Being that I:
- Forgot to do a summer day-in-the-life post and
- Didn’t really blog all summer
I thought I would do a summer recap. Mostly for me. This being the best baby book and all.
So this was our summer. A nice recap. In October. Because this is my life now.
We hung out at the nature center and Emelia and Olivia loved looking at the frogs and snakes in the visitors center. We went on some family hikes, Olivia found, captured, and let go a gigantic dragonfly. Olivia also loved going antiquing with me a few times.
Sometimes hanging out on the deck while Dad makes dinner is all we needed. There was lots of running, throwing acorns and the occasional fight breaking out (mainly over who was going to smother Mama or run into her at top speed.
Olivia and I went to the local coffee shop a few times, and out for ice cream. In June, the kids were both hit with a really bad stomach flu. Emelia got it first, at 2 in the morning, the time when you think the morning is never going to come. She threw up 11 times and it was awful. Was really good the next morning. Olivia got hit two days later and threw up 16 times. Chris took her to urgent care since she was pretty lethargic and couldn’t keep anything down. It. Was. Awful. She got a prescription for Zofran and didn’t throw up anymore which was good but man, I felt bad for her.
Chris got hit, but luckily didn’t throw up. At one point I had all of them on the couch drinking electrolytes. I never got it, per se, but I did go down with extreme exhaustion and nausea for a full day a few days later and literally spent the entire day in bed with my eyes shut, needing to cancel a source interview and give up two assignments, which the editor was not impressed by and it. WAS. AWFUL.
Father’s Day was low key and Olivia got Chris a 500-piece puzzle they could work on together.
We did our annual day trip to Stillwater with the family, something we missed last summer. We had ice cream, a picnic, and went antiquing while the dads took the kids home.
We went to the splash pad but only made it out there once. The kids love the fountain nearby, and we went a few times out to breakfast with Gigi.
The dam on the Mississippi was at the lowest it’s been and we actually got to walk out into the middle of the river, rescuing as many clams as we could. (Clams not pictured) The girls love taking walks and Emelia wants to walk the entire time so it takes three times as long.
Olivia started swimming lessons and very quickly overcame her anxiety towards deeper water and is now a fish and a better swimmer than her parents. We explored community gardens, dressed up as princesses, and learned to ride a bike without training wheels.
We refinished the Kerslake 180-year old table that’s been passed down to us and it’s gorgeous so that means it needed to be covered up and protected against a six-year-old and a 2-year-old immediately.
And we spent a lot of time resting and sleeping, watching TV, and trashing a house where people never seem to leave. It was the last summer where the kids would be home with me full time. I know they’re on to bigger and better things. They need peer interaction, despite the fears I have about COVID.
So while we had a good summer, it’s time for these littles to fly on their own.
