family games – Life Off Headset

Weekly Recap + What We Ate: New things we are trying

Last week was a shorter school week because of the Labor Day holiday. It was also my last week on a reduced contract at work, so it was pretty light work-wise, though there were several union negotiation meetings to attend and lots of other adulting to do. All in all, though, it was a pretty low key week. I got to get some nice cooler weather runs in, the kids went to school, they came home, we had one soccer practice, I got to go on a pirate boat cruise on the Potomac, but other than that, not to much going on, and the weekend was similar. On Saturday, we had a 9:30am soccer game for the 8 year old, auditions for the 8 and 13 year old. After the auditions, we celebrated by sitting outside and eating the frozen treats that the Husband had bought at the nearby food coop. We were originally going to go out to get chais and horchatas from a local coffee shop, but the ice cream was a cheaper option and just as festive.

Saturday evening we went to visit my friend in Southern Maryland, where the kids had a chance for one last swim in a pool. It was probably a little on the chilly side for the pool, but the kids’ didn’t mind. I floated on an tube for maybe thirty minutes – it was the kind of weather where you wanted to either be in the pool or out, but it was too cold to be constantly switching. My friend is someone I know from work, so it’s always nice when we can hang out oustisde of work. She just rebuilt her deck by herself, and it’s amazing.

Sunday my cousin came for a visit and we just hung out around the house. We watched the US Open Men’s Final. I’ve never really watched tennis before, and I don’t know the rules, or whom to root for, but I do enjoy watching that ball go back and forth and back and forth. Also, I was unfamiliar with the tradition of the Grand Slam winners and losers making speeches at the trophy ceremony and afterwards became fascinated with this tradition. It seems so bonkers to me that the players play their hearts out for three hours, experience crushing defeat or thrilling victory, and then immediately after are expected to coherently speak to millions of people? And for a lot of them, English isn’t even their first language. Despite all that, the Grand Slam trophy speeches seem like an appropriately elegant part of a sport that I do think is very glamorous.

New Things For This School Year:
September always brings some shifts to schedules, routines, and habits what with the new school year starting and kids going to new schools, new grades, new activities. I once made a chart, and from now until the 5 year old goes to high school in nine years, we‘ll have only two years where September does not bring a new school for someone. The other seven years will always have a transition to a new school for at least one kid. So September always seems like a natural time to think about systems and routines and try something new. Here are some things we’re trying this fall:

A new shoe rack/ foyer/ landing strip set up – Our foyer is a mess of shoes and backpacks and tote bags and what not. We were constantly tripping over things in walkways or kicking things down the stairs, losing keys and single shoes and IDs and bills. We started looking for solutions for a more efficient drop zone, where we could keep the shoes and back packs in a more organized way but also have place for incoming mail and our keys and ids. The Husband found a really cool shoe rack on Etsy and we had our handyman stain it to match our front door. The rack has transformed our foyer. (So far. It’s only been two weeks…)

Backpacks are on the coat tree on the right. My messy drop bin is out of sight on the left.

Flow improvements:
-Everyone has a shelf for their most used shoes, so they are no longer sprawled across the entry way. We will still use the boot mats for boots, and shoes that aren’t worn regularly stay in the coat closet, but everything else goes on the shoe rack. There are 4 shelves for shoes and space underneath, so everyone’s shoes seem to fit while taking up a smaller footprint. yay for vertical storage.
-Moving the paper recycle bin next to the shoe rack so that the junk mail goes right into the bin and the important mail goes into the mail bin.
-Having the mail bin and the key bin to the top level of the shoe rack. These used to live on a bench, and it was always kind of awkward to get to them.
-A charging station. We are using one of the top cubbies as a charging station. So now, my phone has a “home” when I’m at home. I’m hoping this will lead to less scrolling and less losing of my phone. We’re trying to convince the 13 year old that her phone also needs to charge there, but I don’t know if we’re going to win that one. (That’s a whole other story…)
-backpacks moved from bins to a coat tree, corralling them in a smaller space. We used to have three plastic storage bins in the living room and they became a dumping ground for backpacks and anything else that didn’t have a home. Once a week, the kids would go through their bins and re-set. I love me a good catch all bin, but it was getting out of control. Now the kids’ activity bags and helmets go in their room and just school backpacks are the the foyer hung on the coat tree. We might need to investigate a different coat tree because the current one is a little tall for the kids’ to reach easily. (The 13 year old keeps her backpack in her room.) I still have my little red bin for my tote bags – I’m trying to figure out if there is a more elegant solution for my stuff – I like to be able to dump my things when I walk in the door because often I’m coming in so late and that tends to lead to a bit of clutter. Still pondering here.
All in all, our new foyer/land strip has made life a little less frustrating lately.

