Once again I’ve been a slacker in the blog-writing department. Almost a month since my last post! The biggest news from this past month is that Jason finally caved in to my demands and we built a fence between our yard and our neighbors to the north. The house to the north is a rental house, and for the first couple years we lived here there was a middle-aged woman living next door who was generally a quiet decent neighbor. Then about a year ago the current tenants moved in. It is another middle-aged woman with who we are assuming are her two grown children. I don’t think any of them work. The two boys (who appear to be in their 20’s) troll around the neighborhood on their bicycles. They somehow managed to get a car, but it’s been sitting out front for a month now with two flat tires and a missing front bumper. They have AT LEAST 6 cats and two yappy little untrained dogs. The back yard has completely died since they moved in, and they’ve dug a fire pit in the middle of it. The back yard also looks like if you drop something, you just leave it there…a tipped over cooler, a few beer bottles, an office chair, etc. They fashioned a partial fence to keep the dogs in using a piece of plastic snow fence, a 2×4, some string, a tipped up ottoman, a classroom chair, and a piece of particle board. Needless to say it has become a real eyesore and I’ve been wanting a fence for awhile. I priced around but it was super-expensive to have one built. Then Jason pointed out we could do what our neighbors to the south have done, and affix the new fence directly to the existing chain link fence allowing us to forgo digging holes for new posts. That was all the convincing it took. If anyone wants to see a time-lapse of our project (along with a few shots of the neighbors crummy yard) see the video below.
William also continues to grow like a weed. On the 18th he will be 4 months old! His tricks this month? Rolling over from back to front, and giggling. He’s a really happy little guy a lot of the time now. Almost no crying to speak of. It has been a good month. He also continues to sleep 7-8+ hours at night. 
Last night we put him down at 10pm and he woke up at 6:45…it was lovely. Will is getting really good at grabbing things and interacting with the world around him. It seems like he discovers a new noise he can make every day. He loves to be walked around in the carrier I bought. It’s like there is too much world and he just wants to see it all! He has his 4 month check up and shots on the 20th. It will be exciting to see how much he’s grown. Hopefully the shots are a non-event like last time.
Work has been really busy all summer. I think we’re about to start hitting a lull as our football players get busy. I have never had so many phone calls from football players 3 weeks before practice starts in earnest. I try to tactfully explain that 3 weeks of training with us isn’t going to make them the super-athlete they describe needing to be, but usually they still want to come in for 3 weeks and give it a go. My other pet-peeve from the training program this month…kids who are old enough to train with us (10+yrs) who still have their parents help them tie their shoes. This is a performance training program folks. Your mom is tying your shoes?!? I’ve seen it happen 3 times (at least) in the last two weeks.
The back yard skunks were introduced to our garden hose this month. Jason stuck it into the nest they made under the shed and he periodically turns it on. We’ve occasionally smelled skunks around, but haven’t seen them since. I think they are all big enough to have moved out of the nest by now. Once we take the garden out we will go to work refilling the hole under the shed. What a nuisance!
We are planning our next trip to the midwest in September. Feel free to inquire about dates and details. We’d love to see everyone again during our visit. We will be bringing a 6-month-old! Holy cow! Here are a few pictures from this month to leave you with!
