Well, we are now officially past July 4th which always feels like the halfway point of summer. I don’t know if it’s actually the halfway point because that would require math and a calendar and I’m not really interested in either of those things.
And this summer has been different from summers of yore because I keep waiting for it to slow down and it really hasn’t yet. In fact – and I hate to tell you this because it makes it real – Gulley and I have been having some serious calendar meetings trying to figure out when and if we can make our annual summer road trip with the kids happen. And by serious calendar meetings, I mean we get together and drink wine and occasionally look up hotels and other information.
The biggest obstacle is a combination of Caroline’s soccer schedule and Gulley’s oldest son, Jackson, making the baseball All-Star team. The upside of having big kids is they can make their own sandwiches and carry on real conversations and teach you how to play random games on your phone, the downside is their lives are much busier than they were back in the days of naps and goldfish crackers.
All that to say, we haven’t given up hope yet and have a few days toward the end of July circled on the calendar so, barring any further complications, the road trip should be able to happen even if it’s an abbreviated version of what we’ve done in years past.
In the meantime, here’s what else we’ve been up to this summer. This is probably going to be really boring but I want to document it so I can look back and go “Hey, that was the summer we blah, blah, blah”.
P and Caroline took a road trip to Louisiana along with P’s mom to go visit his brother in June. They scheduled a couple of days of fishing while they were there and it’s safe to say it was a big success.
Meanwhile, I did my part by staying home and reading a couple of books, watching some movies that they’d never want to see and getting a pedicure.
After they got home from Louisiana, Caroline and I had a couple of lazy days while she recovered from all the fun and Mabel was the beneficiary of a lot of attention.
Clearly, she loves hugs. You can see it in her eyes.
And then last week Honey and Big were in town at the JW Marriott for a convention and so we spent the day out there with them, floating the lazy river and living the good life.
There are two HUGE (this cannot be overstated) new slides at the JW Marriott and the kids talked Gulley and me into going down both of them. Gulley and I both have this fear of being accused of being no fun and so we are both easily coerced into being fun (and doing dumb things women in their mid-forties shouldn’t do) when there is no real moral issue at stake. This is how we both found ourselves slightly traumatized and pulling our swimsuits out of various places after going down two slides that had about a 90 degree angle drop off that ultimately shoot you into a tube of water at a high velocity. I’m glad we did it but I can guarantee I will never do it again. I think I still have water up my nose.
On Saturday afternoon, Caroline convinced P to take her to Home Depot to buy some wood. She’s been dying to make something and I suggested she could make an end table for our patio. This resulted in this scene about two hours later.
There is something more than mildly disconcerting about seeing your child (MY BABY!) using an enormous saw. It dawned on me that I still forget I can set her place at the dinner table with steak knife now, while P has her using a saw and making measurements and doing fancy, complicated things like adding and subtracting fractions.
This was the table when they screwed in the legs.
And this was the finished product.
It was almost instant table gratification. And I’m thrilled to have a place to set my drink or my book or my phone every time I sit outside. Which will be almost never until the temperature dips back down into the nice, cool mid-90’s. I would try to explain how hot it has been here but it’s beyond words. When I saw the forecast for the next seven days, I honestly wanted to cry. At some point back in May, I read that we were going to have a wet, mild summer because of El Nino or some such thing and it turns out that was all a BIG LIE.
For the fourth of July, we started our day at the neighborhood parade. Mimi and Bops joined us and we all walked along the parade route and then sang some patriotic songs before walking back home.
After that, we came back to the house to relax for a little bit and then ultimately made our way to the pool to meet up with Gulley and her family. If you’ve been reading for a few years then you may know that our people are big fans of the belly flop contest and we’ve had several champions over the years. Caroline and Jackson have retired from the belly flop game, but Will was the defending belly flop champ from last 4th of July and I’m pleased to announce he is still the reigning champ after an excellent exhibition of flop mastery.
In his words, “he was reppin'”.
I don’t really know what that means.
But I’d like to think it also applies to Gulley and me for being brave enough to go down those slides at the JW Marriott.