Fewer Activities for the Kids/ More evenings at home as a family – This is the activity run down for this fall:

13 year old – basketball workouts (1x a week, plus this year the coach wants people to practice on their own at least ten minutes a day. The 13 year old has been doing this as she waits for the two little to get off their bus), piano lessons, voice lessons, Religious Ed, Swim clinic (starts next month)

8 year old – soccer (1 practice, 1 game a week. He’s still playing the less competitive rec league.), piano.

5 year old – tap classes, Agility classes (this is like ninja warrior courses.)

This is a lot fewer activities than we usually do. One thing that we dropped for the fall is skating for the 5 and 8 year old because the rink is still under repair. We will likely add skating back in November when the rink re-opens. We also aren’t doing after school programming classes or sewing (for the 8 year old) or gymnastics (for the 5 year old) this fall. The 13 year old is auditioning for the school play, so that might be another activity back on the plate, although rehearsals are right after school, so it’s pretty hands off for us. The 13 year old and the 8 year old both auditioned for the children’s chorus of the Holiday opera I’m working on, so we’re waiting for those results, though those rehearsals don’t start until November.

Being light on activities is a bit of a shift for us. Usually I try to sign up the kids for activities when my work load is lighter because then we have two parents on hand to split driving and home duties. But this fall, we decided to try something different and keep the schedule a little lighter. Each kid still has one active activity and one artistic activity, though. I feel bad because skating, programming, sewing and gymnastics are things that the kids really love to do. I’m reminding myself that these activities all have short sessions and rolling enrollment, so we can sign them up for sessions later in the year too. Taking the fall off from an activity isn’t going to stunt their development in that interest or put them “behind”. Whatever that means. I do think it gets trickier when kids get older and start to get more serious about interests and require more commitment, but for now I think the stakes are not as high for the 5 year old and the 8 year old, and we don’t have to keep up with anything. Plus the kids love activities, but they also love just hanging out at home, reading books, playing outside, and getting into trouble.

I have to say, the pulling back on activities has actually been quite lovely. We’re not constantly rushing around on weekday evenings to eat dinner and get someone somewhere. We all have been cleaning up after dinner together, and then having family reading time, or family game time. Same thing on weekend – we have time to hang out together and kind of just do… well, I was going to say “nothing”, but reading books and noodling on the piano and playing board games and going on evening walks and having dance parties while doing the dishes and putting away laundry in a timely manner – these are all something.

Another thing that I think benefits from the lighter activity schedule is something that came up at Back to School Night – The coordinator of the French Immersion program said is that our kids really need time to decompress after school because they’re brains are working overtime being in a non-English school environment. I’m sure all kids need that space after school, but I guess I hadn’t really thought of the added burden of being in an immersion environment before. Anyhow, I’m really enjoying the less frenetic paces of our afternoons and evenings. I don’t know how long we will keep it up, but it does make for a nice soft start for the school year.

I’m going to give a shout out to our new favorite game, Dixit. It’s kind of like a combination of the Dictionary Game and Code Names – there are picture cards and one person says a word or phrase to describe one of their cards, then everyone puts in a card that might also be described by that word or phrase and everyone else has to guess which is the original card. Dixit works really well for our family because you don’t have to be able to read to play it. I also took a page out of Lauren’s book and instituted a rule that the winner cleans up after the game. I don’t know if it’s the rule or if the kids are getting better at not winning, but there have been fewer meltdowns when we have family game night now.

The 13 year old making dinner once a week – We’ve put the 13 year old in charge of making dinner once a week. She’s made dinner a few times, but not regularly. She’s able to make Mac and cheese (out of a box), breakfast sandwiches, pasta and meat balls, and oven fried chicken. I thought this was a good time for her to start expanding her skills by being regularly responsible for dinner, from planning to putting things on the grocery list to cooking. Last week, she made roasted salmon with potatoes and chimichurri sauce, and steamed green beans. I was in the kitchen talking her through every step of the way, but almost all the hands on stuff she did herself. I have this dream that eventually each child can be responsible for one night and then the Husband and I will only be responsible for 3 dinners a week (the fourth night is pizza and movie night.)

