4th of July

We had a great 4th of July...I really don't think we've had that much fun in a while.  Earlier in the day, we went downtown for a little while to see if anything interesting was going on, but most of the fun stuff wasn't scheduled to start until the early evening.  So we came back home and the girls took their naps, and Billy and I just sat and talked.  Sometimes it's hard for us to just sit and connect like that...I think we get distracted so easily by technology (like our phones and the laptop) when the girls are asleep because we need some quiet time to ourselves...but it was so nice to just talk with no distractions.

We invited some friends to come over for dinner, like a bring-your-own-meat cookout.  We bought drinks, chips, and corn on the cob, so the BYOM was just an easy way to save a little money and then people could eat whatever they wanted.  And really, everyone just ended up sharing whatever they brought anyway.  It actually turned out a little larger than I expected...we ended up having 8 adults (including me and Billy).  It was SO fun to hang out with other adults.  I really don't think I do that enough these days =).  Of course, Ellie was loving all the attention and immediately made some new friends, the Hinkles, and then cried when they left haha.

I really want to do this more often...I think my natural tendency is to remain shut in and not really hang out with people.  I definitely don't like that aspect of my personality, but I think it's easily overcome.  I really just need to be intentional about making the effort to spend time with friends instead of waiting for someone else to come up with the idea.  I'm so glad we had people over yesterday...it really gave my spirit a lift to talk and laugh and just be relaxed.

I'm still plugging away at my weight loss...slowly but surely.  Sometimes I get kinda discouraged about it, because it is so SLOW compared to last time I did Weight Watchers.  I'm trying to remind myself that I'm nursing, so it's going to be a slower process since Piper relies on me for food.  Before, I lost the weight pretty quickly because I didn't need to consume as many calories as I do now.  I just keep telling myself that even if I only lose one pound a week, that's still one pound gone.  I'm hoping to meet my first weight loss goal this week...8 pounds, which is 5% of my body weight.  And then I'll set a new goal!

And as a quick side note...I have been driving myself crazy trying to think of what to do with Ellie's hair.  I'm not ready to cut it, because it's so pretty and I'm just afraid that cutting it will ruin the perfect curly-ness of her hair.  Plus, I don't think she's emotionally ready for the whole sit-in-a-chair-while-someone-touches-my-head thing.  So now we're doing pigtails.  I'm not very good at styling hair (I can barely do my own hair to make it look decent) but since she's little, I think we can get away with the messy pigtails.  Here's a picture:

What a stinking cute kid.  This picture really shows how much she's grown up...definitely not a baby anymore!  Which makes me kinda sad =(

Hope everyone had a great Independence Day!