I can hardly believe that today is August, August, August, what day is it??? That’s right, today is August 24. Last night Annika and I went school shopping. I was amazed to see that the school supply aisle of Target had been ravaged and was almost empty. Is it that late in the summer already? Again, I sit amazed and ask myself ‘where did the summer go?’
We started off with a bang. Joshua’s college graduation. After Joshua and Kirsten moved home from college, the blur of activity began to intensify. Kids finding jobs. Wedding planning. Summer Camps. Kids unpacking. Kids repacking. Kid moving. Groceries, laundry, yard work. Oh and then of course jobs. Usually I enjoy at least SOME down time while I am at my office. Ok, maybe that sounds bad, but when you sit at a desk all day, usually you are able to enjoy a little free time to do a little personal ‘stuff’. Not this summer. Nope, this year I have been consumed at work by not only WORK, but also by overseeing the build-out of a new suite of offices (yup, the Friday after the wedding we get to move our entire office from the 2nd floor of our building to the first floor of our building—it will be a good change, but it will also be a TON of work!). So this summer has been a little crazed. We are tired, very tired. But as we look forward to the last official week of summer, we are glad that we had a couple of little breaks along the way.
In July, Annika headed to Young Life Camp in Malibu Canada. She had a spectacular time and learned and grew a lot. It was the first time that we had been separated from her for that long in over 2 years. It was strange to not have her around at night. Dean calls her my ‘TV buddy’. Most nights she and I sit down and watch something together on Netflix or Hulu. We gave up cable TV a couple of years ago, but we laugh that we probably watch more TV now than we did before. Her therapist told us once that it was good for her and I to do this, because it gives us time together to work on her language processing ‘issues’. Sounds good doesn’t it? That is the excuse for all the TV watching together and I’m sticking with it. ANYWAY, I digress. I missed having her around, which was nice.
In July, while Annika was gone, we decided we needed to get a family vacation planned. After all this was the last summer before we add Evy officially to the mix of our crazy family, so we felt like it was the right thing to do for us to have some uninterrupted time away, just the five of us. We got to the first part of July and we didn’t have a clue how we would be able to get everyone out of town for even 1 night. Then Josh and Kirsten’s work schedules opened up for 3 days and we decided we had to go for it. So, we booked a condo at Semiahmoo for 3 nights starting the day after Annika came home from camp. Never mind that Semiahmoo is only 20 minutes from our house and in the same county, it was ‘away’. We had a great time and were really glad that we took the time to regroup and reconnect and relax.
Family vacation of 3 days checked off our list, on to the next thing. Last week, Dean, Annika and I headed north and east to Lake Osoyoos, Canada. There we camped and did all things water and boating related with 6 other couples/families. We knew it was going to be a lot of effort to get our butts out of town, but we decided we would do it. From the moment we arrived in the 90+ degree sunshine we were SO thankful that we had made the effort to go. We had an amazing time. Great people, good food, wonderful sun, warm water and laughter, lots and lots of laughter. For many years when the kids were little, we used to make this trek every summer. We think it had been 12 years since we had gone. Life has gotten in the way and other vacations took priority. On the way home we planned for our trip next year. We had forgotten how great it was to vacation with others that you truly enjoy spending time with. It has been a very long time since we went away and vacationed as a couple with other couples. Something that we have definitely missed A LOT. Something that we plan to start doing again, a lot. A few pictures from our time there:
I love these two…they have made this trip every year for 21 years!
So now, the fun and frivolity of Summer 2012 is winding down. Now, all that is left is to get these two married off next weekend.
We can’t wait!!
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