We’re back from our holiday weekend of Taiwan camp (the kids) and reading retreat (the Husband and me). Last week was a short week of work for me, which was nice since my mother, brother, and niece were in town. My brother was only staying long enough to drop off my niece who would be going to Taiwan camp with my kids and my mother later in the week, but before he left, we did manage a trip to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum out by Dulles Airport.
The Udvar-Hazy Center is probably the more impressive museum here in DC, featuring two large hanger with over 200 air and space crafts. Some really famous aircrafts are there, like the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima), the Concorde, and the space shuttle Discovery. There is also an observation tower where you can see the planes land and take off from Dulles Airport. When we went up, there was a docent in front of a flight tracker screen and he told us all about how you can track information about commercial flights – their paths, their altitudes, etc. He was using an app called FlightRadar24 and it was really neat to see and think about all those planes taking all those people to all those cities.
It’s always fun to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center – also pretty cool that it’s a Smithsonian Museum so admission is free, though parking is $15. But you know what’s not fun? Getting home from there. The Udvar-Hazy Center is actually close to my summer job, and if you’ve been around here, I’m sure you’ve heard me complain about the commute. Well it took us almost 90 minutes to get home from visiting the aircrafts. So much ugh.
The rest of the end of June/ beginning of July was taking the kids to Taiwan Camp – twice! My mother, niece, and the 6 and 9 year old went up on Wednesday for the first day of camp, and the 14 year old went on Thursday because she was doing basketball camp that week too. After dropping the 14 year old, the Husband and I went on our reading retreat, which I’ll recap in another post, but here’s a preview:
We didn’t do much for the 4th of July since we were hunkered and reading and it was so very very hot and then there was that huge storm. Sunday we picked everyone up from Taiwan camp. After a stop for ice cream – actually two stops because the first place I wanted to go was closed because they had lost power, a sad fate for an ice cream shop – we took my mom and my niece to the airport – they were flying back to California that night. My nuclear family headed home where we unpacked, had dinner, played a round of MarioKart and then sent the kids to bed. The Husband and I watched the Mexico v. England soccer game. What a wild ride of a game that was!
I ended up staying up way past the end of the game because it turns out my mom and niece’s 7pm flight was delayed due to the weather – we’d been having super rainy thunderstorms. I thought I might have to go pick them up if their flight got cancelled, but it wasn’t officially cancelled until 12:30am. They got re-booked on a flight this morning at 6am so decided to stay at the airport. What a travel ordeal. What was originally a direct flight from BWI to SFO was, the next day, a flight from BWI to Chicago to San Diego to San Francisco. And after that they still had to get home to Berkeley. Props to my mom for dealing with all that. I hope neither my mom or my niece are terribly scarred by all that. Some times you just get really unlucky travel days.
And now I’m home and ready to jump into another show. But before I get too deep into the month, shall we look at how June 2o26 was?
June Highlights:
-Going to a weekday matinee of The Devil Wears Prada 2 with my friend.
-Piano recitals for the 9 and 14 year old. Voice recital for the 14 year old.
-Summer produce from the Farmer’s market.
-The 14 year old’s promotion ceremony – she is finished with middle school! High school here we come.
-Dentist appointments for me and the kids. To do checked off. (Did I mention my dentist has an office beagle???):
-So much pool time – swim meets, swim practices, swimming laps, cooling off in the waters.
-The last day of school for the other two kids. Yay we survived our first school year without day care payments. Not that life gets any less expensive. It’s just the money goes different places.
-My first foray to Royal Farms for their fried chicken.
-The first show at my summer gig – tech/ opened/ closed. Getting to work with a new to me Technical Director who was so good at her job and really cared about the singers not just being safe on stage, but also feeling safe on stage.
-Going to see Shakespeare in the Park – As You Like It. How lovely to be watching the residents of the Forest of Arden get matched and unmatched under the stars.
-Picnic lunch with three friends from college. So great to catch up.
-Seeing the Tall Ships in Baltimore Harbor.
-Visits from my brother, niece, and mother. Going to hot pot and the Udvar-Hazy museum.
-I went running three times! It’s pretty paltry, but it’s more than the month before, so I’m kind of stoked about it.
– Watching the World Cup. So we don’t have Fox, but we do have Telemundo via Peacock, so I’ve been watching all the games in Spanish, which is actually really fun because I feel like I can focus on the game and not get side tracked by the commentary. Plus I get to hear the most famous announcements of “Goooooooooool!”
-Favorite Dinner this month: Take out Style Sesame Noodles w/ teriyaki chicken. Perfect meal for the pool – can be eaten cold, packs a lot of flavor and vegetables and filling enough to fuel swim meets.
-Favorite thing we watched: Derry Girls. hilarious. The Husband said it actually reminded him a lot about his childhood growing up in Indiana.
June Lowlights:
-Some house things with my parent’s rental unit. Unbloggable, but it seems like every month there’s always something. I guess that’s just the price of owning a home. (literally….)
-The awful commute to and from my summer gig. Sorry if you’re tired of hearing about this one, but it is a truly awful time suck.
-Feeling very stretched. I think this is a lot to do with the point above – I spend so much time commuting that I’m finding I don’t have as much time for other life/family things. Spoiler alert – this will probably also be a July lowlight too….
