Schaefer Family Adventures: July 2019

This is Charlotte….the floating rainbow unicorn.

She resides in Vermont at my Grandparent’s home on Lake St. Catherine. She is a lovely addition to a place that is filled with already amazing memories for me. My grandparent’s home, which we call the Camp, is nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont on a beautiful glacier formed lake in the town of Wells, Vermont. I have visited this place my entire life. They bought it in the 70’s as a summer house and since then, and many renovations later, it has become their home. I loved growing up and going to the Camp each year, especially for the 4th of July. It gives my heart SO much joy to bring my little family there and to know that my children will have the same happy memories of this special place. This might be where my love of mountains with lakes comes from…its such a peaceful, serene place to be. Waking up early to see the mist over the water dissipate with the morning sunlight…spending the day by the water catching fish, going for boat rides, trying not to get a sunburn…late nights by a crackling fire, making s’mores and listening to hilarious stories told by my uncles. I truly love this place and Matthew and I always say, “Gosh we wish lived closer, we would be here every weekend!” We try to make it up each year for the 4th of July to see family and spend time on the lake. There’s always tons of food, lots of family and spectacular fireworks. This year was no exception. We made it a long weekend and stayed a few days after the 4th to really soak in our time in Vermont. It was so wonderful and so hard to leave.

On the way back from Vermont, we stopped in New York at my parent’s house to see my family. John had a blast swimming in the pool with his uncles! It was nice to be back in the home where I spent a good portion of my childhood, especially my high school years. It was also nice to be near a Wegmans again! If you know me, you know I adore this grocery store. It IS the greatest grocery store on the planet (if you need some convincing, click this link) and I wish we had one in Steubenville! Gosh, I’d even settle for one in Pittsburgh.

The rest of the month was filled with days in our backyard pool, John and Grace growing up way too fast and a quick day trip to Michigan to visit my sister. Grace has started crawling which is amazing and terrifying at the same time. I’m learning how to navigate the waters of a crawling baby with a toddler. John will be playing nicely with his toys and she will come over and knock everything over, much to John’s chagrin. I also forgot how clean you need to keep your floors with a crawling baby. Every little spec is incredibly interesting to the new crawler and she puts everything in her mouth. So now our house is both baby and toddler proof and we are adjusting to life with TWO mobile kids. John has been getting really good at independent creative play which is so cute. I love seeing him set up his train set or build with his blocks and Duplos or play with his cars. He is also talking SO much more. It’s amazing what happens over the course of the summer!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from July!