Summer 2022, Week 7

The kids didn’t have any camps this week—- which was good because it was otherwise jammed with fun friends and family activities.

The girls and I went downtown to the National Theatre with a gaggle of friends to see the musical Six. It is super high-energy fun, fun, fun. The tragic bios of Henry' the VIIIs six wives are converted into something surprising, entertaining, and (even if it were just for a moment) thought-provoking.

The next night we met up with the Camarotes in Baltimore for the baptism of our sweet niece and nephew. I was honored to be Hamilton’s godmother. The deacon performing the service was just wonderful and engaging. He invited Baya and Linc to help out with the service- they were delighted to have a role. It was such a beautiful evening celebrating family and faith.

Last but definitely not least, the kids got a kids-only pool party with Aunt Anna immediately followed by an epic sleepover with tractor races at Grandma and Opa’s farm.

Here’s the Week 7 highlight reel. Hope you like it!

Wonder what we’ll do to top this next week???

Summer 2022, Week 5

Week 5 means we’re half way through summer. So only 328 weeks to go. Kidding. We’re at the point when time is speeding up.

We kicked-off the week with another pool party at Aunt Anna’s. We then hosted a “chopped”-style cooking challenge with friends. Then we ended on a spendy shopping trip to Urban Outfitters just in time for the New Kids on the Block concert downtown. (Luckily we had help with hair and makeup from Baya.)

How’d we end up at the Mix Tape Tour concert featuring all the 90s favorites? Well, we got tickets last minute courtesy of Aunt Molly and Uncle Mike. The huge surprise was getting invited into their friend’s fancy suite with catered food, a full bar, and sparkly clean, convenient bathroom. Not exactly a normal concert experience for Marin- a first-timer! It’d be like getting bumped up to first class on your first-ever plane ride. It’s going to be hard to top this!

Also in the Week 5 mix where a bunch of sports and camps. For example, Linc finished up 3 “totally epic” weeks of travel day camp. Each day they get on a little bus and go to some super fun, interesting activity— water park, laser tag, the aquarium, etc. The final week was an outdoor adventure camp with a ropes course, fishing, paddling, outdoor survival skills (for 8-year-olds!?), and hiking. You can imagine which activity got his only ‘not fun’ rating.

Our video highlights are below. Thanks for watching!

PS- Regular blog readers might like to know that Brian’s photography skills have NOT improved. I mean, seriously. We’re supposed to be the focus of this picture, right? Why did he need to get the open utility room door and trash can!!!???

Summer 2022, Week 4

This week featured a couple of those moments when I say to myself, “Oh yeah. I forgot how much I like XYX.”

They were just little things- things you’d never think to mention if someone asked, “Hey, what do you like to do?” Nonetheless, there were little delights in an otherwise predictable week.

The first was in Omaha, NE. I was there for work and enjoyed a fun workout at their downtown Orange Theory studio followed by vegan Indian takeout (consumed in my hotel bed while watching “Beat Bobby Flay." The delightful part happened the next morning. I’d mapped out a trail run along the Missouri River. They have a footbridge that takes you into Iowa.

Get to the point, you say? I will.

Delight #1 was remember the little joy of being in two places at once. It was a quick, light moment of fun to get a picture of one sneaker in each state.

Okay. I can feel your views of me deteriorating by the sentence. What’s next? Might I redeem myself?

Delight #2 was an 8-beer sampler. It’s was a nice, just-for-us buffet of drinks. You see, I’d forgotten how much I like little tastes of a lot of things (food, wine, beer, ice cream, lip-gloss, etc.) So when Brian and I ended up with a kid-free night, we walked up to our local wine/beer shop for a yummy dinner and, yes, a beer tasting. Delightful!

There were a lot of other really cool things for the kids this week— and some challenges, too.

Here are our video highlights!

Looking forward to seeing what surprises come with Week 5!

Summer 2022, Week 3

For the uninitiated, Boba tea (or bubble tea) is creamy or fruity, very sweet tea with chewy balls at the bottom. If you’re trying it for the first time, I’d highly recommend:

• Studying the menu for at least a week ahead of time. Then plan on ordering whatever the very cute but apathetic teenage cashier with extravagantly long lashes suggests. Don’t rely on your own knowledge of what you like. You don’t know.

