July 1: Our early-morning flight to Omaha allowed us to see a lovely sunrise at Dulles.

July 2: Aurora approved of the plate I painted for her; cousins chilling together.

Photo taken by Joe Sands

July 3: Painting pottery (and drinking Starbucks, and talking nonstop) with Kassie and Katrina has become a tradition when we’re all in Omaha at the same time, long may it continue.

July 4: Happy Independence Day! Grandma Carol & Annalie; sparklers galore.

July 5: Annalie and Grandma Val laughing; Old Man Annalie; Aurora making a face at the water we were giving her from the end of a straw, even though she apparently liked it.

July 7: Annalie monkeying around, Aurora watching and wondering how much longer till she can monkey around with her.

July 8: We took Angie out to lunch and introduced her to pottery-painting as an early birthday present, and did some handprints with Aurora and Annalie.

July 9: Lunch with Rachel; an impromptu visit with T and her kids.

July 10: A triple-the-fun birthday party for Zach, Josh and Alex; playing at the sprayground.

July 11: Lunch at Godfather’s with the Kay family (including Mike, who took the group photo); Krista cleverly disguised with a gumball-machine mustache.

July 12: Annalie hanging out with the mariachi band at the Mexican restaurant where we met Nancy and Ben, Angie & Aurora for lunch; shooting off some leftover fireworks at Ed & Leslie’s farm.

July 13: Katrina and I got pedicures and then went to dinner at an unexpectly busy Olive Garden all by ourselves and it was awesome. I think a new tradition has been born.

July 14: Starbucks for the moms, Slip’N'Slide for the kids—perfect on a day when the high temperature was near 100F and humidity was 91%.

July 15: We’re heading home.

I hope to write more detailed posts about our time in Omaha eventually, but for now you can enjoy many photos in my Flickr photoset Omaha July 2010.

This shot of Annalie laughing is my new favorite picture of her.

My dad asked Annalie if she wanted to help him pick up the sticks in the front yard so he could mow. Annalie’s response was an excited, “Sure! Let’s go!”

When we were at Grandma Val’s house, Annalie drew a desert scene on her GloDoodle, and I noticed there was a second circle in the sky across from the sun. I asked Annalie if it was the moon, since sometimes you can see the moon during the day. “No, it’s not the moon,” she said. “You know how sometimes in a movie, when the camera goes up you can see those circles of light?”

Surprised, I said, “You mean lens flares?”

“Yeah, lens flares! That’s what it is, a lens flare.”

My kid makes me so proud sometimes.

After we hung out with T and FJ for a few hours Friday afternoon, we went home, packed, and then got up at 3:30 the next morning to catch an early flight home. Ugh. I won’t be taking that flight again if I can help it.

If you follow me on facebook you might already know that I got a haircut yesterday. I’d been thinking about chopping it off for a while and now I’m wondering what took me so long. I feel like I lost three pounds of hair and I love waking up with hair that looks like it’s partying. I’m already looking forward to a summer of not needing to blow-dry my hair. Ahhh.

Annalie got a haircut too. She’s decided she wants to grow her hair longer so she just got the ends trimmed, but she asked for her bangs to be cut short. She hates it when her hair gets in her face, and I think she secretly loved it last summer when she had to have her bangs cut to about a half-inch after she and Bug played hair salon.

Annalie’s started getting birthday packages in the mail, since her birthday is coming up. She got a really fun package from Grandma Carol and Grandpa Tom with a red-white-and-blue dress, fancy barrettes, cupcake-making supplies, and a marigold garden kit. And Zach, Josh & Alex definitely knew what Annalie would love, and sent her a convertible sports car and a ballerina outfit for her Zhu Zhu pets, along with some adorable hand-drawn cards.

We saw a fuzzy caterpillar on the deck the other day.

We’ve been spending more time on the deck recently because we bought a new pool for Annalie. It’s really too big for the deck—if we filled it full with water it would be very heavy and we don’t want to test our second-story deck that way—but for now we can just fill it half-full and let Annalie play. Later in the summer we’ll move it down to the grass. If you ask me the weather isn’t really warm enough for swimming, but Annalie loves water and will happily splash around in water that seems way too cold to me.

My good friend Angela had a baby girl recently. I crocheted the big blanket for baby Kate Marie, and the two smaller ones for big sisters Gabby & Annie to use as doll blankets.

So…that’s what we’ve been up to lately. I plan on blogging every day but somehow every day ends with me sitting on the couch staring at my laptop blankly, too tired to bother. I need to finish flickring my Omaha photos and then blog about the rest of my trip, and I promised several of you my recipe for spinach pasta salad. Annalie’s 6th birthday is Sunday, and her party is tomorrow, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of photos to share and stories to tell about that. Blogger’s paradox! I don’t think I ever really get away from it.

Just because this post is already so random, here are some more random photos that I like and just downloaded. Rain on my car window one day a few weeks ago:

The shadow of our minivan yesterday evening, looking like Shrek’s head:

A weird shot I took of me and Annalie at the park as she was climbing on a chain thing:

Finally, I took this picture of the changing table at a McDonald’s a while back. Someone’s either a grammar freak or pop-culturally ignorant. Either way, it made me laugh:

This post is a lot like my life lately: busy, random, with me feeling rather distracted and perpetually behind on my to-do list, yet fairly happy with it all. How are you guys doing?