Summer So Far

Our summer so far has been a bit of a roller coaster ride....

Day 1 brought us swim lessons in the morning and then a nasty stomach bug that hit our family with a vengeance (some worse than others) and then left just as quickly as it came. Unfortunately it also spread to everyone we had seen the previous 3 days...

Day 2 was MUCH MUCH better...we spent the day lounging, recovering from the bug. We also cancelled the rest of our swim lessons for the week...bummer...

Day 3 the kids got a life lesson on death, unfortunately learned the hard way. Thanks to Matthew, they now know that if you put a chicken's head in water for a long time it will die. (While I was distracted inside with a grumpy, teething Ellie who desperately needed a nap, he was outside trying to make the poor thing get a drink of water from the kiddie pool....) Sigh...at this point, I was wishing I could just crawl back in bed and not wake up until summer break was over...The chicken received a proper burial in our garden. I hope I never have to do that again...

Thankfully, things have gotten better since then. The weather has been gorgeous. We dusted off our bikes and the bike trailer and have gone on several bike rides. I LOVE our  bike rides. Emma rides her bike and I usually pull Matthew and Ellie in the trailer (sometimes he likes to ride his balance bike) and we go everywhere and anywhere we want...it has been so much fun. I was worried that Ellie wouldn't like the trailer, but she is hooked. She often has me take her down the stairs to the garage and then she runs over and plops her little self down into the trailer, waiting expectantly for me to get moving. I love looking back on our longer rides and seeing Ellie's head resting on Matthew's shoulder while he sweetly brushes her hair with his hand. Melts my heart!

Ellie's first ride...don't let her face fool you...she loved it!  :)

I wish I could say we've been sleeping in and loving it....but Ellie's decided to start waking up with the sun....ugh...I do love the lazier days though and the chance to sit down and do nothing for a few minutes if I want to. I know by the end of summer I'll be ready for the structure that school brings, but for now I'm loving not having it.

A few months ago, Jon won a fashion show at work...no, not a real fashion show...neither of us would ever win one of those.  :) The people in his department were divided up into teams and had to make a costume out of random objects. Theirs won! Woohoo! The prize was tickets to the San Francisco Opera. Neither of us are opera fans at all...we've never been to an opera, nor was it anything we ever considered ever doing in our lives. But we figured we may as well give it a shot and chose to see The Magic Flute. We studied up on the synopsis so we'd know what was going on and tried to get excited about it. But early on, I knew there was no way I would make it through the whole 3 1/2 hours. I just couldn't stay awake. At intermission, Jon gave me the look and I knew he was done too. So, we did the unthinkable and left right then. We were starving and our babysitter wasn't expecting us back for another 2 hours, so we stopped by The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. At 10:30 at night, there was STILL a line. I will never understand that! We tried to make it through our meal, but we were honestly so tired, we finally boxed up our food and called it a night. We are just too old for this! Haha!

Clearly we asked the wrong person to take our picture. :)  The funny part was that we ended up sitting right next to her.

 We took a nice little Sunday walk last week...I LOVE where we live! And I love these 3 little people.

Jon has been busy with all things chicken. Seriously, he is amazing! He planned and built a coop for the chickens in the backyard. It took a lot of time and a lot of hard work, but it looks great now and the chickens are so happy in it. The kids love holding the chickens and would spend all day outside with them if they could. They are getting SO big! We think we have at least 2 roosters out of the bunch....one of them crowed this week for the first time, so we know there's at least one. Now we just need to wait for the other(s) to make their noise. We're not allowed to keep them in our city, so we'll be finding a new home for them and freeing up space for the hens in the coop. This has all been such a crazy learning experience!

He had some good helpers

 

and a cute little cheerleader

 

This is what we have so far. We (meaning Jon) are going to build a roof to replace the piece of plywood sitting on top and then it should be done. But they're in the coop now and out of our garage and we're all happy.  :)

These are each of the kids' favorite chickens. We're 99.9% sure that Matthew's is a rooster, so we're going to have to get rid of it (no roosters allowed in our city), but he is insistent that it's a girl hen and it's going to lay eggs....oh boy... I've been told that Emma's is a female Easter Egger, which supposedly lay really colorful eggs. She is really excited about that.

 

They are getting SO big!

 

We are all getting anxious to go to Idaho...it's coming up fast! The kids can't wait to ride on an airplane (the first airplane ride that they can remember) and to see their Idaho grandparents and cousins. I think this vacation will be just what we need.

 

I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer, for time with family, for bike rides and popsicles and sprinklers. We've got some fun trips and activities planned and a lot of unplanned time too. It's going to be good!