Finally! Nice Weather!

We finally had two days of nice weather and I'm very grateful they came on a weekend!  We took full advantage of it and spent lots of time outdoors!  On Friday, Hailey & I went shopping at the mall to look for a flower girl dress for Uncle Vince & Aunt Austin's wedding as well as a dress for me (trying to find something that will look good when I'm 9 months pregnant has been challenging!).  Luckily (and thanks to the sales lady at Motherhood Maternity) I found a dress I liked.  Brian then came over to the mall to meet us for lunch and Hailey was disappointed that he had to go back to work instead of joining us for the rest of our shopping trip.  She tried on a few very cute flower girl dresses and then we headed back home.

On Saturday, we met my sister & Laura over at a different mall to try on a couple more flower girl dresses and thankfully found one we (as well as Austin) liked.  So, we are grateful to have that task taken care of (now to just find shoes, tights, hair pieces, etc.).  Right after that, we drove down to a local forest preserve to attend Brian's company's annual summer picnic.  They had lots of activities for the kids (which Hailey loved!) as you'll see in the pictures below.  We stayed there for about 3 hours and then went back to the mall to exchange some things.  I'm pretty sure Hailey & I were tired of malls by that point!  After we ate dinner, we did some outside work and then went over to our neighbor's to roast marshmallows for s'mores and chat for a bit.


On Sunday morning, we drove up to Thompson's Strawberry Farm in Wisconsin to pick strawberries.  It went a lot faster this year with Brian helping us out!  We were also able to pick quite a bit from our own garden on Saturday.  And ahh, the smell of fresh strawberries is indescribable!  Our car smelled fabulous on the way home!  I had planned on making another double-batch of strawberry-rhubarb jam, but my rhubarb was not doing well at all this year.  When Brian stopped at the farm stand down the street earlier in the week, they said that the farmer they get their rhubarb from also had a really poor crop this year (from the cold and wet season we've had).  So, we decided to instead make just strawberry jam.  We started the process right after lunch and finished about 4 hours later.  See the next post for how we made it.

  We finally got pictures from the school for Hailey's prom.  Here she is with her date, Colton.

 My broccoli is doing really well!

A little yellow summer squash is starting to form.

This is the beginning of an Early Girl tomato.

My poor rhubarb...by now this is usually 3 times this size!

Remember in the last post how all these yellow lilies had not yet bloomed?  They have exploded with color since!

At Brian's company picnic...this was a really high slide!  I couldn't believe she went all the way up there.  She went down by herself twice, but then would only go down if Brian went with her.

  Here was a trip down on her own.

They had a glitter painting station where Hailey got a mermaid and I got a music note.

I loved how Hailey's turned out!  It sparkles so much in the sun!

Ours together.  This is actually the same paint they use on dancers, so it's quite water-proof and will stay on for at least 3 days.  Thankfully I have no work meetings planned for tomorrow!

Hailey especially loved this game and got a Tic Tac Toe twice!

On the way out of the park, we saw this doe and her fawn.

They also had a balloon lady and Hailey picked a tiger for her to make.  Everytime someone commented on her tiger, she would make it roar at them. :-)

Roasting marshmallows with the neighbors.