Labelling the Sheets – I keep the spare sheets in the bedrooms – ie each room has the sheets on the bed and one spare set in the closet. BUT they were kind of just on a shelf, in a jumbled mess. In the little kids’ room, especially, it was annoying because the 5 year old sleeps in the twin top bunk and the 8 year old sleeps in the full bottom bed. So when someone wets the bed at 2am, there is a lot of night time cursing and muttering as I pull out wrong sheet set after wrong sheet set. Well, I was determined to fix this and on our last trip to Ikea, I found these zip up storage bags. Now, each size of sheets has it’s own storage bag, AND I got out the label maker and labelled the bags. I love my label maker.

The new closer bus stop- I know this is the third week in a row I’ve mentioned the new bus stop, but it’s been such amazing shift for our routine. The 13 year old gets to shoot some hoops while waiting for the bus, the kids can have 15-30 minutes to play before coming home, and I get to walk down to meet them. Also it’s the first stop of the bus, so less likely to be delayed.

Well, those are some things that are making life a little less chaotic right now. Of course, I don’t know how things will be when I go back into rehearsal, but that is about a month away…

Grateful For:
-Little Free Libraries. There are a couple of Little Free Libraries that we pass by regularly that have some really desirable books. I’ve been amassing a collection. It might be a bit of a problem….

-That the kids are old enough to sort of clean the kitchen after dinner.

-That I learned how to touch type. I was painfully watching my kids hunt and peck the other day, and I had two thoughts – 1) how can the school them all Chromebooks and not teach them to touch type? And 2) I’m sure glad I can touch type so that I can type efficiently and without looking at my hands.

-Beautiful blue skies and fluffy clouds.

-leftovers for an easy dinner, plus more in the freezer for the future when life gets busy again.

-Bodies of water – the Potomac, the Chesapeake Bay, pools. There is something so relaxing about being on the water.

Looking Forward To:

-New glasses. I’d gotten glasses earlier this year and I was having a lot of trouble reading with them. They are progressives, but my last pair was too, so I couldn’t understand why everything I tried to read was blurry. I made and appointment for a re-check and the optomitrist determined that the part of the lenses that I am supposed to read through was too low. So a new pair of glasses are coming in a few weeks! I also ordered a new pair of sunglasses while I was there since my last pair is five years old and the lenses are quite scratched. I’m looking forward to being able to read text clearly again.

-Another new thing coming my way – a new laptop. If you remember my laptop died during tech week of my last show. The Husband has ordered me a new one and I’m excited to set it up and get to work. The old laptop top was at least five or six years old, which seems like it should last longer than that…?

-Tap dancing lessons!!!! I am so super excited for this one. The parent child tap lessons I signed up for start this week. I ordered a pair of tap shoes and they just arrived and I immediately tried them on and tapped around the house. I had zero clue what I was doing, but there is something so very satisfying about that tap tap tap sound.

-Starting the high school choice process with the 13 year old. Where we live, 8th graders can lottery into any one of 5 high schools in our general area and September/October is when all the schools have open houses and you can see what different programs are offered. If you home school is your first choice, you automatically get in. Though I just found out, if you don’t submit a form, you don’t necessarily get into your home school. I can’t even think about what the spreadsheets and what nots are for determining results. So okay, I’m not “looking forward” to this in the “can’t wait, I’m so excited!!!!” kind of way. It’s more like, “I have no idea what this process is like and I am eager for more information.” This is another reason I’m glad we pulled back on activities this Fall – there is at least one open house a week for the next four weeks.

-Chorus rehearsals. Work is slowly starting back up and the first big things I have to do are run chorus music rehearsals. These are the rehearsals where the chorus learns their music. It means I’ll be working evenings again, which is kind of a bummer, but I’m looking forward to seeing many familiar faces again.

What we ate– After a super busy summer, I’m really loving being able to dive into cooking dinner again, and having the time to sit and eat together as a family. (Another plus of less busy evenings.) Although now that I look at the week, I didn’t actually cook dinner all that much….

Tuesday: Pulled pork and coleslaw tacos. The pulled pork and coleslaw was leftover from the Husband’s smoking endeavor the day before.

Wednesday: I had pizza on a pirate ship. The rest of the family had breakfast sandwiches.

