Summer Fun and Some News

Yikes! It has been forever since I updated. Since Father's Day, our summer has been a whirlwind. I won't go through every detail, but touch on some of the highlights.

A lot of the summer thus far has been spent visiting with family. One of Liam's favorite things is to see his cousin Ben. Ben is starting to get to the point where he can play with Liam a little bit more and is actually getting mobile now. It is really funny to see Liam try to entertain and interact with Ben - even if Ben doesn't always respond. One thing the boys definitely do is crack each other up, and listening to the both of them giggle is hysterical!









We were also fortunate enough to spend a week at the beach in Long Island at my uncle's beach house. Liam LOVED the beach and even went in the water a bit (although it was pretty cold). He really seemed to have a blast there and I think he'll love our family vacation to North Carolina later next month.



We also took some time to make it down to VA Beach to take Liam for his first sailing trip on Tooey's boat. He did fairly well, especially considering it's a 2 year old in a cooped up environment, it was hot, and he had to wear the life jacket. He really liked the boat and had a lot of fun.





This last part of the month is being spent in NJ with my parents while Taylor is on a grad school trip to England. Liam is having a very difficult time while here. Still trying to figure it if it's more being away from home for so long or having Daddy gone for so long....probably a combination of both. It's already been 8 days and I'm hoping things will improve, but for right now, he is struggling. Either way, I take off in a week for a week in England with Taylor (our first vacation without Liam...yay!!!! - no offense little man) and hot shot here will be spending the week with my parents. I know he'll survive this and hopefully adjust, but it's so hard seeing your little one be so sad and having a hard time. We are sneaking in as much fun as we can, though. As you can see, it's not all tears:







I'm going to end this post with our more difficult news. Taylor received his orders. He will be reporting for duty to prepare to deploy to Iraq around the 3rd week of January. While this was somewhat expected, Taylor and I are both amazed at how hard this news hit us. He will be gone for approximately 15 months and working on a team of 12 men that work directly with the Iraqi Army to train their counterparts there. It is a very different mission than he had the last time was there and the deployment is twice as long. We both love the Army and this comes with the territory, but it is never easy to say goodbye, especially with the two little ones now. We can only hope and pray that he will make it back safely and I know that with my boys, we'll make it through and this only makes our family stronger. Besides, how can I really be too down, with my Mr. Man there to always cheer me up. We really make a good team: