Good morning! Hopefully as you're reading this, we've landed on the first stop of our European vacation!!! You can check out our travels on Instagram (I'm @tashajk72) and I hope to even publish a blog post or two about our travels while we're away. It will depend on both internet access and how much down time we have in the evenings :)
It's been over two years since I've documented a summer day in the life. I only get about three and a half weeks of "regular" summer days this summer, since my summer break is only six and a half weeks long and we're spending a good chunk of that time on vacation. (And I recognize that many, many people work through the entire summer so please don't read this as me complaining, at all. I know I am so fortunate to have most of the summer off to spend with my kids and family.) So I decided to document Thursday, July 14, to have a record of what a summer day looked liked for me this year.
One thing to note is that the kids are definitely more independent and so I had a lot of time to do things on my own.
I woke up around 7am and Dave and I were enjoying coffee outside by about 7:30. I'm so happy my pansies have been doing so well this summer. They don't tend to love the heat so I'm thrilled they're still looking good.
I had a shower and by 8:30 I was hanging out a load of laundry. Plus Rachel wanted me to braid her hair. She's been loving the single braid this summer.
I really hate driving so sometimes Dave takes pity on me and drives the kids to the pool. This day I went along. We saw a rainbow in the sprinklers on our way to the pool.
Rachel has been attending Fun Camp at the pool while Sam has been volunteering to help with tennis in and around his swimming lessons. So the kids have been gone for about four hours every day. This was dropping them off at 9am. Then Dave and I did a quick errand to the grocery store.
I then came home and did two hours of computer work. Every morning has looked different for me this summer -- sometimes I spend time with a friend, sometimes I run errands, sometimes I read, and sometimes, like this day, I do some trip planning/figuring out details. Usually vacation planning is fun but this day I was really questioning why we don't use travel agents!
By 11:20, I was outside, eating some apple butter on sourdough bread for breakfast and enjoying a second cup of coffee-hot chocolate. Usually I eat breakfast a little earlier but I got stuck figuring things out and didn't eat earlier.
Then I did my outdoor chores -- deadheading day lilies (which needs to happen every day) and sweeping all the berries off the sidewalk which also needs to happen every day, ideally.
I can't remember what I did after that but by 12:45 I was eating a snack of cheese and crackers outside.
Then I got into the very hot car (31C is 88F) to pick the kids up from camp. I realize for those of you in the southern US this is a nice summer day but for us, it was a hot day.
I picked the kids up from camp and while they ate lunch, I think I played around on my phone and folded some laundry. This is NOT all the laundry I folded, I just forgot to get pictures earlier :) I also cleaned out the freezer, trying to figure out what all was in there.
I've been slowly going through the kids' rooms with them. I spent over an hour going through Sam's shelves and closet with him. It looked so much better afterwards. And I'm thrilled to say that I got through both kids' rooms with them (and most of the play room) before they went off to a week of sleep away camp! Whoooo hoooo!!!
Rachel has had to take some drop in dance classes this summer because she's in the performance group this fall. So while I sat at dance for an hour, I deleted duplicate (or bad!) pictures off my phone. I got rid of over 400 photos!!! Yay!
We drove home and Dave had made spaghetti and meatballs (veggie ones for me) for supper.
My dad had hip replacement surgery (finally! YAY!!!!) in June so we've been checking in with my parents almost every day since then. This day we had a FaceTime call. We're all thrilled with how well my dad's healing is going.
After we'd talked to my parents, we went for a walk for ice cream...
... and to get some more chairs for our outdoor set. Three of them fit in the Chariot and we took turns carrying the other one home on our head! Hahaha!!!
Rachel's turn to carry the extra chair!
We got home around 8:45 and I took all the packaging off the chairs. I got myself a glass of lime fizzy water and crawled into bed to read.
So there's a very exciting (ha!) summer day in the life. Last time I documented a summer day in the life in July 2020 (you can read it here), we were in the midst of slowly connecting with people after the first few months of Covid. It's so strange to remember how happy we were to be together again. It is so fun for me to look back on these posts and see how life changes.