Thursday: Roasted Salmon and potatoes with chimichurri sauce and steamed green beans. This was the 13 year old’s night of cooking.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Glee. Because the 8 year old has soccer practice on Friday nights, we might go back to watching episodes of tv rather than a whole movie on Friday nights. Or maybe we’ll just watch shorter movies? TBD.

Saturday: Dinner at our friend’s house- she had a huge food spread – falafel and sausage and veggies and fruit. I brought two peach cobblers – a cardamon cobbler and a ginger buttermilk cobbler.

Sunday: Curry shrimp with peppers and cabbage, served with rice. This was a quick thrown together dinner from the cookbook Make This Tonight that I had borrowed from the library then lost and so I paid for it, but then we found the cook book in, of all places, the toy room closet (I’m a little salty about that – it’s a bit of a black hole) and so just decided to keep it. The recipes are pretty simple and straightforward, which is good for weeknight cooking. This curry shrimp was basically toss shrimp in curry powder, sauté peppers and onions (I added the cabbage myself), throw in shrimp and cook until they are done. Add more curry powder. Eat with rice.

Hope everyone had a lovely week – I feel like I’m posting a little later in the week than normal and the weekend is already here! The weekend is kind of packed for us, but all good things, I hope.

Any changes to systems or routines lately? Have you ever tap danced? What is your entry way/ landing strip like? Does your house have a black hole? What should the 13 year old learn to make next for dinner? Anyone else enjoy watching tennis speeches?

Weekly recap + what we ate: Countdown to end of summer!

Last week, I had one day of work to wrap up things in the office and archive paperwork, and then I was home the rest of the week with the two older kids. The youngest still went to daycare. It was a very full and frustrating week. I felt like I was still catching up on sleep, trying to get my body back on a regular sleep schedule after the week of tech – there were a lot of late nights – my own fault! Revenge bedtime procrastination was definitely in play. And then trying to do fun and productive things. Things definitely skewed fun over than productive. The house definitely becomes a pit much faster when we are all home during the day- clothes, toys, books, food, dishes – it all piles up. And then it’s physically exhausting to be constantly cleaning and mentally/emotionally exhausting to constantly nag the kids to keep things picked up. We do need to think of better systems.

We did have a family meeting about the laundry last week and the kids decided that laundry would be put away when they get into pjs. We aren’t super great about enforcing routine clean up habits. I think this is also because the Husband and I are very different about this – he likes to constantly clean and I like to clean all the one go at the end of the night. So no wonder the kids are getting mixed messages about how to maintain a baseline level of tidiness. I’m hoping getting their input in when the laundry gets put away will help it actually get done.

Something I Learned this Week:
–Nothing draws a kid to step on your toes like your toes being broken It is amazing. It is as if a broken toe exudes a magnetic force that just draws kids (or at least my kids) to step on it. On Sunday, a week ago, I walked into a door frame. I don’t really think I broke my baby toe, but it hurt like a bejeezus for a few days. I have many friends who have broken toes and the verdict was if it wasn’t blue and sticking out sideways it is probably fine. Then a few hours later, I tripped while walking up our exterior back steps and badly stubbed my big toe on the opposite foot – I thought I was going to lose a toenail, but it has stayed in tact so far. I never noticed how much my kids step on my toes until my toes are in excruciating pain. What is with that? Do they have some kind of hidden talent for hurting me where it hurts the most? And they don’t even realize. This is the conversation, repeated many many many times:
Me: Don’t step on my toe!
Child: Ooops! Sorry! I didn’t know your toe was there!
Also – this is what gets me – don’t you notice when you are standing on something? Or is this a princess and the pea situation where only the most sensitive will notice the toe sized lump under their foot??
Okay – my toes seem fine now. A little tender still, but I’ve been walking on it an everything. Haven’t been running, but that is probably more life and having the kids at home than really about the toe.

Fourt Signs of Late Summer:

School supply shopping. While the 6 year old’s school sent a school supply list, there was nothing form the middle school. At first I thought, “Wait, maybe no one expects middle schooler to have school supplies?” If I thought elementary school was a huge information vacuum compared to daycare, it seems like middle school is a black hole. (Is that even an appropriate analogy? I’m not an astrophysicist.) The 11 year old had an ice cream social for incoming sixth graders. We got to the school and there was a sign that said, “Come back and pick up your kids at 1:30pm.” What? I just send them in there? At 1:30pm I came back and the Assistant Principal was out front reminding us of the practice mini day coming up. “Are parents supposed to come to that?” I asked.

