Summer's Up and School is Back, or at Least Will Be Soon!

"Hello!" After 3 weeks of traveling and transition, we are back home again.  However, coming up this time was to a clean townhome rather than our mouse happy rental in the country.  Thank you Jesus for a sanitary place now that Riley has taken to crawling, rolling, sitting, and standing, though varied versions of each.  Brenton calls is crawling, I call it lazy.  Two knees forward, bobble and a lunge; that's all it takes for our sweet girl to get to her toys.  Sometimes she throws in a leg kick or a roll before taking on her crawling stance to move both knees again before lunging to the next victim.

Only one time has she pulled herself up on the ottoman to standing position, though she frequently tries to use me as her steadying pole.  And we woke up this morning to find her in sitting position, leaning all the way forward and, yet, still fast a sleep.  Sitting is like crawling.  She has sat up on her own, though she prefers to lean forward and tumble into a role rather than exert the energy to sit and play.  Really, Riley is far from lazy as every minute awake is spent moving, and if she has help trying to stand.  I think the little girl wants to walk rather than crawl. 

As you can tell, Riley's swirl of hair on top of her head has grown tremendously.  The gel mohawk is from trying to remove her cradle's cap.  Think we got it!

So the reason we have been MIA for the past month...

The first week of July, we were enjoyed the fireworks from our neighbors house and the 4th of July celebration in small town Jellico, an even smaller town than Williamsburg... which is small.  We found out that we were going to get campus housing so Brenton can now walk to work.  Perfect timing as we were about to head out on vacation and return just in time for Brenton to prep for pre-season with the University of the Cumberlands Men's Soccer team.

The next week, my family picked me up as the whole Dongell crew headed to Nana's farm in North Carolina.  Brenton, ever so sweet, headed up a soccer camp in Kentucky and hurried back for a New Student Orientation for the college, missing the time at the farm.  Third week of July, the Dongell crew drove to the beach for the better part of the week and Brenton meet up with us.  Riley loved the wind and the water, as if the tongue is not a good enough indicator of that!  She is a girl after her daddy's heart as she was sad to depart from the daily water outings.

And the fourth week, we were able to visit Brenton's parents and family in Texas as we had two airline tickets expiring the month of July.  We flew standby, amazed that Riley did as well as she did and loving the business right outside of Dallas, Texas.  Brenton was in heaven as he had all his favorites; Chipotle, Jamba Juice, Starbucks, In-N-Out, and QT.

The weather was amazingly HOT and Riley sported a heat rash our whole time there but we loved visiting the Benwares and the Fords.

And the last few days of the month, we hurried back to have our country rental cleaned out and get our campus housing all settled.  I think we are about there.  We got internet just yesterday, so forgive my month of blogging negligence.  We are now back in session!

Riley is napping and Brenton is hard at work as his second assistant just made his way into town.  The boys arrive for pre-season soon and NAIA is delaying in decisions regarding international players.  So you can watch with us as we see how the Cumberland's Men's Soccer team shapes up this season!  Just make sure you follow University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky as there is another university similar in name that makes it easy to get confused.  Until next time!