And that was summer!

 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.  

Matt took Allie to the Museum of Life and Science.  She hadn't been in forever and was so excited.  Plus she just loves Daddy time.  She even accompanied him to the dentist a couple days ago just to be together.

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.  

We had some old and new neighbors come over for s'mores and fireworks on July 4th.  We ended up with a loooonnnng fireworks show, with lots of folks having brought over contributions, and it was a lot of fun.  

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!

Is it Summer Yet??

 I'm currently escaping to the screened porch while the kids are blaring hits such as "The Final Countdown" and "Gangnam Style" in our our living room...an old game they have always found entertaining, in which they try to play the same song from multiple devices at exactly the same time.  Doesn't get old. ;)  It's sort of feeling like summer.  The kids have been out for two weeks now.  I'm trying to do some of the "old" days summer things.  We have set summer goals, as we always do.  We are reading the Narnia books out loud (so glad even the big boys are excited about it).  We're trying to plan social stuff that we haven't had time to do.  We've had a short vacation, and we're spending lots of days at the pool.  I've been working half days teaching summer school, though, so I'm not quite in summer mode.  And then the boys have jobs too, so it's just a new kind of summer these days.  No more of the endless days of coming up with activities to amuse everyone as we all spend every waking moment together for 2 1/2 months.  I have a feeling everything will feel like it's changing for the next several years, as we're looking at the last couple years of having the boys home.

The school year finished in a flurry of end of year fun.  The boys took a couple of exams but were mostly home free by Memorial Day.  Julia seemed to have at least one fun party at school every day after EOGs.  Allie had a countdown the last couple of weeks, in which they did something to celebrate end of school each day, like bring in a game to play or have a special snack.  My class did field day and project celebrations and had several of our international parents come share about their home country.  My teacher and I were busy with cleaning and organizing the class and getting the last assessments done on the kids, so time just flew.  We were finished with lacrosse, but got to go watch the Moore boys play soccer again.  We met friends and family at the pool for pizza.  We had a cookout at the Moores', a cookout at Nanny and Pa's, and a graduation celebration for our dear friends' oldest son.  The boys did their job orientations and we had the kids each cook a meal for the family.  Joshua went to one day of a lacrosse tournament to fill in for some sick players.

Allie's last day of 1st grade!

Julia had her end of year band concert, which they did a great job with.  The band teacher was giving out awards and I knew there was a small chance Julia would get one.  She had told me that some of her friends voted her "most improved" because she was "so bad" at the beginning of the year.  But she wasn't sure she'd get it and was concerned she'd feel embarrassed if all her friends got awards and she did not.  After awarding some top band member awards, the band teacher began by describing this student that was “near and dear to her heart” who took not the usual few days to be able to play a note but more like a month and a half, but really fought for it and totally rocked it once she got it.  She said a few more things then she called Julia’s name and there were wild screams and cheers for her. It was a sweet moment, especially since Julia isn’t typically the one getting awards. Wish I had videoed, but I didn’t know for sure it was her till we were too far into it. She was really proud!

One big thing we did at the end of school was totally rearrange the house so that each kid could have their own room.  I used the think that I liked that they didn't spend a lot of time holed up in their rooms because of not having their own space, but certain circumstances (ahem, teenage girlhood) made me reconsider that thought.  We asked the boys what they thought about giving the girls their own room after an especially rough day of drama between the girls.  Gray said sure, anything to make it stop, but Joshua said that would be rewarding them for not getting along and would be super unfair.  So we thought some more and decided we'd give it a try putting Gray in the office with Raven and Allie in the guest room, which no longer has to be kept as a daytime sleeping room for Matt.  Lots and lots of furniture moving, closet cleaning, downsizing of stuff, etc ensued and soon they were settled into their own spaces like it had always been so.

Gray ended up with the biggest room and is still in process with the decorations...trying to make it more his own.  He has partly achieved that by littering the floor with all of his laundry.  

