July's been a full month for us thus far and the next week may hold more excitement than we've seen in the first three weeks of the month combined! The month started off with a long 4th of July weekend. We got a quick visit from my dad and Kate as they stopped by the house on their way to Valdez for the weekend. We took in the festivities downtown on the 4th, enjoying a few personal shout-outs from some of the paraders. I hooked up with our friend Rayna (lingering in town after the reunion) and spent the day having some long-lost girl time with her shopping at Saturday Market and the mall. We must have hoofed it 5 miles at least that day! We went back to the house and enjoyed a simple, fun 4th of July hotdog cookout and s'mores to wrap up the holiday. We had gorgeous weather all weekend and we certainly enjoyed that sunshine!
Lem was still teaching summer school so us girls enjoyed about 2 weeks of glorious, unending sunshine by playing outside and spending most of our time in the pools. We went through some serious sunscreen! One night I even enjoyed a swim and floated on an innertube reading a book at 10pm-a first for me! The following weekend (as great weather continued!!!) we headed out to Palmer for a Family Reunion campout. A whole bunch of Lem's extended family gathered at Uncle Gary and Aunt Lynda's for camping, eating, and dominoes (among other fun endeavors). There was lots of family hulabaloo and plenty of crazy anticts. Our group included Gary and Lynda, their grandsons Ethan and Gavin up from Oregon, Bill and Teresa (Lem's uncle), Mike and Megan, Joe and Vicky (another uncle up from North Carolina), Grandma and Paul (from Texas), Nanny, Papa, Uncle Ian (sporadically) and Lem, myself, Sycely and Ella. Gary and Lynda graciously offered us their motorhome so Lem, Ella and I slept comfortably there while Sycely slept in Nanny and Papa's trailer with them. It was a great weekend and such a fun time with family we so rarely get to see all at once. On Saturday we all made the journey up to Hatcher Pass (a first for me and Sycely) and took in the breathtaking beauty of God's creation. We even got to see a friendly little Marmott!
Lem wrapped up summer school the next week and the two of us got to go see the new Harry Potter movie-hooray! He also headed down to Kenai for the day and did some dipnetting with his dad. They ended up with 19 fish for the morning and our freezer is sure to stay plenty stocked with salmon all winter. Lem brought Aunti Eris home with him from Kenai (she's up on a whirlwind pacific coast road trip of sorts) and we spent the evening hanging out with her and enjoying some Moose's Tooth pizza. We attended our second birthday party of the week (it's birthday season around here!) on Sunday after having lunch with some of our good church friends.
Aside from all the eventful excitement around here, our day to day lives continue along the path of our usual routine. Sycely had her last ballet class of the summer. She continually offers us a parade of characters of her liking as she takes on an average of 15 roles a day! She's getting very excited about her upcoming ballet birthday party and has enjoyed helpign me shop and prepare for the party. The two of us also baked and decorated a "wedding cake" (weddings are a recent fascination for her) last week. She's becoming more and more independent as she gains more confidence and enthusiasm for her abilities.
Ella is eating up a storm and LOVES pretty much everything we offer her, but would also probably be quite content on a diet of hot dogs, peaches and green beans. She LOVES playing peek-a-boo (especially with her big sister) and loves patty cake, too. She points her little finger into her palm to and says E to "mark it with an E". Soooo cute. She's pretty intent on turning the pages of books on her own now when we read to her. She's adding lots of new words so quickly it's hard to keep track. She says "hello" when the phone rings and has added "baby and blankie" (which are hard to distinguish from each other right now) and her new fave "Uh-Oh!" which often comes BEFORE the fall as she drops something. Bathtime is still her favorite part of the day-I guess that's what happens when your babies are born in the water-they never want to get out!
This weekend is the Governor's picnis-sure to be our most attended ever with her celebrity-ism as well as it being her last day in office. The next day our little Ella Roo turns one and will celebrate with friends and family. I will be sure to put up a review of both as well as lots of pictures. Until then I'll be sewing tu-tus and baking cakes!
We had rain the few day heading in to the weekend, so as usual we upped our prayer efforts on the weather front. Faithful as always, God provided and picnic day dawned with what couldn't exactly be described as sunny skies, but they were are least dry skies. Half and hour before the picnic we had hundreds of people already in the foods lines and hundreds more milling about waiting for the festivities to start and I had no petting zoo, not crazy hair artists, facepainters, but no facepaint, no inflatable jumping structure, but at the noon-hour kick off everyone was in place (including the livestock) and the kids were enjoying full throttle fun. I'd have to say that kid-wise it was our best offering in the three years I've been doing the picnic. Hooray for pony rides!
There was surprisingly little anti-Sarah demonstration and all in all it turned out to be an amazingly seemless, crisis free day-what more can you ask for with 12000 people and Alaska's most famous celebrity?! The girls got to play with Piper a bit-Ella LOVED her and I got to take Piper to get her hair done by my hairdresser, Normandy, which was a huge hit for little Piper. Sometimes, kids (even famous kids) just gotta be kids, you know? I got a big hug (along with an invite to move to the Valley) from Sarah, along with a compliment that I looked "amazing" and I finally got a "skinny" picture with Sarah-to replace all those pre-Ella hefty ones! I'm signed up to help handle some of the insane onslaught of mail she's getting and so far that's been pretty entertaining. 
I'm not sure where she's going from here, or if SHE even knows, but I've been a Sarah girl from the beginning-before the cover of TIME and Runners World, before MSNBC, CNN and FOXNews pronounced her last name right, before she won the Gubenatorial election, before she won the Primary, before every woman in the Nation was wearing Sarah glasses and the Sarah updo and I intend to be a Sarah girl to the end, whatever that is.
