Bi-Weekly recap + what we ate: Summer delights

I just spent an hour and a half ordering backpacks for the two bigger kids, which clearly is the start of fall/ end of summer. I also threw in a couple of matching skorts for the ten year old and the baby because I was pretty close to free shipping and the two girls love to wear matching clothes and I think it’s super cute when they do. Of course ordering a couple back packs should not take 90 minutes, but when you have kids hanging out with you giving opinions and generally wrecking havoc and unloading shelves, it always takes more time than one would think.

And so onward to the last month of summer. The five year old had his last day of pre-school last week (sob!), and still he has been asking, “Is today a go to school day?”

“No,” I tell him. “Remember, you don’t have to go to school again until you start kindergarten at the end of the month.” And my heart constricts a little because how is it possible that my little guy is old enough to start school somewhere where I don’t get to walk him to the door and sign him in everyday, where he doesn’t get to nap and where he’ll be expected to go to the bathroom on his own? So many things that I wonder if he is ready for it… but no way better to be ready than to actually do it, I guess. In my head he seems so much smaller than the ten year old was when she started kindergarten, but I think he will always be smaller than her in my mind.

We are still on the fence as to where he should go to kindergarten. Our school district offers several immersion programs, the spots available via a lottery system in K and 1st. The five year old was offered a spot in the French Immersion program, so we are now trying to decide whether to send him there or to send him to our home school, where the ten year old will be come fall. (The ten year old was also in a Mandarin immersion program for several years, but this past year we realized it wasn’t the best fit for her, so she is returning to our home school for one last year before middle school. The five year old was offered a place in the Mandarin immersion but we couldn’t see sending him to a program that we just pulled our oldest child out of.)

It is truly a situation where the choice is hard because there are no bad choices, I don’t think. We have friends in the French Immersion and friends at our home school and both schools are equally beloved. When we first had the choice, I thought we would take our time to decide, thinking that a little bit of time might help us sort through the choices. But… it has been almost two months and, really, giving ourselves more time to choose is just… giving us more time to choose. Neither school has emerged as the clear choice. I think, that perhaps, as in many things, there is never a best choice, there is just a choice, and how we move forward from that.

Anyhow – it’s been a couple weeks of slight shifts and transitions. The five year old had his last days of preschool/daycare and will be home doing “Mommy Camp” until school starts at the end of August. The ten year old finished up county camp. She has one week of basketball camp and then will also be joining “Mommy Camp”.

Swim Team has also finished up – I am so proud of how the ten year old did this season. The last race of the season, Divisionals, she was only slated to swim one race (25m backstroke), but at the last minute someone got sick so she also swam the first leg of the freestyle relay. At the end of season party, the ten year old received one of the Coaches’ Choice Awards. It’s the award for the swimmers who aren’t necessarily the fastest, but who have great team spirit and a positive attitude and show up and work hard. In truth, these qualities are the main reason why I encourage her to do activities and it was so exciting to see her get recognized for being such a great person. I’m a little sad swim team is over for the summer – as much work as it was to get the kids to the pool five days a week, it was really fun to watch the kids swim and work so hard to get better and the every-day-at-the-pool routine was nice to have.

We had a camping trip, and prepping for that occupied much of my brain, if not my time. (More camping recaps to come.)

So that’s what’s been on my mind lately. But some of the fun things we’ve done the past few weeks:

• One day the ten year old’s camp was closed because it was Election Day and her camp location was a polling center. So I took the ten year old and the baby to ClimbZone, an indoor climbing center where instead of the typical climbing walls one would find in a climbing gym, the climbing structures are in all sorts of fun shapes and structures – like bookshelves, Mount Rushmore, enormous blocks, the Empire State Building… It was a great way to spend a hot afternoon. The baby is already asking to go back.

• We had dinner one night with some friends, and as we were sitting chatting at the dinner table, I noticed some of those acrylic press on nails. On a whim, I put one sparkly gold nail on my middle finger, and then found that I couldn’t get it off. So I went through the next couple of days with this whimsical bit of sparkle on my finger, and it made me laugh at how ridiculous it was… everything feels so much more glamourous with a shiny gold nail…. driving carpool, pushing kids on the playground, walking the dog….

• We went to another concert on the lawn at our local concert hall. I think one of my favorite things, aside from the music – Charm City Junction, a roots/bluegrass band – is that the location is perfect for soaking up golden sun set rays. The music was a lot of fun, and at one point, one of the musicians pulled out a gourd banjo and I was fascinated. Also particularly fun this time is that we struck up a conversation with the people sitting behind us and turns out they are contra-dancers. Since the Husband and I met while contra-dancing, we fell into a lovely friendly conversation with these strangers about the dance community. Then they pointed to a bunch of people in front of us: “Those folks are contra-dancers too.” And it turns out they were friends of the Husband from the days when he was a hardcore contra-dancer. Talking to the couple, made me realize how much fun we used to have contra-dancing and what a big part of our lives it used to be. I don’t know that we are quite ready to go back dancing with the current state of the COVID world, but hopefully some day.

