This post must be written, and it must be written today. Summer doesn’t slow down enough for creative writing, and we’re right in the thick of it. Next week is the 4th of July, and then we pick up a rental minivan and rock that wagon all the way to WI and back. When we get back it will be Pioneer Day (7/24) and in a blink we’ll be in August!
This last month has been quite eventful. In all honesty I’ve had just about enough of June. It started off well enough with William’s kindergarten graduation. It was cute to see all the kids sing songs and wear their little graduation caps. As if I need another excuse to bawl in public, they lined up about 100 kindergartners and had them sing songs about making friends, and love, and growing up. Seriously they could have been rapping 99 Problems by Jay-Z and I probably would have still cried my eyes out. Well played teachers, well played. Just as I thought I had it together we went back to William’s classroom and the teachers played a video montage of their activities from the year (Cue Green Day’s Time of Your Life) and more sobbing all around. William was crying by the end telling me how much he was going to miss his friends over the summer–which reminds me of the play day I haven’t gotten arranged.
The second week of June I had training for my new transcription job (stress level 3/10). I also had a routine dental cleaning which revealed 2 cracked teeth needing crowns (stress level 5/10). Thursday I went in to get the crowns placed and after all the numbing injections in the world we could still couldn’t get the second one numb (stress level 8/10). I spent the weekend stressed and feeling like I’d been hit in the mouth. On the next Monday I went in for a bite adjustment and felt so bad about my previous appointment that I took my dentist flowers and a card (I LOVE my dentist). No good deed goes unpunished as they say, because while I was there in the chair getting my bite fixed it HAILED!! WTF?!? $4000 in hail damage on my less-than-a-year old car (stress level 9/10). On top of this I got to look forward to trying the 2nd crown again on Thursday, followed by Jason leaving town for a week (stress level 10/10). I should have been hooked to a Xanax drip. Now Jason is back and I’m SO. DONE. WITH. JUNE. Adios!
Other than that one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, we did manage to do some fun things throughout the month as well. The two older boys did another session of swimming lessons. William is less afraid of getting his face wet and Christopher spent every lesson splashing around with a giant perma-grin. We took a couple trips to the Tracy Aviary to enjoy the birds, as the annual pass we purchased last spring expires this month. We bought a small swimming pool and set it up on the patio. So far we’ve gotten about 10 uses out of it and it’s holding up really well. On Father’s Day we made a visit to the Salt Lake chalk art festival and enjoyed all of the chalk drawings. Christopher lost his first tooth–one he had dental work on as a toddler–and then, not to be outdone, a week later William knocked one of his top teeth out, so now they have somewhat matching smiles.
Andrew deserves his own special paragraph this month. He’s talking up a storm and makes us laugh so hard sometimes. He will follow you into the restroom, dutifully hand you toilet paper, and then exclaim “Mom, wipe your bum!”. Such a helper! He’s become an expert tricycle rider. We ride that thing all over the neighborhood. It’s actually become enjoyable for the adult walker as well. Now instead of pushing the stroller, or meandering at a snail’s pace, we actually hike right down the sidewalk at a pretty good clip. The story of the month (one that didn’t make it to Facebook, because someone would parent-shame us for sure), is that after the hail damage Jason got up to inspect our roof while Andrew played on his tricycle. I couldn’t see him in the front yard so I yelled “Andrew!” and he yelled back “mommy!” so I went into the back yard to check on him. Not seeing him, I turned around to go back out front (thinking he’d circled around) and I hear Jason laughing. Here that little sh*t had climbed the ladder and followed Daddy onto the roof. Jason walked over the rise of the roof and there was Andrew, pleased as punch, holding onto one of the poles that comes up through the patio. My sister in law Misty had a good summary response: “Awe. Terror. Anxiety. Sudden desire to through out our ladder.” I told her after the week I’d been having (remember stress level 10/10?) my thoughts basically ended with “Of course he’s on the roof”. The angriest part of the whole ordeal was that we wouldn’t let him climb all the way back down the ladder by himself. Pretty sure that week aged me about 10 years.
I’m going to just throw a slideshow on the end here to try to summarize the month. Look forward to exciting travel stories from the month of July. We hope you all have a safe, happy, 4th of July! See-ya June!
S.~