Julia had her bud Addie come over and restyle her space.  This was its neatest time pictured here.  They did a great job with it.

Joshua swiftly kicked all Gray's stuff out and made a Seahawks shrine on his wall.

Allie loves having her own desk and space for animal homes.  She is excited to sleep on the top bunk now too.

The highlight of our beginning of summer was getting to go to the mountains with Matt's side of the family (minus the oldest cousins).  The kids loved extended cousin time and I enjoyed spending more time with them (and the adults) too!  We did a waterfall hike on Father's Day, in which the boys were encouraged to race up the mountain.  Us walkers got to the waterfall only to find the boys were nowhere in sight.  After asking strangers and trying to make phone calls with little reception, we figured out they had gone past the fork with the "WATERFALL" sign and taken the path less traveled up the other way.  Oh well, more memories made!  

Speaking of which, while we waited *forever* for our Father's Day lunch to come to our tables, the men started something that will definitely be a memory from our trip...they recited, each taking a part, the official North Carolina toast.  They felt this appropriate to break out many more occasions during the vacation...e.g. while rafting down the Watauga; while drinking a soda on the porch of the Mast General Store; really anytime, anywhere will do!

Our rafting trip was so much fun.  We chose the "tame" tour down the Watauga, which seemed most appropriate for all of us to enjoy, no matter our age or comfort level.  We began with a 45 minute bus ride to the river, in which the driver frequently used his mic to tell us all about the places we were seeing out the window.  Most of the info was just a joke, but delivered so seriously he really got me quite a few times.  He also threw in many puns, which I am a sucker for.  He played music and encouraged sing-a-longs.  Gray even got up briefly when called to make a paddle his "air guitar".  It was a memorable ride.  

We then had a picnic lunch and headed to the boats. I don't know if I quite grasp why, but due to the dam being let out each day, the water is a freezing 55 degrees.  HOWEVER, we were assured of a bucket full of that water being dumped on us if we called it cold.  "Refreshing" was the only thing permitted.  Our first stop on the river was "Jump Rock", where we were all invited to climb up and jump into the "refreshing" water.  The teenagers, Matt, and Pa accepted that invitation and the looks on their faces when they came up from the water said it all!  

Since most of the raft ride is very calm, they gave us water guns to amuse ourselves with...and soak our neighbor boat with the freezing water.  We were all dripping wet at some point, jump rock participant or not!  Maybe Jack was the most wet, as he went in at jump rock, and then again when he tried to throw a bucket of water at us and, in total hilarious slow motion, lost his balance and fell off the edge.  Or maybe Matt was the wettest, as he decided toward the end to take a swim and just tipped himself backwards into the water.

There was one class 3 rapid towards the beginning of the trip and our guide encouraged us to do it "adventure style", meaning most of the passengers sat on the edge of the boat with their legs dangling and rode that way into the rapid.  It was pretty fun, even with me being on the "dry side" hanging on to Allie for dear life.

The ride back home was also a good one.  The girls had a big dance party most of the way home...and here I thought we'd be worn out and sleep!  They were so cute though, Allie sitting in Lydia's lap, with Audrey and Julia across the aisle.

Most of the rest of the trip was spent eating, talking, and card playing.  I learned to play "Hand and Foot Canasta" with Nanny and Jack, which I thought was really fun, and "Egyptian Rat Slap" with the teen boys.  One night we had a whole family discussion about who wanted to get married, who wanted to have kids, dream jobs, etc.  We all had a great trip and hope we can do it again sometime...like at the new beach house!

That's about all our news.  Gray's basketball team has started up.  He's on a team with Will, with Dennis and Matt (and Joshua) as their coaches.  Joshua is most likely going to take on a second job/paid internship working on buses with the school district transportation department.  I've got one more week of summer school, which has had its challenges, but mostly has been good.  So here's to REAL summer break, just around the corner!!