“No! No! You just send them to us. They need to get used to figuring it out on their own,” was the reply.

Oh my. Okay.

Anyhow, I hadn’t received a school supply list and I texted a friend with a high schooler to ask, “Do they still get school supply lists in middle school?” I mean maybe this was just one of those things that I don’t know since I’ve never had a middle schooler. Turns out there is a list of sorts. My friend forwarded me the email that was sent via the PTA listerv. Another thing I have to get on. So list in hand we went to Staples.

I love school supplies. While I appreciate the efficiency of schools that create a lump package through some retailer, I do love actually going and wandering the aisles of Staples. Moreso than my kids. They do not appreciate the way I look at every single pen, or Post-It or compare notebooks and binders. They were definitely done with the process before I was. Sigh.

We also got a new back pack for the 11 year old. I figured since she was off to middle school, she needed a new sturdy backpack. She’s had the Lands End backpacks for most of elementary school, but I’ve found that they don’t hold up really well since she is very rough on them. (In kindergarten she had a backpack from Target with a some licensed character on it – I can’t remember what. It was very pink and shiny. That did not last even one year. A friend of mine says if her kids want character backpacks from Target, she always buys two because then when it rips halfway through the school year, she’s prepared.) The 6 year old has an L.L. Bean backpack – and those are nice and sturdy; I’ve had my L.L. Bean backpack since college. But the L.L. Bean backpacks don’t have the sternum clip and the 11 year old really needs something with a sternum clip since she will be walking and maybe biking to school. Someone had suggested that we check out REI for a backpack, and indeed that was where we found her a backpack – The North Face Borealis – lots of pockets, tough material, laptop sleeve, and most importantly a sternum clip. More than I had expected to pay for a backpack, but I think it will really hold up and actually it will be great for travelling adventures too. The patterns aren’t as exciting as Lands End, but I think it’s a nice colour that will grow with her, and she’ll hopefully like it just as much in three years as she does now.

Things from the garden. I’ve been in hard core kitchen nesting phase, where I just make things in the kitchen – It’s probably a result of having not really had any good kitchen puttering time yet this summer. I normally love spending time in the kitchen, whether it’s just cooking dinner, or baking, or making kitchen experiments. The Husband has been growing cucumbers and tomatoes (among other things). He is the kind of gardener that loves to grow things, but doesn’t always harvest it in time. A lot of it is over ripe, not really suitable for eating raw, so I’ve been making other things with it. The cucumber has been made into cucumber agua fresca, cucumber lemonade and cucumber yogurt soup. This latter is not really something I usually am partial to. I like my soup to be hot and chunky with texture and variety. But a friend suggested a cold cucumber curry soup, and I used this recipe as a basis, except using curry powder instead of dill. It was very tasty, but in my mind cold soup is kind of like a savory smoothie – which, once I phrased it to myself like that, it was a very nice snack to have on a very hot day.

The tomatoes I have made into tomato sauce. No recipe – just chopped two large bowls of tomatoes, mixed with a sliced onion or two, lots of garlic (like half a bulb), olive oil, salt. Roasted at 450 for an hour. Let cool, then run through the food mill. The food mill is one of those single function tools which I use maybe twice a year, but which does its one job oh so well.

It feels really satisfying and good to be messing around in the kitchen again.

Summer Day Trip. We also went to see my friend at her new house over on the southern tip of Maryland – it took about two hours to get there. She has a pool and lives on a cove with a dock on said cove. It was just a lovely relaxing day – we swam in her pool, we walked to the dock and saw lots of fish and jelly fish. We even saw a crab swimming. I’d never seen a crab swim before – it swims sideways, paddling furiously all its legs. My friend grilled us a tasty dinner, with a fantastic German potato salad on the side (note to self, get her recipe), and then we went to visit her neighbor who had sheep. I don’t know if I could live so far from the city all the time, but our quiet, calm, and nature filled day with my friend certainly made a case for it.

The County Agricultural Fair. We went to the County fair one day. We saw animals – rabbits, chickens, turkeys, cows. There was a cow giving birth; we stayed to watch the water break then the lady in charge said it might be another hour until the calf was born so we didn’t stay for that. (I did see a calf being born one year – it was kind of amazing. One moment there was one cow, the next moment, all the a whoosh, there was a baby cow, walking and everything.).

