Just like that, it's the last day of summer break for me and I'm heading back to work tomorrow. It's flown by in a whirl of pool visits, parties, and "spring" cleaning.
She was so worn out from the museum that she fell asleep reading!
For a couple weeks there, we were going to the pool nearly every day!
Also common in our house all summer has been various combinations of males lifting weights in the garage. This is Gray's M/W/F crew, but Joshua also has some friends he works out with, Matt and Hunter have been working out together, and Matt has continued to teach lacrosse team members some mornings.
Julia went to Atlanta for a week on a mission trip to serve with some homeless ministries down there. She loved going with her friend Grace from school and Grace's mom, and was full of stories of all the super nice people she met and their life stories.
On the last day, they got to go to Six Flags and she rode some major roller coasters, which was a big step for her. She loved that too!
Not pictured, but I had a ladies' "exchange" night where we brought things of ours that were still nice but we didn't use and "shopped". Through the pool (and Allie's tendency to talk to everyone there!), Matt's parents, and my work, I had connected with lots of neighbors recently, some that just moved in this year, and it was fun to have new folks over to hang out.
I wanted to keep the good times rolling with the new neighbor friends we'd been making, so I hosted a mom/daughter cupcake decorating contest. These girls got sooo creative and made truly beautiful creations. Each couple got a category to go on and we had a counter full of candy and decor. Allie and I got "magical creatures". She's so into mermaids and unicorns. I thought her unicorn was pretty adorable.
A few days later, we kept with the theme of partying with new and old friends and celebrated Allie's birthday at the pool. She's never had a party beyond our family or few close family friends, so this was a comparative blowout. She started with a list of a handful of kids, but then kept inviting kids every time we went to the pool, whether she new them or not. I had gotten all the stuff for the party and told her to stop inviting because I didn't have enough. So then she'd just ask people if they were going to the pool that day and say she was going to be there, but not outright invite them. It got awkward;) So I bought more stuff and told her to invite away. We ended up with a great crew (and there were a few extra kids that I'd never met but the dad said Allie invited them) and it was easy and fun. We had two huge cookie cakes, one adult made and one kid made with 25 layers of sprinkles! We ate and ate and talked and swam and she loved it. Then Moores came over to watch her open her gifts and play.
Somewhere that weekend I think, the Moores bought a piece of land right outside our neighborhood and we had a crazy all-pile-in-the-van ride over to see it. They are cautiously optimistic about building a wonderful home there this year.
So as not to exclude the boys with our sugar fun, my friend Robyn hosted a mother-son candy sushi party, which was great too. They made their creations and all went out to play sports, so the moms got to talk and I really enjoyed getting to know some new neighbors better.
Our friends the Runkles are so generous with their hand-me-downs and the girls decided to wear these beautiful skating dresses to their lesson.
Allie's actual birthday began with dumplings for breakfast and makeup, which is a favorite Julia and Allie activity. Mimi and GrandGene came the day before and she loved having more family here to celebrate with.
Later we had the Moores and Cindy and Barnette over for a tie dye birthday party to celebrate both and Allie and Jeannie.
We dyed our shirts, danced, and ate.
Allie opened presents that included beautiful handmade paintings by her grandmothers for her newly acquired room.
Birthday buddies!
This summer it has been really fun to finally be back at the rec center watching basketball. Here Joshua was filling in as assistant coach with the Bakers out of town. Gray is super entertaining to watch, just throwing himself into every play and having fun too.
Somewhere in there, Matt and I had a date to a restaurant downtown we'd never been to that has a variety of international food and we also finally went to see the Top Gun movie, which was super fun.
And then I realized it was my last week of break and I hadn't really accomplished much as far as cleaning or projects, the way I'd normally do on a break. So I decided to clean our dusty fan...and then I didn't stop cleaning for 3 days. In the end, I think nearly every wall, door, appliance, picture frame, cabinet, etc got wiped, plus the girls earned a little money cleaning the fridge and I made everyone clean their windows and baseboards and some cabinets got reorganized, such as the art cabinets where Allie had apparently just been tossing all her many creations for the last year. It was good to get stuff done.
Then we went back to party mode and had a bunch of the new neighbors over for a potluck. This crew has mostly younger kids, so it's really fun for Allie to have lots of kids her age to play with. We had some great food to eat, including some authentic Chinese and Korean dishes, lots of good conversation and laughter, and some classic makeovers for the little girls. One family has twin baby boys that Julia and Addie just loved following around.
My last task of summer break was to drop Julia off at summer camp. This is her third year going but first year in the "older" camp, where they sleep in boxcars that are showing their age, as opposed to the newer camp for younger kids, with it's "cabins" that still smell like a new house and have bathrooms that are bigger than many peoples' homes. ;) We had never seen inside either camp's cabins because of covid, but were able to go in this year, which was fun. And that's a wrap on summer break. On to training meetings, helping set up classrooms, and meeting the new group of students that I'll spend the next 10 months with!
