It's a late summer afternoon and what I should be doing is cleaning the house and making a grocery list for our dinner party tomorrow, but instead I am drinking a G&T and blogging. I'm trying to enjoy every last moment of summer, and this is my justification for not doing chores. I think I'll be sorry later...
Mindy and I took the kids to Washington Park one morning where they had fun on the ginormous play structure and then played in the sand. We had a picnic in the grass, and it was the perfect summer outing!
Our friends Adam and Jenny were in town from Colorado and came over for dinner one night. The kids had fun in the pool, and the parents had fun catching up. We really miss them.
Sarah and Trey
Jenny, Adam, and Randy
Sarah, Kennedy, and Trey
It's funny how now Trey has his own friends and not just the children of my friends. He has made some good friends at his daycare/preschool, and one day we met Miles and his mom and baby sister at the park. Miles moved away AND is starting kindergarten, so the boys won't be seeing each other much, but hopefully we can still stay in touch.
Trey and Miles
Trey getting wet...one of his favorite things to do
Day four of soccer, and Trey was excited. Shocking to me since it was only a week before that he puked after soccer class. He enjoys running around and kicking the ball, but when I ask him if he wants to be on a soccer team, he says, "No thank you." At the end of this soccer class, Trey and two boys got into a pile up during a scrimmage (and I use the word scrimmage loosely). Trey ended up with a huge goose egg on his eye socket and a really pretty black eye.
Now that my coursework is done, I've been enjoying my last few daycare days. One day I went into town and met a friend for lunch and then had some time to kill before my haircut. I stopped at Migration Brewing and had a beer while I read my book. Have I mentioned how much I love summer?
Trey and I met my dad at Enchanted Forest on a Friday. I had been telling Kerry about it, and she said she hadn't been there since she was a kid. I said, "Oh, don't worry. It's exactly the same as when you were a kid."
This is the picture I sent her to prove that nothing has changed.
Riding the train
Waiting with Grandpa for Jack and the Beanstalk
A free play AND it's Jack and the Beanstalk?
I had a very happy boy on my hands.
Mesmerized by the mediocre performance
Ice cream and a black eye
Bumper boats!
That night we went over to have dinner with our friends Curt and Rose. Curt is an old friend who moved away eight years ago to Indiana with Rose. Since that time we have all gotten married and had kids. They just moved back to Portland and we are very excited.
Ana and Trey
Rose, Curt, and Randy
Curt...it really doesn't seem like eight years has passed.
We blame/credit Facebook for that.
Saturday Randy and I went to see Foster the People at Edgefield. I don't know their music that well, but I know I like all of their songs when they show up on my Pandora station. Randy was not thrilled about the type of music, but he went along
willingly. It is always fun to have date night and it is always fun to see music outdoors, but we paid for six hours of babysitting to listen to one hour of music, so I was sort of disappointed.
Sunday we took Trey to the beach for the day. The weather was gorgeous and it was pretty warm, but it was windy as hell. By the end of our time on the beach, I had sand in my teeth and on my scalp. Trey dug in the sand for about an hour and a half before he was ready to go. We ate some lunch and headed back. Another short but sweet trip to the coast...
Guess what we are doing?
I've always been one to approach a new situation with reading about it. I read my way through my mom's illness (
Losing a Parent was the best one I found), I read my way through pregnancy, and I read my way through Trey's infancy. I have been collecting some books on raising children and have some favorites on my bookshelf. It should be no surprise that when I am faced with my first friend with cancer that I go straight to the library. (Actually, a random aside: one thing I love about Facebook and Twitter is being able to connect directly with authors. Will Schwalbe wrote the
End of Your Life Book Club which I really liked and I remembered that he referenced a book about etiquette when a person is sick, so I sent him a message on Facebook and he got back to me immediately. I love that.) Anyway, I have a friend who is sick, and I have felt at a loss for what to do and say. Going through it with my mom gives me some background knowledge, but I'm finding it's not the same when you're trying to support someone who is not as close to you. Will Schwalbe posted
this article on his Facebook page which I found helpful, and I am getting some good tips from this book. While I feel helpless and pretty in the dark with this particular situation, I have gained some insight into some grudges that I have held since my mom was sick because now I know that sometimes you just don't know what to do or say, and sometimes people deal with that by not doing or saying anything. That's not really how I want to support people during these types of things, but at least I have some understanding into what some people may have felt back when my mom was sick. Does that make sense?
Only way to read this book is with a drink.
I read this ginormous book (almost 780 pages) this summer and was sort of disappointed. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. Luckily, a silver lining of Trey's stomach flu was that I got a lot of this book read in just a few days. I'm glad for that because otherwise this book would have taken me weeks. I found myself uncomfortable during many parts of the book, and I didn't like hardly any of the characters. It won the Pulitzer and I had some good conversations with friends while reading it, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Mixed feelings.
Jojo Moyes's newest came out this summer, and I was really looking forward to it. I read it quickly and it was okay, but I didn't love it as much as Me Before You or the Girl You Left Behind.
I see this on a lot of my book lists, so I thought I'd give it a try. I didn't love this either, but I also couldn't put it down finding myself awake at 1am still reading. Luckily, it was a fast read. The librarian told me that
Eleanor and Park is much much better, and I have that in my stack to read soon.
This is what I started a few nights ago. The first night I dove into it, it was after midnight and I had just finished celebrating my birthday AND I was wearing a headlamp in the dark. Needless to say, I had to reread the 2.5 pages that I got through again last night. Jacqueline Winspear writes the
Maisie Dobbs series which I love, and this is her first stand alone novel. So far, I have not really been able to get into it and I blame that on her style of writing which is different than the Maisie Dobbs books. Sometimes it takes me a few nights to get into a book, so I'm hoping tonight is the night I get over that hump.
Any suggestions for me to add to my list? Please let me know!
