After a lack of play dates with vacations, and even a hiatus from youth (where he goes and plays with his friends in the provided childcare) Josh got his friend fix this week.

Three of his best friends are Samantha, Jeremy and Annabelle. Those four love to play together at every youth function their mommies are at. This week Josh got a play date with them (and other friends) and got to see them during a small group leader training.

Tonight he gets to see his favorite babysitter too. Which mommy and daddy are pretty excited about! I think this will be the first time since STL that we are going to go out with friends. A night out is a pretty big novelty, but to do it with company is extra special. It will be nice to communicate without having to feed someone, talk over little people, or be interrupted with necessary disciplinary actions. Oh to be a real adult again.

Jack is walking almost exclusively now. He seems a little more unstable that Josh did at first, but it's cute to watch him quite literally toddle around.

Daddy is so proud because he is already throwing balls. We've got another one with a really good arm. Daddy is going to have to start restricting the throwing, no matter how proud he is though if he wants to keep his flat screen in tact!

Not too much else to update on. Just keeping busy with all the school start up activities going on for Josh (gulp) and me with the youth. This school year is going to bring lots of changes. I hope we all adjust well!

Two sick kiddos here. Supposedly just a bad cold, but at least for Josh it is one whopper of a cold. I haven't seen anything other than the stomach flu take him down this hard before.

All he wants to do is drink VitaminWater and lay on the couch and watch Bolt.

Currently Panera's chicken noodle soup is helping to make it all better.

He's funny even when he is sick though. Jack was about to throw something on the floor (which we have been getting onto him for rather harshly since I have estimated that I spend at least one hour every day cleaning him the chair and the floor up after he eats) and I yelled at him"no" to get his attention. Apparently I scared Josh too because he looks over at me and tell me that he had the "pee scared out of me".

Speaking of Jack, I'm not sure how that little trickster has become a master of stairs without even being fully stable on his feet yet, but he has done just that. He's stealthy too. We have to keep the gate up at all times. Chris came home from work and I had just brought Jack downstairs and left the gate down. In the course of going to tell Chris "hi" Jack had already crawled over to the stairs and gotten all the way up them. I run over to find where he is to see him sitting nicely at the top of the stairs grinning at me and clapping for himself. So much for the idea of less busy mornings while Josh is in preschool.

We also got a letter yesterday informing us that Josh will be playing for the Tornadoes soccer team this fall. He's going to look so handsome running aimlessly back and forth on the field.

Now I have to go clean up the disaster in my kitchen that is the result of two sick kids eating lunch. I'd been trying to avoid it with blogging, but there is only so much a girl can say, and so much more that I've got to do.

School starts back here is less than a month. Geez. Normally that date wouldn't effect me, but this year it does. Not only do I volunteer with the high school ministry and the start date of school is correlated to the start date of small groups, but Josh starts school this year.

Mind you it is just preschool, but it's 4 days a week. That's a lot. I'm trying not to think about it because when I do it makes me want to do crazy things. And he's playing soccer. So while last year the start of school came and went without much notice, this year it will bring a busier schedule, trips to a soccer field for practice, lonelier days, and Saturday morning soccer games.

It's so funny Chris and I always talked about these days with excitement, but admittedly I'm getting a little apprehensive now that they are here. I'm sure it's mostly the intimidation of change, and I'll love the freedom and excitement of our new schedule. But like it or not, there is no more escaping the fact that Josh is growing up.

Normalcy for the most part has been restored in the Kelly household. I'm restocked on my usual grocery supply, after this afternoon the house will be completely clean (I use that phrase loosely, meaning that it will have been completely cleaned at one point, not that it still is), we are back on our typical eating and sleeping schedule and have already finished testing the boundaries.

I think it's a little crazy how it takes nearly as long as you were gone on your vacation to recover from it. Again using the term vacation loosely. If you have ever been on to youth camp you know what I mean.

Last night we had a lovely family evening. It's rare that we all have a really good night at the same time. Either Chris is stressed from work, or has something else on his mind, I'm thinking about what kind of cupcakes I'm going to make or how to explain apologetics to 15 year old girls, or one of the kids is fussing because of teeth, they are tired, or just because.

But last night the stars aligned. We had a nice dinner, of which everyone ate well, and then headed over to Dairy Queen to pick up a treat. We took it over to this area in historic Buford where train tracks run right through the historic area. On either side of it there are large areas of grass and benches. We took our treats there and the kids played in the grass, being incredibly sweet to one another while Chris and I got to hang out and talk. The boys got to see two trains go by within a couple feet of them.

We came home and Chris and the boys played with these little plastic army soldier guys (which I got in the Target $1 section, they have a bunch of great stuff for boys right now, those and foam swords). Jack joined in trying to make shooting noises which Chris coined as chemical warfare in the form of spit. Even bedtime went fairly smoothly.

These nights, however few and far between make it all worth it.

I'm home, we're home, and resuming a state of normalcy.

I'll try to do a quick summary here with more in depth posts later.

Camp was good, but for reasons other than I expected it to be, and it was a very different experience that what I had in mind.

Savannah was AMAZING! I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but since our honeymoon, Chris and I have never gone anywhere just the two of us. It was a much needed time away, and what a blessing it was!

It was great to come back home, I got quite the greeting from Josh. I don't think he stopped wanting to be close to me for the first 24 hours and even after that he will still randomly come up to me and tell me he missed me. Jack on the other hand wouldn't have anything to do with me at first. He refused to look at me and gave me a bit of an attitude like he was mad at me for leaving him. After the first couple hours though he was his normal self.

Now if I can get all the laundry finished, and the house all clean, we'll be in business.

We've had a problem recently with Josh occasionally picking his nose and then feeling then need to ingest the results. Gross I know, but necessary information for the story.

Chris had been getting onto him extra hard recently to help him try to kick the habit. After having the incident happen a couple of times today, Chris finally just asked Josh, why do you do that? To which Josh replied:

"Daddy, sometimes I just get hungry and I need to."

Our kid has an excuse for everything.


In other news, I leave Monday for camp, and then on Friday Chris is meeting me half way and we're headed to Savannah to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. Things will be silent for a little bit.

Hope everyone has a great Fourth of July!