4th in Nashville

We spent our long 4th of July weekend with Jill's family in Nashville, or a good chunk of it anyway.  If you ask the machine for trip duration, it says something like 6 hours from Urbana to Nashville.  For us, it was more like 10, which is why I say only a chunk of our time was actually in Nashville.  The girls passed the time watching movies, napping (just a tiny bit), and eating Skittles.  Clara shared a few of her sour skittles (yellow only), which cousin Josh has been talking up for 2 years.  He's right, they are super good.

One reason the trip took so long is a huge positive.  Janny is now pretty well potty trained!  We had no accidents during the drive.  She has spent a couple of nights in undies without problem.  Hooray!

It rained most of the time down there, but we managed to find a few breaks between the torrents to play outside.  Matt and Lupita have a trampoline.  Fun for the whole family.  They also now have 3 chickens in their backyard, and are enjoying them so far.  We also can have a few chickens in our backyard, but I'll wait for the 1 year review from them before even considering it.

 

Lots of rain meant that there was lots of time for stories with Grandpa.  But running around the house and playing dress up were more common.  All the kids got fun toys called hex bugs to play with.  They chew through batteries like you wouldn't believe (or is that just because our kids leave them running all the time?), but are quite cool.  They run around just like the roaches on the U of I campus.

The local reservoir had a whole lot more water than the last time we were there.  A couple places along the path were flooded out, much to the delight of the kids.  We also learned that wet plastic slides are super fast through the bottom (literally).

Oh yeah, and the main reason we took the trip was to meet baby Linda!  She and Lupita are in good health.  She does what all strong one month-olds do-- not much. 

Clara and Janny were both intrigued by their new cousin.  Janny's first comment about Linda was that she didn't like her, but she warmed up to the new tiny person.

And now for the quick recap of other recent events. 

Andy Cline and family stayed with us for a day during the cross country tour.  I might have some pictures to post next time (not sure we took any photos, boo us).

The softball regular season ended with our record at 5-5.  Our hitting is hugely erratic.  In recent games we scored 24,13, and 4 runs.  I'm sure that trend doesn't mean anything.  Playoffs start on Monday.

I had my 6 month review at work.  They are keeping me around (and increasing my pay a skosh).  And I am staying.

We got reimbursed for our dentist appointments of 9 months ago this week.  In an effort to discourage such late payouts, our state passed a law requiring it to pay something like 5% interest on late payments (where does that extra money come from?).  IL-- we know money.

Jill is watching somewhere around a bazzillion kids this week.  Our two, neighbors' two, church friends' one spend a lot of time here.  Tomorrow, 3 additional kids come.  And she is still going to 5:30 am workout.  I can't say that I'm surprised she is sleeping while I'm writing this up.