We did go check out some of the entertainment, but I found the escape artist kind of cringe-y and chauvinist. He had this act where an audience member puts him in a strait jacket, and I was just really uncomfortable with his double entendres the whole time. I’m sure he’s someone who does the fair circuit, but I would be glad never to see him again.

And then went to the Midway and we rode rides and ate fair food. Our fair feels quite standard and modest. We probably have the same rides and food booths and over priced lemonade that you would see at any other county fair. But even still, it’s a good time. The 11 year old and I like riding rides – I don’t have the courage to do the upside down ones; I’m always afraid that my glasses will fall off. But I like the big swings and the twirly rides and the roller coasters, though there aren’t really roller coasters at the fair. I do not like bumper cars. This year we got the unlimited ride wristbands for the 11 year old and me. In past years I only got a limited number of tickets, but I figured that the oldest is of an age where it makes more sense to get the wrist bands. We got the little kids enough tickets to ride a few rides. The Husband does not like rides, but he is a stellar bag holder and child watcher. The six year old only wanted slow rides and the 3 year old wanted fast rides. She was too small to ride the super fast rides, but we found a couple that were quite zippy for her and she had fun.

The 11 year old said to me at one point that a good ride had to be just scary enough to be fun, which I thought was an interesting metric. Around 7:30pm, the husband took the two little kids home and I stayed and rode rides with the 11 year old, which was nice because we don’t often get just mommy/daughter time since the little kids take a lot of attention.

On the shuttle back to the parking lot we talked to a lady who grew up showing cows at this fair. “You saw the animals, right?” she said to us, “You don’t come to the fair just to ride the rides, right?” I do wish we had spent more time with the animals, but we arrived at 3:30pm, and by then a lot of the animal stuff was winding down. Next year, I think we’ll plan to arrive earlier.

Now I truly understand the term “Sheep eyes”.

Ice Cream Adventures – We haven’t had as many ice cream adventures as we usually do. My how work gets in the way of fun! But last weekend we had no plans so we got in the car and drove to Prigel Family Creamery. On the way, we played this game:

It was a lot of fun – we all laughed so hard. Highly recommend. One of my favorite cards: “Is the Driver driving with just one hand on the wheel? He loses a point.” Hilariously on the way home, the 3 year old fell asleep and still managed to score three points.

In between we had a very relaxed visit to the Prigel Family Creamery. We first visited this place as part of the Maryland Ice Cream Trail – a list of ten or so dairies in Maryland where you could get ice cream. Visit all ten and get entered to win a prize. That first year we went to seven of them. This dairy is a nice outing because you can get sandwiches and meat and cheese plates, and there are cows – we can go, get lunch, eat it while watching the cows, and then get ice cream. I’m glad that we went because it turns out they are shutting down their sandwich counter and we were there on the last day. We ordered lunch then played some CodeNames – one of our new favorite games- then had ice cream. I had lemon ice cream, the six year old had strawberry (I think my favorite of all the cones), the three year old had cookies and cream and the 11 year old had a vanilla milkshakes with cookie dough chunks. I was a little annoyed when she thew out most of the cookie dough chunks – she said they were too big. I was probably disproportionately irked at her for this, but food waste annoys me and I would have eaten them if she had asked around. Oh well, lesson for next time.

The kids picked rocks from the parking lot to keep our cards from blowing away. I like Code Names because you don’t have to be able to read to play so all the kids can participate.

All in all, some good summer adventures for these last few days. Also not as much life admin as I would like – I still feel very behind. But I guess when we look back on the last weeks of August 2023 I want to remember the time I spent with my friends and family and the food and the sunshine, not the time I spent paying the bills. (Though that is important too.)

Grateful For:
-A full summer of work. I haven’t worked all summer in a very long time, so I’m grateful I got to do that this year.

-Friends. Now that I have my evenings back, we’ve started to make plans and see friends. One day we went to Comet Ping Pong and had pizza and played ping pong. One evening a friend came over for dinner, and she brough dessert and marinated anchovies (the way to my heart!). The past week felt very social, but that certainly fills up one my buckets too.

-Friends who cut hair. The 11 year old needed her hair trimmed – seeing as how she wants to keep it long I just wanted to take a few inches off the bottom so that the ends could stay healthy. I texted my friend and asked if she could do it and she said yes! So we went over for dinner one night and my friend did a bathroom trim. Frugal and friendly! Win!

