July Mendez News

Hello all!

Yep, July was quite a busy month here in the Mendez household!

First up this month was Abby's birthday. On her birthday, we went with the family to one of our favorite restaurants here in Fairhope, Big Daddy's. Some of the best seafood in the world is right here in Fairhope, especially the fried kind. If you guys have never been to this area and had fried shrimp, oysters or fish, you are seriously missing out. But then, we fry everything in the South. We even fry pickles. (Hey, don't knock it if you haven't tried it; they are AWESOME.) Big Daddy's is right on Fish River, and the kids like to hang out outside in their play area.


That weekend, we had her birthday party at a local petting farm. The cool thing about this place is that it's on land that used to be my great-grandmother's farm. We're still distantly related to the folks that own it now, but it was cool to say, hey this is my-great grandmother's farm and we're having my daughter's birthday party here.

Abby LOVED her farm birthday party. She got to pet all sorts of animals include a rooster and a baby chick and a rabbit, feed a baby cow, ride a horse, take a hayride, feed goats, you name it. She talked about it for days. Here are some pictures from the party:






And here's a picture of the pregnant belly at the party: (I was 36 weeks at the time. Lily was born almost 2 weeks after this picture was taken.)

The rest of the month we spent waiting for Lily to arrive. And since she's gotten here, we've been keeping busy with changing diapers on 2 kids, feeding 2 kids, getting 2 kids to sleep, that sort of thing.

We also had a nice visit from Joel's sisters and dad and Abby's cousin, Belen. Joel showed them around the town and they hung out and helped out with Abby and Lily. It was great having them around.

Lily is doing great. She's starting to be awake a bit more showing off her pretty blue eyes to anyone who's around. She also sucks her thumb, just like she would do in all of my ultrasounds! Abby just adores her, and only gets upset when others hold Lily. Not because they're not paying attention to her, but because Abby's not getting to hold Lily. She calls Lily, "my baby." It's so cute. I'm getting used to waking up several times a night again, and Joel has been so great with getting up with Abby and letting me sleep in in the mornings.

August is cranking back up again, with all of our preparations to travel again. Between getting our shipments picked up, getting Lily's passport and visa, and check ups, we're keeping busy. My sister and her boys came down again this weekend to visit this weekend and Abby has been in heaven. She loves hanging out with "the boys." We're also looking forward to seeing Joel's parents who will be coming to visit for a week this month as well, and that will be great. That will be our month, and it looks like we'll be heading out of here the first week of September.

(We had to get the lens to our camera fixed, but it should be arriving today. I'll have much better pictures to share with you guys next month.)

Talk to all of you soon.

Love,
Julie, Joel, Abby, and Lily