Rachel Zimm: Making summer memories

I finished this post a couple weeks ago, and I somehow forgot to publish! Here it is though - playing catch up to record our summer memories!!

Love this of my Auggie and me!

August had his first visit to the dentist!

We went to our church's annual summer picnic.

Steve's 34th birthday - we celebrated with a chocolate chip caramel oatmeal cake!

Nursing her to sleep for as long as she'll let me! Such peace in these moments.

I spend a lot of time watering and taking care of our garden. This was the container garden part at its prime! It's kind of hard to watch it start to die off in August.

Picking loads of cherry tomatoes!

There's so much I could say about all our butterflies - if you follow me on Instagram, you've probably heard it all at this point. What a wonderful experience!

Nolan is so patient with holding them!

Out on a walk with the double stroller every night.

Nolan got glasses! He wasn't super excited about getting glasses before he got them in the mail, but he is really really happy with them now.

We made cookies and cream popsicles!

Celebrating our two July half-birthdays with brownies.

Every week, we head to our friends' pool - and it is the highlight of our week for the third summer in a row.

Little fishy!

Steve's parents and brother and niece moved here at the very end of July, so we've enjoyed some more family time!

Twelve little monarch eggs found in our backyard.

My sweet girl.

Our cardinals, Lucy and Charlie, sent their third set of fledglings out from our backyard into the world. Turns out, one baby was a cardinal - and one was a cowbird (the cowbird mama laid her egg in Lucy's nest). A few weeks later, and I still see Lucy traveling with and eating with the cardinal baby (Sally), and it is the sweetest!

We've been watching the Cubbies for just about every game! It's been a great, mostly winning season thus far!

Junia and August were sharing a bedroom . . .

and Nolan and Ephraim shared a room with two twin beds. . .

then we got bunkbeds and moved August in with the big boys! They love the new setup, though to be honest, it's been a tough month of getting them to fall asleep when they're so excited to talk.

Soccer started up again, and both boys have really improved since last season! They're really enjoying it.

We made raspberry mango ice cream. Recipe here.

A couple months ago, a friend helped us plant a baby apple tree, and now he gave us a pear tree too! They're growing really well, which is exciting since we only had one small tree in our yard before.