• The Husband took a day off work and we went to the National Gallery of Art to see an exhibit by photographer Robert Adams. I was unfamiliar with him and his work, and I really liked seeing a large number of his photographs in one place so I could see the scope of what he did. Some of the things that stood out to me in the exhibit:

This Adams’ quote about silence. One often thinks of silence as an auditory thing, but Adams strove to capture silence in his pictures – both the silence of beauty and promise and the silence of destruction.

This photograph. When I first saw it, I thought it was a picture of a lake or the ocean seen from a mountain top. When I read the placard, I discovered that it was actually the suburban sprawl of Boulder beyond those trees. How strikingly similar they look. I spent ten years working in Colorado and many of Adams’ pictures reminded me of my time there – how bright it was, and how stark. Also, seeing the pictures during a heat wave, many of his photographs seemed to radiate heat, with their bareness and light, even though they were taken in the winter.

This photo which juxtaposes the concrete blocks with the similarly solid ice. It was in pictures like this where I could really see what he meant by photographing silence.

Then no visit to the National Gallery of Art is complete without visiting the big blue rooster on the roof, and the Calder room next to the roof entrance:

I always feel so lucky that we live a short Metro ride from so many great museums. We can have a half day trip to see an exhibit and not feel like we need to see everything since it is easy enough to come back. I find that with museums, I much prefer this easier, more reflective pace.

• I thought this interesting:

It’s a picture of the back of the building where I work. I’ve never actually seen it from this view before because there was another building that buts up pretty close to it, and the front of the building looks rather like the right side seen in the picture – very utilitarian and square. But they are doing some construction and have torn the building behind us down and the other day when I walked by, I was struck by how I’ve worked in this building for almost twenty years and never realized what lovely period architectural details the building had. There is something so delightfully surprising about seeing these details revealed. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for something…. not sure what. I’m going to have to store this moment in my mental “metaphors to be used” file.

• And one oops – The two older kids got their COVID booster shots, and I thought I’d save time and drop off the school medical forms for the baby as well. I handed the forms to the receptionist and she looks us up. “We can’t fill out these forms because she’s not up to date on her well visits,” I’m told. Wait what?!? Turns out I completely forgot to schedule the baby for her 2.5 year well child visit. Which should have happened five months ago. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but I really felt foolish. Oops. So the appointment was scheduled for the following week, which would put her 2.5 year visit about a month before her 3 year old well visit. Not catastrophic by any means, but between this and double booking the ten year old for camp, I feel like I’m losing track of threads. In a lot of ways, life is a lot easier when I’m working and someone hands me a schedule everyday with where I need to be and what I’m supposed to be doing.

What We Ate:

Saturday- dumplings and green beans

Sunday- hotdogs and corn on the grill. Bundled up and taken to be eaten at the pool.

Monday- Smashed Zucchini with chickpeas and peanuts, New York Times recipe. I had a bunch of zucchini to use up, and this salad sounded interesting – the zucchini is eaten raw, just salted, almost like cucumber. I think I liked this more than the rest of the family.

Tuesday- BLTs. I over cooked the bacon. I like my bacon still slightly chewy, but the rest of the family likes it crisp.

Wednesday- take out bahn mi sandwiches and lawn concert – Charm City Junction.

Thursday- Chicken tacos from Toco Loco by Jonas Cramby. Love making tacos – if I cook the meat ahead of time, or in the InstantPot, the meal comes together so quickly when I get home – heat tortillas on the grill, make an easy cabbage salad (chop cabbage, two big pinches of salt, juice of one lime or red wine vinegar. Cilantro if I’m feeling fancy.), slice some avocados and put it all on the table. Some pickled onions if I have them. And then a meal that everyone can assemble as they wish. I feel like the ratio of tastiness to work is pretty high.

Friday – sesame noodles from Bad Manners cookbook for swim team potluck. The theme was Pasta dinner, and I was a little self conscious about bringing an Asian style noodle dish, but people still ate it, so I guess it was okay.

Saturday – Dinner at friend’s house – they grilled.

Sunday – Swim Team award’s banquet. Pizza and cake.

Monday – Pizza and Sneakerella, a Cinderella with a twist story. I thought it was a lot of fun, and it was neat to see a Cinderella movie where Cinderella was a boy.

Tuesday – Eggplant noodle salad from the Greens Cookbook.

Wednesday – Zucchini Boats with ground turkey. This recipe from Dad with a Pan is my go to recipe when I have zucchini. It’s so easy to put together and really tasty.

Hope your summer is unfolding with delights and adventures!