More July

July was a busy month!  We had birthdays, swim lessons, vacations, and back to school preparations.  I'll have to do the vacation posts later, because it was a long trip and it's going to take awhile to organize all the photos.

Swim lessons were great this year, Ben finally gained the confidence that he was lacking and always worried me.  He's a swim star now, and can do almost anything.  Just not the butterfly stroke, which I never could do either, so who cares.  Grace also became a stronger swimmer, and I'm so glad... I wouldn't ever let her go swim at a friends house because I didn't trust her abilities.  Now she can freestyle in deeper water and it's a big sigh of relief.  That girl just didn't want to work at it, she'd rather splash in the shallow end!  Silly girl.

Even though we had a huge birthday party for Ben back in June, his actual birthday was July 19.  We celebrated by going to see Harry Potter 7.2 on Monday the 18th, just Mom & Ben.  The movie was amazing, and we both clapped and cheered at the end!  This picture is in a dark theater and looks terrible, but it shows how happy we are and how much fun we're having!

Then on Sunday we had cake at Grandma and Grandpa Lawlor's house with some extended family.  There were no candles in the house, so Ben got to be the first one in our family ever to have toothpicks as candles.  They actually worked pretty well, but they DO need diligent adult supervision :)

The next day, Monday, we left for our week long vacation in California and Prescott.  We packed a lot of activities into those seven days and it'll take me awhile to blog about it all.  See what I mean about July being such a busy month?  Thankfully it's August now, and school starts next week!  Yay!