July was action packed. We had flash floods and days that felt like we were living in a sauna. Through that, we went on a road trip, welcomed a couple of our favorite out-of-towners, spent time at the pool, got a first hair cut, and had lots of good family time.

The month started with Harvey’s first haircut 🥲, pool time, and meeting cousin Jenny on the 4th of July which was a great surprise.

The next big adventure was our road trip to visit Sarah’s dad, Jeff, and wife, Nancy. We initially planned to drive out to them in Minnesota, but they were looking for an excuse to visit Chicago and we were happy for a shorter drive, so we decided to meet in the Windy City. On the way there we made few stops in PA with Sarah’s work colleagues and spent the night in Pittsburgh at the Priory hotel which is very cool place.

Once we got to Chicago we had a great few days with Jeff and Nancy. We saw some sights when we weren’t melting (Lincoln Park neighborhood, the aquarium, and zoo), ate great food, and had more than a few glasses of wine with Nancy. We also got to celebrate Jeff’s birthday and Harvey got some quality grandparent time.

We wish we had a few more days in Chi-town, but we had to make our way home. On the return trip after uneventful driving through Indiana and Ohio, we stayed the night in Mars, PA with Michael’s cousin Ryan, his wife Debbie, and their daughter Miranda, home from school. It was a short visit but we had a blast. Harvey was both terrified and fascinated by their pets Juno (cat) and Luna (dog) which is par for the course 😂

After leaving western PA our last stop was lunch with Sarah’s grandmother in Ephrata. She’s been alone since her husband and Sarah’s grandfather passed away last summer, so it was nice to check in and see how she’s doing.

Overall it was a great trip. We broke in the new car and got some great family time. With all of the stops, it wasn’t quite the relaxing trip we envisioned, but we’re grateful that it worked out.

The last half of the month was a blur. There was the flooding previously mentioned, a business team BBQ, and our good friends, Andrew and Emma, from Lexington, KY paid us a visit. Harvey got to spend some fun time with Aunt Emma and Uncle Andrew, we relaxed, showed them around Cranford, and we caught a NY Liberty game at the Barclay’s Center which was awesome – we highly recommend going to a game if you haven’t recently, the energy was way better than a Nets game 😂

I’ll put all the random assortment of photos below and be more prepared for next month’s post so we can get back on track. Hope everyone has a great August.