Summer 2011

A warm aloha to my blogging friends! It's that time again. The twice yearly update. Let's see, I need to cover most of June, all of July and most of August in one post. Simple, really. Easy as pie. A no brainer. Piece of cake. A slam dunk. Easy peesy mac'n'cheesy.

Trying to recount 3 months worth of life will be easy? Heck yes. This from the girl who takes 30 paragraphs for one single story on one single day. But seriously now. How could writing about this summer NOT be easy? I mean, this post started out with the words "warm" and "aloha." So without further ado (or cliches), I'm proud to give you:

Summer 2011
June:
#1: Ty graduated from preschool and Jake graduated from Kindergarten. This means that I'll have graduated to a mother of 2 kids in school EVERY day come September. Are they really that old? Am I really that old?
Which brings me to:
#2: I turned 30. And I liked it.
#3: I had a grand birthday party with my fantastic husband and my fabulous friends.
#4: We continued our "Biggest Loser" competition with some friends that we started in February, and continued to see pounds come off because the dream of delicious empty carbs was not as big as the dream of not feeling mortified in swimsuits for our quickly approaching anniversary trip to Hawaii.
#5: Dan and I (mostly Dan) planned, and day-dreamed of, every waking moment we'd spend in Maui starting on the 4th of July.
Which brings me to:

July:
#1. I finished packing myself for Hawaii, the kids for 5 nights with G&G Stump and 5 with G&G Alcorn, and Felix for Doggy Heaven on Earth (AKA the Alcorn house...where my mom actually refers to Feel as her "granddog" and has Felix address her dalmatian as "Uncle Moses.")
#2. I stepped on the scale and mentally flogged myself for being 1 pound over my goal weight I'd set in January, and then I realized I had lost 29lbs. Not the 30 I was hoping for, but 29 pounds felt pretty gosh darn great!
#3. After giving Alaska airlines the deed to our house in order to check our luggage, we boarded the plane and I started the first of 9 books I read on the trip. Yep, nine. I'm pretty literate. And yep, I bought a Kindle before we left in order to save some of our retirement money that we'd have spent on checking the extra suitcase full of books. Literate and frugal. I'm quite the catch.
Which brings me to:
#4. My catch. The one I caught 10 years ago. The one that after 10 years of marriage I love even more than on our wedding day. Holy smokes did we have a great anniversary trip! We laughed and reminisced through the longest uninterrupted conversations we've had in 7 years (love you Jake and Ty), and then we had hours of comfortable uninterrupted silence. We had adventures like a helicopter tour and parasailing and almost dying on our boat ride back from snorkeling Molokini and spending a day circling and snorkeling Lana'i. And oh yes, we had food.
Which brings me to:
#5: Quite possibly the best meal I've ever eaten. In the most amazing location I've ever eaten at. Our victory dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse seated right by the ocean as the sun set. It was there that our friends Paul and Natalie (who were also celebrating their 10th) officially crowned us "Biggest Losers" as we inhaled our butter-drenched steaks and mac'n'cheese with caramelized onions and our fried potatoes...If there was a "Biggest Gainer" competition after eating just one meal, let's just say we would have owned that crown as well.
#6: Our completely wonderful relaxing and renewing vacation was the perfect amount of time away. The last night we were there, falling asleep to the sounds of the ocean, we looked at each other and agreed it was time to reenter reality. I absolutely love regaining the perspective that when it comes right down to it, I wouldn't truly want to live any other place but home or live any other life than mine, with any other people than the friends and family God has blessed me with.
Which brings me to: (am I not just nailing these segues by the way?)


August:
#1 Jake's birthday.

Ah, shoot. I'm actually thinking I should break this up a bit. I'm getting exhausted just thinking about rereading this to edit my mistakes. Not that I ever make a mistake...okay, spell check is my BFF. I've already written half of August, so you won't need to wait another 5 months for me to finish it. At least I'm pretty sure I'll finish it soon. O ye of little faith! Return soon for Jake's birthday, the 2 day vacay that was supposed to be a 5 day vacay, and some great one liners from Jake and Ty.


So until then, I'll leave you with these. Just a taste of our amazing vacation:

Could it be?

Well helloooooo there, blog! Feeling a bit neglected lately? You know what, I'm not even going to apologize. Okay, maybe I'll apologize for breaking cardinal blogging rule #1: not blogging about Christmas. And shoot, maybe I really should say I'm sorry for not blogging on Ty's 5th birthday. But honestly...not really very sorry.

I know it will come as a bit of a surprise to you all, er, to the both of you who still even remember that I once was a semi-regular blogger at one point in my life, BUT I'm fairly certain that I'm not going to be blogging very often anymore. I told you. Shocker. Why, you two ask? Because, my friends. Well...just because. I really don't have a great reason besides the fact that at a certain point I realized I was stressing myself out feeling like I had to record every funny/important/meaningful moment in our lives or I was destined to forget it all. I decided I really enjoy living it more than I enjoy writing about it. It's like when I realized I was missing just having a blast watching my boys' basketball games because I was so nervous I wouldn't get one of their baskets recorded on our video camera. I know it's sad, but I truly found myself thinking at certain times in the past "now how am I going to word this best when I write about it on the blog?" rather than just appreciating the moment.

There are times when I have really loved writing, but I'm not super passionate about it right now. Know what I am passionate about? My family. My husband and my boys are just about the coolest things ever. I just love being with them. Life is really good for us right now, and I'm pretty gosh darn excited to keep living it without as many distractions.

OH stop it, I'm not saying I'm quitting the blog all together, simmer down. I'll still post some memorable stories every now and then. Half the reason I'm not posting as much is because I told myself I wanted a record of my kids' childhood. Because heaven knows I'm not keeping up with any baby books. But my kids are growing up. They don't have as many crazy things happening to them (or because of them) anymore. They're kinda boring. And after experiencing the first 4 years of Ty's life, I'd like to take this moment to raise the roof for the word "boring." NO, boring is the wrong word. Really it is. They continue to crack me up on a daily basis. For example:

Ty recently stated on his way to swimming lessons, "I hope Carrot is going to be there." Carrot? "Yeah, my new friend Carrot." Um Ty, I think you mean Garrett. "Oh, yeah. Garrett."

When asked what he wanted for breakfast the other day, Ty replied, "Could you make some Sherman waffles? Sherman waffles are my favorite." Sherman waffles? I have no idea what you're talking about. He described the "Sherman waffles" in great detail and I burst out laughing. German pancakes...the child meant German pancakes.

Jake continues to grow like a weed on steriods. He and Ty have the same size waist but Jake's legs are approximately 9 feet longer which makes buying pants for him a little difficult. Whoever thought of the adjustable waistband for kids is a genius. Rock star brilliant. I mean I know there are people out there coming up with cures for horrific diseases, but my hat is off to the guy who made it his life's mission to make certain my child wouldn't go pantsless. Can I get an amen?

So anywayssss, Christmas was great. Watching the boys play basketball together on the same team was the highlight of my winter. Ty's Star Wars birthday was a little chaotic with almost 20 kids in my house, but he loved every light-saber-bearing-Darth-Vader-defeating-Jedi moment of it. Swimming lessons was one of the highlights of my children's lives. Ty graduated from preschool and Jake will graduate soon from Kindergarten which means I will have both kids in school every day next year (Ty will still have half days) and I'm a teensy bit world-rocked with what that will mean for my every day life.

Oh there's tons more, but I've spent too much time at the computer already today and so I'll sign off. With a promise there will be more blogging in the future. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. And for the rest of our lives...

Here's looking at you, blog readers.