• Then, specify your sweetness level. 0, 10, 30, 50, or 70%???!!! Huh? I’m not even a dentist and this seems like a bad idea.

• Most importantly, know that boba tea is a cool kid thing. Act annoyed when drinking it so you don’t mess up the “ass-thet-ic.” What, huh? Those words don’t even make sense.

Before I paid $17 to learn the lessons above, we had had a crazy week. It started with dropping the girls off at camp. We then celebrated the 4th with our dear friends and neighbors. Unfortunately, it was also our turn for Covid. Ugh.

We’re all better now, have our girls back and are looking forward to week 4! Thanks for watching our video!

Summer 2022, Week 2

This week was all about making stuff— a genius base for our badminton net thanks to Opa, a lemonade stand, and coding small machines at camp.

Eat, Run, Play & Repeat

Whoever “they” are say most New Year’s Resolutions fall away after the second week in February. I’m beating that average.

One of my vaguer goals for 2021 was to write more on the blog. I’d decided to half-ass it even more than normal by posting bulleted lists with a couple of pictures. After all, the intent behind the blog is to provide evidence to my future self and kids that we did some stuff. This was my attempt to lower the bar basically to the ground. As a master listed, I figured this shouldn’t be too hard.

Well. I’m at exactly zero posts for January.

And that’s fine. Sort of.

These posts aren’t due to anyone else- which is precisely the problem. I deliver on anything with someone else expecting it on the other end. This is not that. So many of my ideas get stowed in a black hole of a bucket called “maybe someday.”

I rationalize not writing by reciting my wishful thinking that I should be able to write as fast as I can type (I would have crushed in the secretarial pool.) Because writing feels slow, it also feels indulgent- an emotion that’s hard to add to the pile of other stuff I already feel guilty about.

So here I am on a quiet, snowy morning. All the “have to dos” are pretty much done so, here I go restarting my resolution to write bullet-y, picture-y posts on the blog.

And what exactly did January 2021 look like ‘round here? I’ll say upfront that this is just the easy, light kid stuff. Streaming through the minds of all the adults involved were the politics and attacks on the Capitol, a hope-filled inauguration, and the ongoing mess of school reopening (or not, as is the case.)

We started with a big barn bang. We took a family horseback riding lesson at @TalbotRun in Mount Airy. It’s one a handful of activities that everyone enjoys equally. We left chatty, laughing, and smelling like horseshit. Joy, joy, joy.

We ate well. One of my goals for the year is to get the kids cooking more and expanding their tastes beyond syrup and anything in nugget form. My sister and her husband gave us a gift certificate to a super fancy restaurant in DC with this gorgeous winterized outdoor patio. The food was just amazing. Linc had a Sprite. Meanwhile, we sampled all the major meal delivery services- Home Chef, Blue Apron, and Hello Fresh. All were great. We have one more to try before deciding if we’ll keep this going.

Brian and I continued our training programs for the 50K trail ultra in March. Running and thinking about running now occupies the few brain cells leftover after kids, work, and what’s for dinner. Last week, I did my first marathon-distance training run—which just surprised me for reasons I might write down at some point. The key takeaway is that it feels good to do something you never thought you could or would—even if your legs feel like concrete pilings afterwards.

We celebrated Marin’s 10th birthday on January 24th. We were so fortunate to have use of a good friend’s spacious and comfy ski house at Deep Creek. Conditions were great. Like horseback riding, everyone loves skiing. This eliminates the need for Brian or me to cajole or bribe them into participating- so it’s more fun for all. The girls skied their first black diamond. Baya is an exceptional and fearless skier. What makes it (secretly) fun for us is seeing how much she enjoys being better than her siblings in this one sport.

And lastly- the hair ordeal of 2021. After several days of hot tubbing and hot shotting around the slopes, Baya developed a knot that felt (no kidding) like a dead squirrel attached to her head. It started below her right ear curved around her neck. After a lot of trying and tears, we took her to the Hair Cuttery. They were AMAZING- so patient and kind. What started as a job for one woman, turned into 3. They worked and worked on her for about an hour and finally were able to comb and cut most of it out. We all resolved to really, really this time be good about brushing and braiding each day. I see another trip back for a serious trim in our near future.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I hope to see me back here some time before 4th of July!