Summer 2016: Mid-Summer

Two months ago I declared to my husband that I wanted this summer to be as slow and leisurely as possible. He laughed a bit because we were already deep into wedding preparation. It was such a joy and privilege to be part of my sister's big day as she married her high school sweetheart at our good friends' house; but having such a large event behind us definitely felt freeing. It was a bit fleeting though because we just moved on to the next thing and the next thing both mentally and then physically. After Amanda + Kyle got married we started planning for our yearly 4th of July camping trip with my family. We were also mulling over whether or not Malakai's upcoming tonsillectomy was necessary or if we should wait and see (more on that later), and preparing for Malakai's birthday celebrations. Remember the part where I said we were going to have a slow and leisurely summer? Well, that hasn't happened yet and we are more than halfway through! I had the best of intentions but life with littles never seems to slow down. We have made efforts to not overschedule ourselves and despite all the big stuff happening we have had a lot more little moments and relaxing evenings to ourselves than in summers past.

I've written several blog posts over the last couple of months (that I had alluded to in my last post) but none of them are quite done. I keep thinking of photos I need to take (and upload and watermark and position perfectly) to finish off each post and thus they sit unpublished. Again, I had the best of intentions. I do think those posts will be shared some day, but who knows when. It all really depends on what happens next. I'll back track a bit to recap our summer...

Starting with May, even though it's technically spring. I have to say that May is one of THE busiest months we've had over the last couple years. It's so full of end of the year activities at Malakai's Elementary school, at our church for the kids' programs and we started swim lessons at the end of the month. There was Mother's Day, Ben went to a Hillsong concert in Portland with the worship band and a guy's night out with our church life group, Desmond had a gymnastics party, Malakai had a limo ride and choir performance (back to back), a jog-a-thon, a skateworld party and we had 3 kids' birthday parties to attend. Plus the weather here was very warm and dry so we started packing in house projects and I got my garden going. I threw my sister her Bridal shower and then got to planning her bachelorette.

In June we started swim lessons and wrapped up church events with a volunteer BBQ, we went to Kid's Garden Club, I woke up at midnight to get my kids registered for VBS (yes, that's a real thing), took Malakai to the dentist for what we thought was a broken tooth (oh no problem, just part of his jaw bone as his 7 year molars came in...), continued swim lessons twice a week, Malakai went on a very long field trip to Wildlife Safari that Ben was able to attend with him, I threw my sister a Bachelorette party that consisted of laser tag, painting and hot tubbing, We attended more back to back events for graduations, camp opening and Father's day, I took a treat to celebrate Malakai's birthday in his classroom, we gathered together with our huge life group, we had a fairly quiet Father's Day that Ben thoroughly enjoyed, then we went through the whirlwind that was my little sister's beautiful wedding day, Malakai had his first friend sleepover at our house, his pre-op that got us wondering if he still needed surgery, I cut my hair off after having grown it out over the last year for the wedding.

At the beginning of this month we took off camping and we started it with Ben having a day off at home to help prepare and that worked out so nicely that I may insist we do that for every trip we ever go on because preparing on my own is pretty much hectic and no fun, we played at camp and the let the kids get dirty and eat too much junk, we watched fireworks from our culdesac with the neighbors, the next night Malakai had an impromptu first overnight at his friend's house, he also came down with an ear infection so we had to go back to his ENT doctor and ultimately decided to have his surgery, I kept attending a Bible study that had started in February and is wrapping up at the end of the month, Ben and I celebrated 9 years of marriage, we went to a garden party that night which was basically a double date with my parents, the next day I got the stomach flu and the rest of the family went to my nephew's 2nd birthday party, we had birthday party 1 of 2 for Malakai with just his school friends which was the rainiest day in July I can remember, then Desmond and Malakai attended a week of VBS, I prepared our house for Malakai's upcoming surgery and planned out the details of his 2nd party, we celebrated Malakai turning 7, took the boys to their first theater movie (Finding Dory), had 2 doctors appointments, a play date and swim lessons and then Malakai's surgery. The one thing his surgery did for us (besides the health benefits for him of course) was force us to slow down. I have had tunnel vision on my sweet first-born for the past 5 days. All my energy was focused on making sure he was healthy and comfortable, and that brings us to today...whew!

Wow, look how slow our summer has been... 

Summer always goes by entirely too fast. For August we have a camping trip with Ben's family, then Malakai goes to day camp, we go to Portland for a weekend trip and then Ben has a week of vacation where we have ZERO planned and I am convinced it will be the best week of the summer. No house projects, no long drives, nothing. Just being together and laying low. Then just two weeks of summer before my baby turns 2 and my big kids are starting school again. If I'm not careful to intentionally keep slowing down I'll blink and it'll be mid autumn!