We are well past the end of summer, by nearly any schedule except for the calendar which insists we still have a few more days (it certainly feels like it, temperature wise) but my kids have been in school more than a month and we've started harvesting pumpkins from our garden! Fall is in the air and eventually it will feel like it.
I started planning for this summer maybe the earliest I ever have, booking our Outer Banks trip a whole 51 weeks in advance. We knew it would be a little bit different of a summer (see #1) but still managed to fit in quite a bit of fun.
1) Matt in school
Matt was in school pretty much the entire time the boys were out of
school. He had 2 week semester breaks in late April/early May
(before the boys were out) and another in late August (after the boys
had started back up). But he did get one week off in the middle of
summer where we were able to go on vacation. So that was wonderful! And for the first time since he started school (last September) he didn't have class Mon-Thurs evenings which was so helpful. He still had a lot to do but him not being tied to his office quite as much was a break we all needed. We also spent the most time apart we ever have in our marriage when he had to go to South Bend for 5 nights. The second day of that trip was only the second day in 19 years we hadn't seen each other. And then we added two more days to that count later in the week. But boys & I got to visit him twice (once for his graduation ceremony, 5 months early) and then we got a week off together. When thinking about next summer my brain automatically goes to working around Matt's school schedule because that has been so much of life for the past year...but he'll be done by then! We just will be working around a new job.
I went to the Outer Banks with my family the summer before my senior year of high school. It was one of my favorite family vacations. That was 2000 and Matt and I went back together in 2011. We unintentionally stayed in nearly the same area, only about ½ mile down the road, actually coming across our KOA on one of our beach walks. OBX had long been on the list to take the boys back to and we finally did this summer, when we knew we needed a lower key trip with Matt's school. We stayed at the exact same KOA as I did with my family 24 years earlier and I was SO delighted by this, especially when my Mom found and sent me a picture of the KOA map from 2000. We found approximately where my family's site was (there was a pretty major hurricane that came through just 2 months after Matt & I went in 2011 so a lot had changed). We visited some of the same places as our previous trips and even spent a day with our nephew, his wife, and their kids who, truly completely coincidentally, were on the Outer Banks (but ~45 min away) the same week as us. I loved being back there and it was a shorter drive than Cocoa Beach last year!
I became pretty dedicated to my sun tea this summer, almost always remembering to make a new batch when drinking my final cup of the last batch. Maybe I should sleep more so I am not so reliant on my caffeine?? That would be smart. Anyways, I really looked forward to my afternoon tea. Sometimes I even managed to drink it while reading on the porch.
4) Teaching Matt & boys Peanuts
This barely counts as summer but I think I'll remember it as a summer memory. My family played the card game "peanuts" a lot when I was around Luke's age, sometimes having pretty big groups going. I always used these troll doll cards I had gotten for Christmas (I still have them!) and everyone else thought they were pretty ugly. As part of my "teach the boys a new game every month" plan (which we are behind on) we played this with them after I had the boys practice with some solitaire to get used to the concept (kinda). It has been such a delight for me to be playing with my family.
These were my drink of choice most of the summer. I did hard cider for a long time but wasn't really liking it as much anymore and a browse through the liquor store lead me to these. It's hard to find a beverage pack with no cherry or watermelon flavors (I will not touch either). These are very drinkable and lemonade is so perfect for summer.
6) Boys with neighbors all summer
On the first day of summer break I sat down with the boys and we talked about expectations for the summer, both from me and them, and how we could handle screen time. Well that screen time planned lasted about 3 days then our schedules became too unpredictable. However, the boys spent a significant time this summer playing with the neighbors, two brothers in the same grades as our boys, to the point where I wouldn't see them for hours (if they were playing at their house, we tried to make them alternate between our two backyards). It gave me some nice quiet time in the afternoon AND motivated the boys to get chores and things done so they could play.
7) Italian Ices (affiliate link)
We had long been consuming many of the frozen tube popsicles over the summers, I think it started back in our lake days. I'd buy 4-5 boxes of them at the start of summer and we could go through all 400-500 in a summer. Matt ordered a box of these Italian Ice pops at the beginning of the summer and I was leery at first. I had already stocked up for the summer. But then we started eating them and they ARE better than the Aldi/Target variety. One kid hated them but that meant more for us. This kind of popsicle was also a huge help when our older son got braces at the end of the summer.
I didn't know if we'd be able to fit in our normal summer fun this year but Matt did the best he could with his schedule and we still made 2 Jellystone trips (one over his semester break when the boys had a couple extra week days off!) and 4 KOA trips like we had the previous 2 summers. He did class zooms at Jellystone once and homework at a KOA but he did what he could so we could still fit in our fun. I think, on our 6th trip this summer, we finally mastered our Jellystone preferences.
9) Kroger Sea Salt Caramel Truffle
I really fell off the "make all my own ice cream" bandwagon this summer. I was so dedicated to it for so long and there were some I wanted to make...but then it didn't happen and I have no good reason as to why. However, I was paid in Kroger gift cards for helping someone and that lead me to the Kroger ice cream aisle which lead me to this masterpiece of ice cream. It really is perfect and I had it too many nights before I decided nightly ice cream isn't the healthiest choice (I still have it a couple times a week, plus peach sorbet on the days I run). This stuff is GOOD. And now Kroger sends me coupons for it so I kinda have to keep buying it, right? (I know I don't...but I am going to.)
This was a weird summer with school but it was still a lot more like our "normal" summers than I expected. And he should never be in school over summer again!!!
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