-Bose wireless speaker. The rear speakers on my car don’t work, which makes it hard for the kids riding in the back to hear whenever I play music/audiobooks. The husband had the idea that I should bring his wireless speaker on our drive to see my friend in Sothern Maryland and it worked really well. We listened to the audiobooks of How To Train Your Dragon – hilarious. Highly recommend.

-Our new lawnmower. The 11 year old ran our lawnmower into a stump in the backyard while mowing and pretty much killed it. The lawnmower, not the stump. The stump was dead already. She feels pretty terrible about it so I am practicing putting on my big girl parenting pants on and not getting angry at her. I mean, truth to tell, the Husband is the yard/garden person so I think he took it harder than I did, but even he was the one who told me not to yell at her. I’m trying to embrace the idea that there will be casualties of raising children (My husband’s favorite snow globe, for instance that got smashed last Christmas by toddler hands), and not flip out any time something gets ruined. Seriously there should be some kind of insurance for parents of children. At any rate, as part of our agreement to buy a new mower rather than hiring a lawncare service, I have agreed to mow the lawn every other time. (I think I used to mow maybe twice a summer) The Husband is letting me get away with not using the trimmer or the blower. I just have to mow. The lawn is tiny. It takes about 45 minutes for me. Anyhow, we got a new mower. It’s battery powered. (Our previous one was gas.) It actually makes mowing not feel like an uphill struggle. It’s so quiet that I’m afraid that I’ll forget that it is actually quite dangerous. Something about the ear splitting noise of our gas mower reminded me every moment that I was one absent minded moment from losing a finger or toe. I wouldn’t say I’m looking forward to mowing now, but I guess with our new mower, it does seem like less of an inconvenience than before.

Looking Forward To:
-Having time back to myself after the kids are in school. I haven’t been exercising – first because the kids have been home and I can’t leave the six year old home by himself, then there was the whole smashed toe incident. I did manage a few yoga sessions, but I haven’t been running.
– A trip to Longwood Gardens. We haven’t been all summer, so we’re going to take a day and go before school starts. I’m looking forward to seeing the fountains and the flowers and the trees and eating the mushroom soup.
-Season Two of the Gilded Age! The trailer just dropped – I love a good soapy costume drama. I binged the first season earlier this year – it was my “watch while I do the dishes” temptation bundle. Second season starts end of October. Knowing me, I probably won’t get around to watching it until next spring – I’m horrible at keeping up with tv shows – but just knowing that there is a second season coming is very exciting for me. And I hear that there will be a dueling opera company rivalry as a plot point. Oooh!

What We Ate:

Saturday: Went out for Mexican food at Guapo’s with my sister in law and her family. I had the ceviche sampler plate. I do love ceviche. This was the last day we saw my sister in law’s family before they went back to the Netherlands (which reminds me – I still have to finish those trip recaps!)

Sunday: Grilled salmon and veggies. I did the veggies (onions, peppers, zucchini) on skewers -which isn’t something I usually do because for some reason I thought they don’t cook as well on skewers, but turns out they turn out great. I might be changing up my grilled veggie game now.

Monday: Comet Ping Pong with friends.

Tuesday: Cold Mapo Tofu, stir fried green beans w/ fired tofu, and cucumber salad, brown rice on the side. There was a great collection of recipes in the Washington Post of no-cook meals and the tofu was one of them. Basically it’s marinated silken tofu. It was very tasty, but I think I would like to use soft tofu next time; I don’t think I’m much of a silken tofu fan.

Wednesday: Snack dinner. Both the Husband and the 11 year old had plans this evening so I took the two little kids to the pool. We had crackers and cheese and fruit and whatever else I could pull from the fridge.

Thursday: Fair food. I had the grilled corn. I think the kids had corn dogs and sausages. There were also fries and funnel cake and lemonade. I’m kicking myself because I threw out my lemonade cup and I should have kept it because refills are definitely cheaper than getting a new one. Oh well, lessons for next time.

Friday: Dinner at my friend’s house in Southern Maryland.

Saturday: Pizza (Husband made) and move night. We watched the first How to Train Your Dragon movie. I thought it was quite good, but very different from the book.

Sunday: impromptu dinner at friend’s house – wings, hotdogs, salad, corn. Perfect casual get together.