Shphew. That's my noise of exhaustion, because it's been A LOT.
We came off like 15 months of solitude and quiet and virtual school hell and went straight into allofthesocializing. The eldest three of our clan are fully vaccinated, the infection rate is super low in our area, and the air is warm. Which means it's been...full speed ahead.
And I'm collapsing from exhaustion. This introvert is....overwhelmed.
But it's been fun. Truly. I just need way more recovery time than I've been able to utilize lately. Things will slow down soon - they always do once we cross Henry's birthday in mid-July - but I'm toast.
So, here's some of the memories we've made.
Strawberry Picking
We haven't done this one in a couple years, and were super pumped to go. I will say this - it was a beautiful day, and it was fun to do something nostalgic together - but it was a total rip off. There's now a "picking fee" on top of the not-all-discounted price of the berries (despite doing the work of picking them ourselves??) and I realize that it's a whole "experience" but sheesh. Call me old and grumpy but $43 for 5 quarts of strawberries seems like a con. So I'm glad it was a good day because I don't think we'll be doing this one again. The boys did really like the petting zoo aspect of it, though.
Camping
This was a whole whirlwind, but a good one. We left for camping the very day my kids finished up their last day of school. So schooling, cleaning, shopping, packing, taking the last day of school pics - exhaaaausting. But it was worth it. We did some amazing hiking and campfire cooking and fishing and I'm going to keep this one to a cliff's notes version because I want to write a whole post about our trip to the south towns.
Gardens
I love it when my growy things get going. My lavender bloomed recently, the kids' experimental pots of things have also started to develop blossoms (anxious for all moon flowers to get there, too!) and we've already been harvesting pickling cucumbers from the garden - which are growing much larger than I expected them to! No tomatoes yet, but soon. We have lots of tiny green ones popping up.
The 4th
My family always seems to end up being 4th of July orphans. Our parents and siblings all vacation during this week, and we're always left with nothing to do. We tried to put some things together this year, though, and we had a great day! We spent the afternoon swimming at my mom's house, then hosted dinner and a fire with glow sticks and sparklers and the neighbor's fireworks. The gathering at my house was small - just my sister and her family and my SIL - but it was so nice to actually do something. And I felt a lot better about the holiday overall than I did last Summer.
Backyard Camping
This past weekend we had Matt's family over for dinner and a fire, and the kids decided they wanted to camp in the back yard. So they split up between our two tents, and in the morning I made pancakes and sausage over the fire for everyone. We had to race to beat the rain in the morning, but it was fun!
Of course, all of this doesn't include the dinners we've had with family or the swimming trips to my mom's, but ya know...I don't always photo those. Just know that I am even more exhausted than these pictures have depicted. How do people have stuff to do every single day?! I'm so drained!!
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