Happy 4th of July!!!

We celebrated the 4th of July weekend in Grandview with my entire family. Lauren got to experience her first "Greatest 4th of July Celebration this side of the Mississippi!" It was a great weekend, with fantastic weather!! Lauren ate up the pancakes at the firemen's breakfast in the morning and enjoyed the parade, although she was a bit scared of the fire truck sirens. She met a new favorite friend...a little white puppy! (No, we're still not getting a dog.) The parade was so much excitement that Lauren fell asleep in the stroller on our way to the park for lunch.

Jim, Melissa, Nick, Steph, Mike and Maggie were all able to make it home as well. (Mike was also celebrating his 10 year high school class reunion...whew!!)

While Mike and Maggie were visiting friends on Saturday, the rest of us went to the pool in Muscatine. Lauren had a great time (as she usually does at the pool!) She is such a water baby...I hope she continues to enjoy the water.

Lauren had two huge milestones over the weekend. We got rid of her bottles! YEAH! Her last bottle was Thursday morning at daycare and she hasn't looked back. We had a few rough nights going to sleep, but she's doing great now and is enjoying drinking regular milk out of her sippy cups. It definitely makes our morning routine a lot easier not having to prepare bottles for daycare.

The bigger news is that Lauren took a few steps this weekend! YEAH! We sort of got it on video. Click here. I'm sure they will be more videos to come.

I've started my new job and things are going great so far! I will be working from home a few days a week, which is nice and saves the commute. We're heading to Wisconsin for the week next week. We'll spend a few days in Rhinelander with my parents and Aunt and Uncle and the rest of the week we'll be at the Mead's house in Crivitz. We're really looking forward to a relaxing week. (Oh yeah, Justin and his brothers-in-law will be hog wrestling on Saturday. We'll see if they survive! Justin has never touched a hog, let alone wrestled one! It should be interesting.)

Thanks for checking in on us.

Until next time--