Summer of 2012

Wow, what a terrible blogger I have been!  A month and a half of no blogs.  I kept thinking, "I need to add a blog entry about this", but alas, it just didn't happen.  So now I'll have to try my best to (relatively) quickly recap the summer in one blog post and hope that I'll be able to get back on track when school starts and we get into a schedule again.  This summer has been difficult for blogging because I have no down time during the day.  While Brynn is napping, I try to keep Blythe and Ethan from killing each other and simultaneously waking Brynn up.  That means I try to squeeze in some hours for my part-time job late at night.  And we ran our first swim camps this summer which was way more work than I anticipated.

Blythe starts 1st grade on August 27 and Brynn and Ethan start preschool the following week, so looking forward to a little time to myself and a nice, structured schedule :)

Not sure if I can even remember back that far, but I guess I last left off sometime while Braden was away at Olympic Trials.  While none of his swimmers made the Olympics (because it's REALLY freaking hard to make it), they did have a good showing. And I was able to recover from my hernia surgery while hanging at my parents house for a while.  We were all home for July 4th and spent the day at the pool (imagine that!) but didn't make it to many fireworks.  We roamed our neighborhood looking for some, but only came across a few small ones.

July 15-19 was our overnight swim camp, which was so much work, but a big success.  There are definitely things we'll improve upon for next year, but I think most of our campers will go home and tell their friends and come back next year, which is what we definitely want to happen!  Of course, planning for next year's camps has already started.  At least we're ahead of the game from where we were this past year, so maybe it won't be quite as crazy.

Considering we now live only 2 hours from the ocean, it would be a cryin' shame if we didn't make it to the beach at SOME point over the summer.  So we were able to join the Freel's and crash their beach house for 2.5 days at the beach.  Blythe and Ashley played like they see each other every day as did Ethan and Luke.  It was SO nice!  We went to Ocean Isle, which I hadn't been to in 20 years and I really like the beach.  Not too overdeveloped, but still enough to do.  Wish we could have stayed the whole week!

But we had to get back, because shortly after Braden and I were celebrating our 10 year anniversary!  Where have those 10 years gone?  So much has happened in those 10 years....we move to Chicago, then to Tennessee, then to Virginia, and finally back to Raleigh.  We had 3 kids.  Braden went through many jobs, but finally ended with his dream job!  I somehow managed to stay with the same company the whole time.  It's been a ride and we wanted to celebrate.  So we booked a room at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville and dropped the kids with my parents.  We stayed only 1 night, but it was a nice getaway (though we weren't all that fond of the hotel itself).  We headed back to my parents to pick up my sister because my parents left on a 3 week vacation (must be nice...ha!).

The following weekend, Braden, Doug, and Ethan headed out to Cashiers on a boys weekend with a purpose.  The purpose - to pick up the boat we purchased from Braden's dad.  Woohoo...getting a boat!  We had everything ready....bought a tube, got insurance, got ski ropes, life jackets, reserved storage space.  Unfortunately we've had problem after problem in the short time we've owned the boat so I have yet to even step foot on it.  Hoping that all changes in just a few hours when we take it back out to test the latest fix.  Fingers crossed!  I grew up on a lake with a boat, so I love boats and would love to pass down to my kids all the fun that boats can be.  It's a small jet boat, so if we have friends out we need to have some people hang at the beach, but Jordan Lake (where we will keep it) is perfect for that.

Because we were getting the boat, we decided to use Braden's week off on a STAYcation and we'd play on the boat all week.  Unfortunately the boat gods had other plans and it went to the shop.  We desperately wanted some sort of family vacation, so we made an impromptu visit to Washington DC since the kids had never been.  And when I say impromptu, I mean I booked a hotel at 9:30pm the night before and we left at 9am the next day.  It was the most spontaneous thing I've ever done!  The kids were pretty impressed with DC and we had a good time.  We walked from our hotel to the White House, Washington Monument, and Lincoln Memorial.  The next day we took the Metro and went to the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History museum.  The kids said they liked the Air and Space museum the most, but I think they actually liked the revolving door at the hotel the most and seeing lots of taxis.

So that pretty much leads me to now as far as highlights of the summer are concerned.  We've had a lot of fun and we've done a lot of other things as well.  Picked out most the places to go from the one jar and still have lots of "things to do at home" from the other jar that we'll save and we can do anytime we are bored.

We went to Marbles, The NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Durham Life and Science museum, Monkey Joe's, Defy Gravity (a place with ALL trampolines), Pullen Park, lots of other parks, Build-a-Bear, Jordan Lake, our pool (a lot), Doug and Lynette's pool, the library, Krispy Kreme, the puppet theater, etc.

Blythe did a week of swim camp and a week of art camp.  Ethan did a week of soccer camp and is doing a tennis mini-camp this week.  They both did a 1 day art camp together, which they will do again one day next week.

It's been a jam packed summer and lots of fun, but I'm ready for school to start.  And gymnastics.  And t-ball.  And ready to play on the boat :)