Speaking of Allison, she is picking up new things every day. Aunt Beth stopped by and taught her to say “monkey” and what sounds it makes. She seems to love books and to have them read to her. She will keep bringing you books and sit on your lap as you read to her. She has a friend at school that is older and she follows her around. Mackenzie seems to enjoy it and treats her like a little sister, which is pretty cute to watch. Her walking is much more stable now and even though she has the occasional fall, we let her roam whatever floor we are on with little concern about her being able to create too much havoc.
We are going to begin 2 major projects on our house. We are putting up fiber cement siding, which should help our house look much nicer, but also clean up some of the leaks we have with our current siding/joints with the roof. With it comes some chimney fixes along with repainting the house and gutter guards. That project begins next week and should be completed in October. We are also having our basement finished. We already have drywall and a drop ceiling, so all we need is flooring and to re-do some cabinets and countertops, or that is what we thought. Once we got started, we got excited and wanted to do it right, so we have added several things like drywall repairs and some electrical work. We will see how those quotes come up. Hoping to have everything done by the holidays, but these things seem to have a mind of their own.
I went camping with some college friends in September in southern Indiana. With rain in the forecast, we spent one night at buddy’s parent’s lake house. The next morning, we went zip-lining and stuck around to camp the second night. It was pretty great to sit around the fire, have a few more beers than I normally would, and get to sleep in cold weather (it felt like the cold-air dorm in the fraternity). Zip-lining was a good time, and something that I’d definitely do again!
A few more items from this month:
• Debbie, Laura and Mom threw a wedding shower for Beth over Labor Day weekend at mom’s condo. It was well attended by family and Beth enjoyed it.
• Deb and I used a gift certificate for Mitchell’s Fish Market that we got at Christmas for a date night on Labor Day. We realized how necessary it was to try to do that more often.
• We had a dinner at our neighbors in early September. It was quite entertaining to chase Allison all over their house while they were discussing their vacations and such. Most of our neighbors in our cul-de-sac are retired, so our conversations were dramatically different!
• We attended Lobster-Fest at Tom and Tracy’s this year. As always, it was a great time as we flew in lobsters from New England!
• I went to the Colts season-opener versus the Vikings. It was fun and we were able to see the only Colts win up to this point.
• The last weekend in September was Beth’s bachelorette party. Deb attended most of the weekend, except for the bus ride around to a few breweries. With her nausea, that didn’t sound very appealing!
