Hot and Muddy

In terms of house work this week, we didn't finish much.  It has been insanely hot and humid - you walk outside and immediately start sweating.  When we were willing to brave the weather, we worked on finishing up the concrete forms.  We normally have to wait until Samantha is napping or is down for the night.  It doesn't give us much uninterrupted time to work.  We will definitely be ready when the concrete arrives on Friday morning!

Samantha had a great time supervising a couple events.  On Monday, the gravel was delivered and since she loves rocks, she was in little girl heaven!  Later in the week, there was a concrete pour across the street. 

 

They have been adding yellow textured pads at all the handicapped entrances on all the sidewalks around here.  In a day and a half they broke up the concrete (with a backhoe style jackhammer), removed the debris, made the forms, and poured the concrete.  Granted, they had 7 guys working on it with no interruptions but it still made me feel inadequate.  It has taken us a couple weeks to just get through the first three steps!   

My parents are coming down so that they can help with the pour (and babysitting) on Friday.  Hopefully we'll have beautiful sidewalk/step pictures to show next week!

On Saturday, I participated in a women's mud run with my mom's running group.  We had a large crew from all over Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania (only 3 moms from my chapter).  It was so much fun.  The course was only 3 miles long but there were 16 obstacles throughout.  They ranged from crawling through mud, climbing a 15 foot high cargo net, to scaling an 8 foot wall. 

Chris and Samantha came to watch and had a good time too.  I'm sure it was fun to see all the craziness!  I forgot my camera that day so I need to wait for other people to send the "muddy" pictures!

On the way home from the run, we decided to stop to pick blueberries.  Samantha was an expert picker but every berry she picked ended up in her stomach.  She probably ate about a pound and a half of berries while we were there - at least there are a lot of antioxidants! 

We ended up with a little over 10 pounds of blueberries so I made two batches of blueberry jam.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any more small canning jars left so I had to use a few large (quart size) ones.  We'll be eating jam for a long time around here!

The only other events during the week were the normal ones - library, story time at the mall, play time, etc. 

Now I would like to share some of Samantha's new looks - she (unfortunately) gets her fashion sense from me.

She really enjoys putting on random socks she finds around the house...

A little too young to be a babushka...

 
I think Chris needs to start putting away his clothes...

That's all for this week - hopefully the sidewalk pictures we'll blow you away next time (we'll at least be happy to have a way into the front of the house again!)