is it really august already?

Wow - it's been a while, again. July was a busy month - David & I went on a kid-free vacation for a few days. We went to Playa del Carmen. It was our first trip of more than one night without the children, and I was worries I would miss them too much to have fun, but I didn't. I did miss them terribly, but it was so nice to have a break & just be able to sit back & relax. It was nice to have time to just focus on us as a couple, and to just do nothing. The weather wasn't perfect while we were there, but we made the best of it. We did some touristy stuff, we hung out by the ocean, we swam, I read 4 (YES 4!) books.

According to my parents, the kids were well-behaved while we were gone. They did ask us every night on the phone when we were coming home though. (The kids, not my parents.) Scarlett will often randomly say "I really love you all the time." Well she recently started getting on the phone & saying it, followed by "so byebye" and she snaps the phone closed (we only have cell phones in our house). We called my parents on their landline one night & she tried to do that to us on it. My dad was laughing so hard, he said you should have seen her face when she tried to fold the phone closed & it wouldn't fold up. My crazy girl.

I stayed at my parents' house for another 1.5 weeks when we got home, while David had to get back to work. Matthew told me a few time he wanted to live in GA all the time. He then told me he wanted us to move our house to GA. If only he knew how much his mommy wants that too! But we have a comfortable life here, and while we've tried to figure out ways to get back "home", those ways are riskier than I'm willing to take right now. I'm comfortable enough with the status quo, and we get home often enough that I'm content. I would be happier there though. That makes me feel bad, like I'm saying I'm not happy, but I am happy.

I'm marathon training...AGAIN! NYC Marathon is the first Sunday in Nov, and I'll be there. This week I also signed up for 2 marathons next year. I fretted about the first one, thinking we are planning to TTC after I run in NY. A friend pointed out that just because we're TTC doesn't mean I'll get pregnant, and she's seen people put their lives on hold waiting on pregnancies that don't happen. While I've been extremely lucky & gotten pregnant easily, I am getting older & realize that things change, and it doesn't always happen easily. It was presumptuous of me to assume I would be pregnant next May (which was worrying me about signing up for the 1st marathon), and I decided I'd just try to maintain my fitness as much as possible IF I am pregnant & I will run/walk what I can of the marathon. This marathon is for a cause in a way, so it was important to me to take part in it. Then I just got carried away in excitement today & registered for one next fall too. That one has a half that I can "downgrade" to if I am pregnant or have just had a baby, and I'm pretty confident I can maintain my fitness well enough to complete a half.

We are taking Matthew to Iowa later this month for his feet. The doctor there has been wonderful communicating with us via email, and we feel it's better to go there now than wait & let the doctor here do surgery. The physical therapist we've been seeing has seen improvement since we've been going but says he thinks he's done all he can & that Matthew would benefit from more casting. We're praying the doctor in Iowa can achieve the desired results with *just* casting; meanwhile, we're trying to figure out how to explain what's going on to Matthew so he's prepared, when in reality we don't even know what will happen once we get to Iowa. I don't want to scare him going into it, but then I don't want him to be surprised by things either....hopefully we'll figure something out.

I'll try to update more often so they can be shorter :)