Update On The Addition

Yesterday, the neighborhood ladies got treated to eight hours of Josh, the shirtless wonder, as he labored away on the addition. He's pretty sure he got checked out 17 times. I figure if that's what he needs to believe in order to stay motivated, I won't burst his bubble. So here are the pictures of the progress Josh made. Pretty impressive for a guy working alone (although, against my better judgement, I did help him hoist those windows into place... I'm guessing that ranks up there with drinking a whole bottle of wine in terms of pregnancy risk factors). I also included a couple photos of Daddy & Anna at the bottom. You've got to love a guy who works 8-5 M-F in an office, works on the house all weekend, and still finds time before and after work to actively entertain a two year old. For the record, the construction paper princess crown & earrings pictured below were both conceptualized and executed by Josh himself (you can click to enlarge those little photos, by the way).

Summer Vacation

We just got back from our vacation in Hilton Head and, for the record, paring down the number of photos for the blog was a difficult task. The house we stayed in was beautiful... the weather was perfect... I got a tan... and Anna was extra cute in her bathing suit this year. All of these factors resulted in a huge number of share-worthy snapshots.

Let's begin with this lovely photo of our still chubby little girl, complete with size extra-large swimmies (the package said size 2-12 years which seemed like a bargain to me!) and hot pink goggles (which Anna insisted on wearing). Anna made amazing strides with her "swimming" during vacation and by the end was demanding that she be allowed to "do by self" (i.e. don't touch me!)

Meanwhile, I rediscovered about 43 muscles I forgot I had thanks to some long bike rides and a never ending tennis match with Josh's brother Ben and his fiance Denise. I'm pretty sure that was the first time I'd done either in about five years. We're seriously considering buying some bikes and one of these great cart things for Anna (as you can see, Anna thinks they're a blast).

While Anna had lots of fun playing on the beach with her "cousins" Erik, Leah, and Becca, I think her favorite part of the beach might have been the thrill of drinking 100% juice out of a sippy box (we typically give her super watered down juice at home). Every five minutes she'd come up to me and say "juice now? juice now mommy?"

To my great delight, one thing we discovered on vacation is that we may have a girl drummer on our hands. Anna picked up the drum sticks one night while everyone was playing Guitar Hero and started banging away... in her monkey jammies, no less.

I could go on and on, but these last few photos are pretty self-explanatory, with one small excepetion... no, that is not coffee in Anna's cup (though her facial expression does remind me of how I feel when I have my first cup of coffee in the morning):

This Old House

My abitious (read: crazy) husband decided to single-handedly tackle enclosing our side porch to create an office and (hopefully) a little extra storage space for the ever-growing pile of toys. I had little to no interest in starting another house project and proclaimed from the start that I would not be involved in this instanity. Naturally, watching Josh slave away broke my resolve and I've been logging 2.5 hours/naptime each day. We've already discovered our fair share of surprises -- a (thankfully defunct) wasp's (?) nest measuring almost two feet in diameter, lots of wood rot, and (on the brighter side) a concealed vaulted ceiling which we will definitely be keeping!

In the meantime, our poor Anna is walking around the house with a chunk of lip hanging out of her mouth after hitting the floor face first last night. The "hanger-on" piece is so disgusting that I can hardly bear to look at my own child (is that wrong?) and actually thought momentarily of cutting it off to relieve my disgust. She also got stung by a carpenter bee three times earlier this week and burned her finger on a lightbulb. Truly a banner week for Anna Claire. I spared you the injury/sadness photos and included these two cute ones instead.