Catch Up Post

10 Aug

Just checked and the last time I wrote anything here was May 26, so I guess there’s a lot to catch up on!

Quickly:

We had an awesome block party with our neighbors. Mike pulled a permit and we closed down the street. We rented a dunk tank and bounce house, had gobs of food, an outdoor movie, a glow stick parade, and more. It was super fun and a nice way to kick off summer.

Michaela made Mike to cutest thing for Father’s Day. It’s a shirt with a grid drawn on the back of it, with a corresponding grid on a piece of paper. Mike puts on the shirt and, using the paper grid, can tell Michaela which part of his back to massage. Isn’t that creative and also sweet?

Work has been nuts, in part because I got a promotion! My new role (which includes all my old responsibilities) is a good match for my long-term career aspirations and is a really nice acknowledgement of what I bring to my organization.

Mike and I went to see Paul McCartney in concert. The show wasn’t as good as the last time I saw him, but it’s still pretty cool to see someone of his stature. He’s a living legend and he played his heart out.

Michaela did Zoo Camp, which she loves, a STEAM-focused camp, a jump rope camp, and a week at Camp Cahito (aka. Camp Tired and Dirty, because your kid comes home exhausted and filthy). She spent some time with Mike doing Camp Dad, and she’s currently in Colorado for her annual trip to visit Nana and Papa.

One of my good friends from college was pregnant, so a couple of my other friends and I had a day-long baby shower/get together that was a total blast. She’s since had the baby, who is gorgeous and who I’ll get to see in October for our annual girls’ trip.

Mike, Michaela, and I spent several days in Washington, DC. It was so much fun! We walked our feet off and sweated like crazy (hello, heat and humidity!), saw things like Mt. Vernon (where George Washington lived), Ford’s Theatre, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and the Smithsonian Museum of American American History (which deserves but probably will not get its own post here). Mike keeps talking about how cheap the trip was since he has a companion pass for Michaela, he flew on points, and my airfare was paid by work because I attended a conference in DC after our trip. We booked the hotel on points and all the Smithsonian museums are free, so it was relatively inexpensive. All the more cash to spend on a trip at Thanksgiving, I say!

We have made progress on the house. It’s officially been a year since we moved in and we finally have floors installed downstairs. That sounds lame, but it’s a huge deal. No more scarred concrete; now it’s beautiful Italian tile and hardwood. We need to buy furniture and unpack, but that’ll come in time.

Mike, Michaela, and I traveled to Oklahoma for our annual trip to see the family. The group has grown– it’s Mike dad and stepmom, two brothers and their wives, and now a total of  six kids (this year ages 10, 9, 6, 3, 2, 2 months). Michaela went tubing — her favorite thing to do there — and we did all the usual stuff like swimming, boat rides, eating, and napping.

While we were in OK, I went kayaking!!! That’s one of the things on the “40 Before 40 list” I created when I turned 35. Hard to believe that was five years ago… The kayaking couldn’t come at a better time, because I’m basically a month away from turning 40 (eek!) and there’s still a lot of stuff left on that list.

When we came back from the lake, we brought Michaela’s cousin P with us. As when we took him to Europe with us, I am reminded that having two kids is very different than having one, especially when one is a boy and not yours. We’ve molded and trained Michaela, and have a good routine and set expectations; that’s not that case when you throw in a new kid. But it was great, and Michaela enjoyed spending one-on-one time with her cousin.

We have a couple more weeks of summer and then Michaela will be a 4th grader. Not sure how that happened, but I am, as always, proud of the person she is. She told me a few weeks ago that she’d been thinking about the street dogs we saw when we were in the Philippines and that she wants to do something to help homeless pets. On her own she came up with the idea of saving cans and bottles to recycle, to raise funds to donate to an animal charity. We did some research together and she settled on supporting the Baja Animal Sanctuary, which helps animals in Mexico get adopted in the US and runs programs to spay and neuter street dogs. Her first bag of cans and bottles raised $3.13, so we have a ways to go, but it’s such a sweet, loving gesture that it doesn’t really matter.

And that’s about it! A couple of months in a nutshell. Posting regularly on the blog is part of my list, so I guess I should get on that…

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