It's Summer.

 Hi all!

It's summer.  A totally different chapter of life.  We have had travel, relaxation, busy home projects, some summer activities for the kids... it has been pretty awesome.  Considering we are already more than halfway through this break from our "normal" lives, I'd say it's going by too quickly, but isn't that always the way?

My goal is to give you all some quick updates on our goings-on with this post, and then hopefully return to you at a later date with a few more thoughtful "deep thoughts" type posts.  They're in my brain as always, whether they make it out to you here, well... we shall see.  But suffice it to say, I miss chatting with you, blog friends!

So, first up on the summer list, about a week after we all finished school, was a trip: down to Delaware to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for the girls, and for me it was off to Spain for a musical tour, with the same group I toured with four years ago... this time M came along as a singer in the group!

The way we did it was to drive the girls down to Delaware two days before we needed to leave with our tour group.  We brought our van with the girls bikes on the bike rack in the back so they would have them while they were at Grandma and Grandpa's.

After spending the night all together in Delaware, my Dad drove me and M to the Amtrak station in Wilmington, and we trained back to Boston and checked in to a hotel near the airport for the night.

(passing by NYC)

We met our tour group at the airport the next day and took off for Europe!

I won't take the time to detail all of our travelings in Spain-- I'll just share some of my favorite shots for now.  We toured the cities of Salamanca, León, Burgos, and Bilbao, and gave three concerts along the way.

Beautiful sights, interesting history and culture, delicious food and drinks... and so much together time with M.  It was all just a huge treat, and I'm so very thankful for the time away, and for family who were willing to care for our girls.

After we came back we spent a few days with Grandma and Grandpa so M and I had a chance to visit with them too.  It had been a while!

It was so nice to be together!

We were home for about a week before it was off again to a weekend dance competition for N and C.  They attended National Work It Dance Competition in Connecticut.  J wanted to tag along because any time there's a hotel room involved she is ALL about it.

A great time was had by all!  And we took home some trophies to boot!

Since then it has been working steadily on home chores, a bit of planning for next school year, swim lessons for C & J:

And unfortunately, a positive COVID test for N:

She picked it up somewhere during the weekend of the dance competition.  She's the second in our family to have had it-- I had it back in June.  So far everyone else has tested negative every time and no other symptoms in the family.  N's illness has been very mild, thankfully.  If I have time I'll write a whole other post about my experience with it.  It's amazing how differently it can manifest from person to person.

I took this picture of them social distancing on the deck through our screen door.  In the middle is C & J all bundled up after swim lessons in the cold water of the outdoor New England pool!

Sadly, the COVID diagnosis happened two days before N's birthday, meaning she was still in 5-day isolation and we had to cancel her birthday sleepover with friends.  To make the day special despite sad times, we picked up sushi (her current favorite) and bubble tea (a new favorite) and made her a Stranger Things cake (also a current favorite-- she and L have been binge watching the entire series this summer).

The cake was a bit hastily decorated with help from C & J so not totally perfect, but it's supposed to represent the Christmas lights from season 1 and Eleven's favorite Eggos on top.

The inside layers are the normal Earth dimension on top, then red and black for the Upside Down on the bottom.  :)

This week was also the project of figuring out a plan for our girls' use of social media-- because N was turning 14, she had asked about it (although she does have a phone, it is currently pretty heavily restricted by parent controls and she has no social media).  M and I spent several days talking it all out, researching, and trying to decide the best and safest way forward for our girls.  Man, this is not an easy parenting decision and probably one of the more difficult conversations we have had to have with a child.  N was very patient with us as we took our time figuring it all out-- we knew that whatever policies we put in place would apply to all the girls eventually as they reach this age, so we wanted to get everything as close to right as we possibly could.  Again, that could be a whole other blog post, but for now I'll just suffice it to say that N is becoming quite grown up.  I know everyone says that it goes by so fast, but things seem to really accelerate during the middle school years.  SO much has changed for N and L especially in the last year.  

On that note, I have had several heart-stopping moments of awareness of the passage of time this summer, now that our pace is slightly slower and I have a bit of time to think it over.  I was so busy with my new job this year, it was hard to focus much on what was happening with the girls.  This feels a little unsettling to me because I was so completely "Mom" for so long.  I took a day about two weeks ago to sort through all of C and J's school papers from this year-- I just didn't have time when they came home from school to look at them, always being busy taxi-ing the girls to activities or lesson planning for my students the next day.  So we accumulated a huge pile.  As I finally was able to go through them, feelings of sadness washed over me when I reviewed the things that I had to miss in the moment, especially because it was J's kindergarten year and there were so many "firsts".  It made me think pretty hard about whether or not that's a good thing, how much I should focus on myself and my career, and what I want our family life to look like going forward.  You can never get those moments back, you know?  Life is so simple and precious when they're little. 

Today as we were driving back from a family outing and enjoying some '80's tunes, Der Kommissar by After the Fire popped up in the playlist.  I thought of my baby who used to fit in the exer-saucer and how she's now asking for piercings and entering into the world of social media.  Don't get me wrong-- my girls get more wonderful every day and I love them at all of their ages.  I just don't want to miss any of it.  Every moment with them is a precious gift.

So, those are our summer updates... and some of my current thought bubbles as an added bonus.  There are plenty more thought bubbles, and hopefully I can make some time to come back here and share them, before things get absolutely crazy in September.  I hope that you all are enjoying the summer months!  I hope to be back with you soon!