An August Update

Things have quieted down considerably this month, but somehow August still managed to fly by.  We had a quick visit from Angela and Reed when they left for their honeymoon (they flew out of the Minneapolis airport).  They are hiking in the Swiss Alps and exploring parts of Italy.  They get back the day after Labor Day, and we are all anxious to hear about their adventures.  My mom came down for a quick visit the other weekend while my dad was fishing in Canada.  We took the girls to a carousel and lunch at a local mall.  When Lance got home from work my mom was kind enough to watch the girls so Lance and I could go out for the evening.  We used this as an opportunity to celebrate our anniversary by going out to a neat pub, having a few drinks, and doing a little shopping.  I find it kind of funny that whenever we actually get to have some time without the girls we hardly know what to do with ourselves.  Do any other parents out there have that problem? We spent the majority of last week up in Duluth at my parents' house while Lance was in Colorado for work.  The girls had a blast at the lake and were quite distraught when we returned home. We are now back into our normal routine and are trying to stay comfortable while an intense heat wave is making its way through the area.  We don't have anything planned for the long Labor Day weekend, but we hope the weather is more comfortable by then. Claire and Breanne update: Claire is becoming quite the diva.  The first thing she does when she wakes up in the morning is finds her fancy little dress shoes and insists on putting on a dress.  Nana Brannan recently introduced the girls to nail polish, which they both loved. I have a feeling there will be a lot of nail painting to come. Breanne is getting very good at using the potty with chocolate as motivation.  Claire, on the other hand, has no interest.  When we ask her if she wants to sit on the potty we usually get a response of "no thanks".  Today, however, she actually sat on the potty twice before lunch, so maybe we are finally making progress with her.  We just enrolled the girls in a program through the school district that is for kids ages 2-4.  The class is 1.5 hours long on Tuesday nights for an entire semester.  Part of the time is for the parents to do a group activity with the kids (like an art project or something) and then the second part the parents actually break away from the kids to talk about topics like potty training, tantrums, etc.  I am really excited about this! Well, that pretty much sums everything up around here.  We hope you all have a safe and fun holiday weekend!