one great big fat summary

 Wow. This post is RIDICULOUS, I'm just telling you now. I'm not offended at all if you choose not to handle it. This is my attempt to cram not even close to everything that happened to us this summer into one ginormous post. I've been SO bad at keeping up with our blog this summer. It's gotten to the point where, like a journal, if you keep waiting to catch it up before you put new stuff up, it will just never happen and you'll be behind forever. So I just included the major happenings of our summer (not including our cruise, our visit from Howells and my New York trip that I already documented), and who knows, maybe someday I'll actually scrapbook the rest? Haha. But I want to remember at least some of these details, so here's my massive catch up. Hang on to your hats, folks. 

First off, I just have to say that a healthy portion of our summer looked a lot like this:

It's one of the things I love most about living in this area. If mountains aren't easily accessible, I'm at least glad that several beaches are. :)

We had a birthday, shout hooray!! Sharing a birthday means we only get one chance to celebrate during the year, so we try to make it memorable. This year we splurged and took the ferry from Lewes to Cape May, NJ. Jaden loved the bohp (boat) and we loved exploring through the quaint shops, walking the streets lined with Victorian style homes, and burning through five dollars worth of quarters in the arcade at the beach. Ski Ball anyone?

Two of my favorite pictures from our birthday. My boys. See the resemblance? Gosh I love them :)

A couple of days later we celebrated the fourth of July! Steve was at scout camp until the evening, so Jaden and I headed to our town's children's parade. It was a bust. Never going to it again unless my kids are begging to be in it. But while we were waiting for it to start, we walked past the firehouse. As I was pointing to the fire trucks for Jaden, one of the firefighters there with his grandson saw me and ended up taking us on a tour of the firehouse! We got to climb up inside a truck, ambulance, and boat! I was sad that Jaden was a little too young to know what was going on, but I sure loved it! It was the one thing that redeemed the 4th for me until Steve got home and we went to a carnival and awesome fireworks show.

The best family night of the summer had us at the Delaware State Fair! Giraffes and sheep and cows and pigs and goats and kangaroos and tractors and lights and music and lots of walking...holy moly, Jaden was in heaven. The state fair has never been so fun for me. Just watching him see all those animals up close and take in every new sight, sound and smell was totally worth the admission.

We are turbo tourist champions. A quick overnighter business trip to Queens, NY for Steve turned into a couple of days with enough time for Jaden and me to spend almost a whole day in Manhattan! We made the last minute switch because Steve's parents and two siblings were coming to the city the day we were supposed to be leaving. So thanks to my generous dad and his endless hotel points, we managed to stay one more night and surprise them (not really but we tried) in Central Park. We got to have dinner with them before heading back out to Queens to our hotel room and home the next morning. Poor Jaden was not feeling well at all and the city was hard on him, but we had a good time and saw a lot. The trip was worth putting up with the puke in the backseat from all the stop and go NY construction on the way home...poor kiddo...

I chose to spend the day seeing things I hadn't seen yet. I've spent a lot of time in midtown but not very much in downtown. Highlights of the day included Wall Street, Trinity Church, the bull, Battery Park, the World Trade Center visitors center (not the memorial...I still need to see that), the NEW World Trade Center, walking the first part of the Brooklyn Bridge, playing in some AWESOME playgrounds in Central Park, and dinner at Carmines with Stan, Julie, Em and Spence :) Oh and let's not forget the adventure that is getting a stroller up and down the subway steps by myself, changing a diaper on a bench in bowling green...sitting on a concrete step for an hour with the stroller leaning back against my legs so Jaden could nap...walking in circles trying to find a Starbucks so we could get a vanilla frappe chino to cool off... feeding the birds in Central Park every single goldfish we have left...you know, the fun stuff. :)

Uncle Jake came to visit us in August! We got to play guitar, eat LOTS of ice cream, go to a local baseball game, and hang out with our friend Marilyn. Every time Jake tried to go to the beach though, it rained. Sorry dude, better come back :). Can you tell Jaden was excited to spend time with his uncle one-on-one?? We were so happy to have him one-on-one too. Well, maybe one-on-three :). 

It was SO fun being hosts to Shawn and Britt when they came to see us in August!! Maybe because we got to take DC, the Eastern Shore, AND Philly by storm...maybe because they're married and we're married and it's fun to have married siblings around...maybe because I just LOVE Brittany and it's so fun having girl time with my new (ish) sister in law...I don't know what it was but we just had SO. MUCH. FUN. We picked them up from Baltimore in the evening and spent the night so that we could go to the temple and then on to the Mall the next day. We mapmyrun...ned? (can you verbify that?) how far we walked that day and it was well over 6 miles as we saw tons of monuments and museums, including the new Martin Luther King Jr. monument. The rest of the week was spent introducing them to the Eastern Shore, complete with Ocean City, Berlin (where Runaway Bride was filmed), picking crabs, and "campering" down in Eastern Shore Virginia. And to top it all off, we made it to Philly in enough time to find the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall before they had to fly home. Phew! So much accomplished and such a great trip!

Some perks to Steve's job: Every now and then we get free tickets to sporting events in Baltimore! In June we saw the Orioles and in September we lucked out to get Ravens tickets to the ONE Monday night game they have this season (usually they're on Sundays)! My dad usually tries to take my brothers to one away game a football season, so he was kind enough to sit this year out and instead fly both Charles and Pedro out to join us for the game! We included a trip to the DC temple, as well as a stop at Rehoboth Beach while we introduced them to our new home. It was a wild weekend. Now every family member we have has been out to visit us. We've loved it!

And just a little summer potpurri to finish out this forever long post. Steve and I actually got a babysitter(!) and went on a picnic date to the beach. AND...ended up getting a flat tire. AND...changed it in a HUGE torrential rainstorm. I love life's little adventures that happen to us. There's no one I'd rather be stuck on the side of the road with in the rain than Steve, haha.  

For a few months we had a new area open in our ward (two sets of missionaries for one ward?! Lucky us, but kind of sad that we really need it). It recently got closed, but because the missionaries lived so close to us, we got to give them rides to church, feed them dinner, go on splits (well, Steve did), let them help us paint our laundry room, and get to know them really well. So well that when they left, we initiated them into our family with a token of the running joke that in order to be a Howell you have to wear polos. We miss you Perkins and Luthi! Thanks for all your hard work! 

So there you have it. Summer 2012. We've been SO blessed. Blessed with adventures, family, new sights, history, lots of time outdoors and way too many ways to spend money :). We're also tired and ready for a more realistic and structured routine that generally comes with autum and winter. Although we wouldn't be Howells if we didn't already have the next big adventure up our sleeves...(or two adventures, or three...) 

Stay tuned!