to work on her robotics and engineering skills.  

At the end of the week we traveled for a weekend in Jasper with Kate and Megan.  Dr. Megan lives in Jasper with her husband and 3 kiddos.  Kate and I made this trip 2 summers ago, but since then we have added 2 children to the mix and a rather large Betsy bump.  

Genevieve and Eloise had a ball with their Bitty Babies.

We spent one afternoon swimming.  G has officially become super comfortable in the water and is like a little fish.  We lined up all of the kiddos.

Meg's kids:

Nolan going into 1st grade

Molly going into 4th grade

Mac- going into whatever he can get into:)  2 1/2 years old

Kate's babes:

Eloise-just turned 3 in May

Annabel-turns 1 year this month

We lined them up and it started out fine-

Then G somehow got sunscreen in her eyes, and the screaming commenced.

This distraction undoubtedly caused a piper to go down.

I repeat, a piper is down.

Poor Annabel.

They dropped her like a bad habit!

Due to recent rains, we had a delay in removing the pool cover.  The children entertained themselves by eating copious amounts of potato chips.  

During our two night stay Megan and Ryan cooked up a storm for us, and the kids had a ball.  We didn't really leave their house.  It was like summer camp.

Kate and I stopped for lunch in Indy before she headed back to Chicago.

Her sweet baby finally got to play with the stroller that her sister and my child refused to share with her all weekend.  

After such a fun weekend we kept the fun rolling with a trip to the historic  Artcraft Theatre in Franklin to see Snoopy, Come Home.  They show kids' movies on Tuesday mornings and it was on our summer list of fun.

G loved the movie, the theatre, and the popcorn.

We packed up and went to Terre Haute for two nights.  

Courtney was in town from California for her cousin's wedding.  As usual, G & C got along beautifully.  Only Courtney could get her in the pond.   I don't love a pond.  Teri was there to help out too.  

Court gave her a push to keep her motivated.  

I stood at the end of the dock, taking pictures and sweating my socks off.  Being 26 weeks pregnant in July blows.  

It was a great visit home.