Summer Update

I'm a really bad blogger. I was going to share more beach photos, but I realized I did that last time I blogged. Not that it matters because it's not like I have a wide audience of people that I need to keep entertained with my twice a month blog posts. Still, we have done other things than go to the beach.

I've sat at the optometrist office again.

That was fun. Diagnosis: my corneas are still jerks. I have at least four more weeks left in glasses and no eye makeup. While I know there are plenty of people who wear glasses all the time, I am not one of those people. Glasses are not what I am used to, thus this has been hard for me--especially in the summer. I'm ready to have my contacts back and hopefully when I see the doctor in four weeks, I'll get the all clear.

Tommy discovered that he loves salt and vinegar chips. Thanks to my migraine meds altering my taste buds, I've made this discovery as well. Salt and vinegar for all!


We all discovered that the grocery store has a tractor, which is confusing and entertaining.


We had a picnic lunch to celebrate my mom's birthday and Tommy put a flower in her hair.



And, of course, there's the beach, where we secretly wish we could live and dance in the waves

and fly kites



Not pictured: Luke learned to ride his bike without training wheels and I learned to maintain a sub-10 minute mile for five straight miles. Now if only Tommy would learn to SLEEP, we'd all be set. Oh, and our local Dairy Queen now serves Orange Julius. Huzzah! How has your summer been?

Beach Boys

We kind of love the beach. I love looking back through my blog at beach posts of days of yore. Like our first beach trip last summer (I'm happy we made it much sooner this year!). Though not our beach, two summers ago, we spent some time in the salty waters of the ocean in Salem, MA. Pregnant at the beach with Tommy. Or Luke at the beach when he was only 18 months old (picture me clutching my chest).

Yesterday, we made our first beach trip of the season. It was much-awaited by two little boys, the bigger who could not believe that we had to wait until after Tommy's nap. Lucky for him, Tommy woke up stupid early as always and thus, went down for a nap early. First we went for barbecue, where Luke ate an adult-sized pulled pork sandwich. My kid, the carnivore. Not that a full stomach stopped him from climbing a sand dune seven times in a row!

Tommy grew more fearless between this summer and last. He was unafraid to dash into the water, which meant someone had to be on him at all times (this is kind of the norm for Tommy, anyway). He was undaunted, though. He would lose his balance, go under, come up spluttering and laughing, and go back for more.


And, of course, Grandma and Grandpa were more than willing to swing him around to his little heart's content.


Although the temperature passed the 90s, it was the picture perfect beach day. Blue skies, puffy white clouds. We couldn't ask for better beach weather.


We like to get to the beach in the afternoon and stay later. It starts to cool down. People start to clear out and leave for dinner. You get to watch the sun sink lower into the horizon. It makes for the perfect way to end a day.


And the best thing about the beach? The shortest person in this house is so tired that he's still sleeping. Shh....

{splash}

Since my rant about Summer 2012 being a jerk, it's gotten a little nicer. I am still shaking my fist at it a bit, especially when I have to wear my stupid glasses everywhere, but I'm dealing.

We've had some great moments. Today, we met friends at the splash pad. The boys ran, played, jumped and splashed for a few hours straight.



They had so much fun. I love these summer days now that we're slowly but surely settling into routines. Or into a lack of routine some days, but that's okay. Tomorrow morning, I'm meeting friends for a trail run, followed by pancakes for breakfast (it's obvious why we run). Tomorrow after Tommy's nap, we're going to get BBQ for dinner, then head to the beach.

Yeah, Summer 2012, you might just be okay after all... even if I do have to spend you in glasses.

Rocky Road

Summer 2012 has been a little bumpy. Last week was not the happy first week of summer I thought it'd be. Luke acted out a lot. Every day. I know a lot of it was transition. He missed preschool and his all of his friends at preschool. Shane wasn't on summer break yet. There are some other things going on that just made me stressed and sad, but I knew it would get better because hey, SUMMER.

And then out of nowhere, my car started making a funny noise. That funny noise led to my car needing new brakes. New brakes are expensive. The next day, I woke up with bright red eyes. I've been struggling with this off and on. It tends to happen to me seasonally. I have seasonal allergies and occasionally, seasonal allergies plus my contacts will become a bad combination. No big deal. However, after a great trail run with Barb (fortunately, summer 2012 hasn't been all bad), my eyes just kept getting redder, to the point where I knew I needed to see an opthamologist. Fortunately, they were able to get me in that afternoon. I wasn't concerned about pink eye. Although my eyes were pink, I've had pink eye enough times to know the symptoms and I had none of them. No itching or any of the other gross stuff associated with pink eye, which I will refrain from listing here. But as I soon found out, pink eye is a jerk and can actually spread to your cornea, in which case it will not present with the normal symptoms of pink eye. Since it didn't present with the normal symptoms, I was all, It'll clear up quickly, right? HAHA, no, because this is the summer of 2012. Recovery means 8 weeks of steroid eye drops and 8 weeks of no contacts and no eye makeup. This is super, because I have one pair of functional glasses that is about four years and four prescriptions ago, which meant that I needed to order new glasses, as well as prescription sunglasses because it is summer and I need to be able to SEE. I also need to be able to figure out how to run in my glasses, so that will be a barrel of laughs.

Anyway, because I am not made of money, the fraud department at Chase was actually concerned at all my expenditures this week and contacted me. No, sadly, all that money on brakes and glasses was me, but thanks for having my back, Chase. The end result of all of this is that in two days, I completely spent what we'd budgeted for our anniversary getaway next weekend. After a short cry, in which my eyes turned completely demon red again, I realized that it would not be happening. In the five and a half years that we've had kids, we've had exactly one overnight. Because that's been our choice as parents, I've been completely okay with that. However, I was really, really looking forward to next weekend. We'll make the best of it--we always do--but it's still been a little rough.

That said, it's summer. There's sunshine and no 8th graders. I can't complain about that. Yesterday, we took the boys mini golfing. It was so much fun.


Tommy actually used the club to hit the ball, although he eventually got tired of it and just started placing his ball in the hole.
He was also a huge fan of intentionally sending his ball into water traps.


And Luke got a hole in one!



So, the road has been a little rocky. That's okay, because it's summer and in the rocky road, there is bound to be marshmallows.