-I got a stupid parking ticket. Again. This was totally my fault- I was just making a quick stop and I didn’t pay the meter. Stupid mistake.
Checking in on 2026 Aspirations:
Creativity:
-painted two pictures (10/26 pictures painted for the year.)
-wrote 1 haiku (16/52 haikus written this year… need to work on this.)
-finished two crossword puzzles (My goal is to finish one every week, but I got behind)
Consumption:
-1 live performance – As You Like It
-1 Museum – Udar-Hazy Center (see above!)
-0 hikes. (need to work on this….)
Health:
I was rubbish at tracking exercise in June. But I did start swimming while the kids were at swim team practice. It’s been too hot for me to go running consistently. But I did run inconsistently.
-Daily yoga – I think this was 25/30 days. Like I said – rubbish tracking in June.
-3 vegan dinners. Two of those were the Teriyaki Tofu from America’s Test Kitchen. It is that good. And easy. (goal is 5 vegan dinners a month, but given that we were at the pool almost every night, I’d say any vegan dinner is a plus.)
Quote of the Month:
“You can’t thrive for free”
-from Netflix’s Beef. Said by the Ali Wong character to her mother in law in regards to the cost of raising a child. I thought this was hilarious. Also we watched an episode of Beef and I don’t know if I’ll return for the rest – it’s pretty dark and full of people doing things that range from unfortunate to reprehensible. Not my jam. I know it was critically acclaimed. sigh. Sometimes I don’t feel cool enough for the critically acclaimed media that everyone loves.
Looking Forward to in July:
-Starting rehearsals for my second opera this summer. Excited to again be working with some great colleagues.
-World Cup. I have rehearsal on the afternoon of the World Cup Finals. Today I asked my stage manager if we could move rehearsal. I was only half kidding.
-planning our Niagara Trip. The trip isn’t until August, but planning is part of the fun, right?
-speaking of which, there is an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art featuring paintings of Niagara Falls, I want to try to take the kids before our trip – might be a fun tie in. Also there’s a Mary Cassatt exhibit there too. Might be the same one I saw in Philadelphia, but Cassatt is always worth seeing either way.
-Peach Truck Peaches!!! I ordered a 25 lb box of peaches from the Peach Truck.
-Digging into the pile of books I bought on my reading retreat:
Grateful for the week:
-$2.50 ice cream scoops for 4th of July.
-This imperfect country that celebrated its birthday last week. Look, there are a lot of not great things happening. BUT… I once had to spend three days at the INS office replacing my lost green card and I realized that there are much worse things going on in other countries. Things are messed up, but in the scheme of things, we’re really very lucky we live in America.
-That my mother, brother, and niece came to visit. It was nice to spend time with them. I got to have a few moments of one on one time with my niece, and we talked about books and school and food, and it was cool to see her becoming her own person.
-Slow mornings with the family and not having to rush to get to school or work.
-That the kids had a good time at Taiwan camp.
-Air conditioning.
-Food that lasts in the fridge. Actually refrigeration in general. We got home from our holiday weekend away and I was going to make our pantry standby of pasta with red sauce for dinner, but I was unexcited by the prospect, so I looked in the fridge and there was some ground turkey from before we left. I looked up ground turkey recipes and found this recipe for Italian Wedding Soup, and in addition to the turkey, it needed kale (which had been in our fridge for at least two weeks) and eggs (which were from at least two weeks ago), lemons (at least a week old), parmesan cheese (who knows how old that is..) and other things that we had in our pantry (chicken broth, pasta, panko break crumbs). Instead of parsley and garlic, I dumped the week old zhug sauce (from when we had shawarma earlier in the week) into the meatball mix. It felt really good to use up bits and bobs to make a really tasty meal that was a step above plain pasta and red sauce.
What we ate:
Monday: Cauliflower Sheetpan Shawarma with Tahini Sauce and Zhoug Sauce. My brother was visiting and he’s vegetarian. And I had a cauliflower to use up, so this was perfect. Honestly, though, it’s all about the sauces.
Tuesday: Chicken Wings and steamed green beans – eaten at the pool. My mother made her famous soy garlic chicken wings.
Wednesday: We ordered Indian Food for dinner – The 14 year old’s choice since it was her first time being alone with her parents since she was five, before we had more babies.
Thursday: Grabbed food on the road while driving 14 year old to Taiwan camp. I got Naan Tacos from a place called Tikka Shack Indian Grub, which I guess is a chain. They were really tasty.
Friday: Made dinner from stuff we picked up at the markets – Sage pork chops, steamed green beans, corn, salad, sauerkraut. it was delicious.
Saturday: Went out to an Indian restaurant for dosas. Wow typing this out, i’m realizing that I had Indian for dinner three times this week. I do Love Indian food. If I had to choose a last meal, I would have a hard time deciding between noodles and dumplings or Indian Food.
Sunday: Italian Wedding Soup with Turkey Meatballs from NY Times Cooking. This was fast, and easy. I added dollops of Ricotta on top for added creaminess.
And onwards we move into July. 2026 now has more days behind us than in front of us – whew, that’s a thought.
What critically acclaimed tv show do you not get? What cuisine could you eat multiple times a week and not get tired of it? Favorite pantry meal? Are you watching the World Cup too? Can you thrive for free????
