Happy first week of school! Alas, it is time. Jack was not excited about school starting soon, until we met his teacher and learned that his best school friend will be in his class. Now he is officially over summer and excited to get started. Alice isn't quite as excited, but she is going to do one day of creative dance class at her school, before class starts, each week. I got lucky that it starts on her first day of school, so that is overshadowing the preschool part and she will be really excited to go to her first dance class.
Over the weekend we snuck in a trip to Jared's extended family Bear Lake cabin. We realized we hadn't gone at all this summer and it was the last weekend before school, so we made a quick, spontaneous drive up there. The weather was starting to feel ever-so-slightly crisp, and it was a wonderful transition out of summer break. I think we may make that a yearly end-of-summer tradition.
Our backyard is at the finish line! At least for this year. There will be future phases to finish the top level and the other half of our patio, but those are on hold for a few years. Our landscape team is done with everything except for the last stretch of fence, which has been ordered (phew--we were getting nervous they would leave us high and dry since the pace was so slow this last month). Did they do a great job? Eh . . . Did they leave plenty of loose ends that they won't be coming to tie up? Absolutely. But most of them are things we can do ourselves (add gravel to the planter beds, paint over the concrete they splattered onto our house). It was like pulling teeth getting them to do anything at the end, so at this point we are happy to have them out of the backyard so we can put out patio furniture and enjoy it. They say you can't have fast, cheap, and good with landscaping. We did get cheap though, and after putting down a big downpayment for our home last year, cheap is what we needed this time around. It is a great and functional backyard, and it isn't perfect but we are sure going to enjoy it. All's well that ends well, hopefully.
Let's do some pictures from our week now:
^^My favorite way to buy myself some time and keep the kids occupied is to take an inside toy and set it outside without a word. This is where the patio shines brightest. This hot wheel set-up bought me like 2 hours. A north-facing backyard means great patio shade all morning.
^^Do people around here realize how crazy of a childhood backdrop this is? The kids had a great time playing in the foothill brush late one afternoon when attitudes were rancid and I was grasping at straws to find them a novel activity to distract them.
^^Another "grasping at straws" day. Every summer I choose a random day to be "Christmas in the summer." I don't announce it ahead of time. I just pull it out of my pocket when I need it most because we've had several rough days in a row. Usually this is toward the end of summer break when everyone is just over it. The kids wake up to Christmas music, a balsam candle burning, exactly one Christmas decoration draped on the walls (usually a paper chain), and red and green sprinkles poured over whatever their breakfast happens to be. I pull out the Little People nativity for them to play with, plus a couple of Christmas books. Once the novelty of those wear off, I pull out paper snowflake supplies. By the time we finish that, we are usually over the Christmas theme, but it usually takes up an entire morning. Then if we need something else in the afternoon, I'll turn on a Christmas movie. Didn't make it that far this year because I had a freak POTS flare around lunchtime and ended up pawning Jack off to my brother and then running to my parents' house with Alice. Fun day other than that though.
^^Driving to the cabin! Alice packed her own clothes and chose out her own outfits, which meant she wore her fanciest easter dress to the cabin. She started to get really sick of the drive about an hour in, so I pulled out our YOTO and these headphones for her, and she was absolutely thrilled with the control she had over choosing her own songs. Took me back to my CD-player days.
^^Our kids are infamously awful sleepers when we travel. Jack turned a corner around age 7, but we're still in it with Alice. I had to lay right next to her, which was fine and cute, but she did wake up between every sleep cycle it felt like. We stayed for two nights, and that does feel like the maximum number of nights we probably want to spend away from home during this stage of parenting.
^^Limber pine hike
^^By the time our beach afternoon rolled around on our second day we were pretty exhausted, so Jared proposed a low-key walk to the beach instead of a full beach afternoon. Against my better judgement I agreed and hopped in the car, grabbing just swimsuits, sunscreen, two towels, and a lone pool noodle. None of the sand toys or shade canopy or paddle board or anything made it into the car. Our biggest mistake was bringing Savvy with us. Once we were there of course the kids wanted to play in the water. It was pretty crowded so we kept Savvy on leash, which she didn't appreciate. The kids still had a great time, but next time we'll bring the wagon full of supplies no matter what.
^^Savvy is getting old. On our last morning, we opened the trunk to start the 3-hour process of cleaning/loading up to leave. Savvy hopped in the trunk at the very beginning and didn't hop out at all during those 3 hours--not even when a deer wandered right in front of her. She just watched it! It was wild. She had fun but she was ready to go home.
^^Meet the teacher night! We had soooo many back-to-school things on Monday. Four total. How do you parents of 4+ school-aged kids logistically do this? I am baffled and impressed. I am guessing there is some element of what you
know i would be doing in that situation, which is just completely skipping meet-the-teacher night🙃 (I suppose if Jared were able to divide and conquer for this stuff that would be an entirely different story, but alas he works too late now.)
^^Toddler drawings 4evr.
^^I think I manifested this al fresco patio situation from years of Pinterest boards full of picnic tables in the mountains.
^^Buuuuut the price of said al fresco mountain backyard is actual tarantulas on our house😁 We also get wolf spiders in our garage and enormous night beetles that I didn't know could even exist in Utah. Luckily I am weird and kind of like it. (Besides the wolf spiders. No to wolf spiders.)
