Back to Blogging

So, If I have anybody left who still checks to see if I am blogging, I am back! I decided to take the summer off. I have not been busy every single second and could have found the time to blog, but just didn't feel like it. I was having such a great time just enjoying life. Something about sitting down at the computer almost every night to journal my day, sort of felt like homework to me! However, I started this blog to be a memory book of sorts for our family and my kids to have one day. SO I find that I NEED to get back to blogging.

So what did we do all summer?? As for our family, we didn't do the vacation thing this year. Instead, Charlie's family came out to visit us for the 4th of July week. We had a wonderful time visiting, eating, playing games, going to the beach, sight-seeing, etc...Here are some pics from the week.

Lobster Dinner rooftop

The McDonald Family in Palos Verdes

4th of July

Sarah was busy doing camps and Irish dance competitions. Sarah started her camps with a dance (all-in-one) camp. It was basically hip-hop, jazz, yoga, musical theater, cheerleading, and music everyday. She then did a couple of weeks of beach camp, an Irish dance camp, and soccer camp. Amidst all that, she continued to do her art classes, ice skating classes, and upped her Irish dance classes to 2 days a week. She also competed in 3 competitions this summer and did well in all of them. So a lazy summer she did not have, but a fun one for sure.

Sarah's 1st Feis

2nd Feis medals

Soccer Camp

Her team (U.S.A.) won the mock tournament

Lauren continued to do gymnastics and asked me weekly when she would start ballet up again. She is excited for next week! She spent most of her days at the summer camp at her daycare, however, we did pull her out some to do some fun activities. She had some play dates with friends, we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific and the Natural History Museum.

Ready for Pirate Fest at the Aquarium

Natural History Museum

Charlie has been a busy, busy worker bee. He has worked 2 bike races (Tour of France and Tour of Colorado) and has been hard at work prepping for his new gig as the producer of the weekly college football game on FX. This is the FOX network's 1st year of doing college football and Charlie was picked to be the producer. It is sort of a big deal and a big promotion for him. It has been a lot of hard work, but it has taken him all over the country for press and media days, he has had some fancy dinners out (which is the part I am jealous of), and has been on the phone or computer about 99% of the summer. A restful summer at the beach he did not have, but he loves what he does.

I have been busy carting kids around to play dates, camps and competitions, as you can imagine. On July 22nd, I became the primary care giver extraordinaire to our dog Peaches. She decided to jump off our tall bed and dislocated her hip and had to have emergency surgery to keep it back in place. I do love my sweet old dog to death, but a good patient she is not. She is supposed to rest and recuperate and she has done everything in her power to be nothing put active and disobedient. We are in the last 2 weeks of this healing period where I have to carry her up and down the stairs (we live in a 3 story house) and I am not allowed to let her jump on anything. (Mind you her favorite place to be is on the couch). I will be so glad when she is back to "normal".... And somewhere between being mom and dog nurse, I have been working at my new business of being a Stella & Dot Stylist. I LOVE this job and have had great success my first 3 months in business. Every month has been better than the one before. If you are not familiar with this product, you need to go check it out and fall in love with it like I did!

www.stelladot.com/tamaramcdonald

Poor Peaches

So there is our summer, busy, but fun! The fall looks to be even busier and even more fun. I love that we decided to move to Hermosa Beach. I think it is suiting us well.

I will be back to blogging more frequently now, in fact, I will post tomorrow about 1st Day of School and next week about our girls weekend to San Diego for Labor Day.