Tonight began my week of goodbyes. As our time here is winding down to an end, I’m taking every opportunity to spend time with as many people as possible. This evening I went out to dinner with some dear friends. We went to a nice restaurant nearby and enjoyed each others’ company. Later a few of us went for ice cream and a walk on the boardwalk. I’m going to miss these women. I know I will make new friends in our new town, but leaving these ones is pretty hard.

Thank you for making my night special. Love you!

My parents started their business when I was just a baby. My childhood is populated with the memories of the various shops they worked out of. Each of them have their own reference point, the way I can describe them to my family members so that they know which one I am referring to… “the first one,” “the one with the dumpster out front,” “the one with the yard,” “the one with the office in the basement,” “the one with the fig trees.” I could say those phrases to my brother and sister and they would know exactly which one I was talking about.

Yesterday when I went out to get my nails done with my friend, we drove right past one of them.

It was the shop with the yard. Sometimes in my head I get “the shop with the yard” and “the shop with the dumpster out front” confused in my head, not their exterior, but the layout inside.

But there are definite memories from “the shop with the yard.” For one thing, it had a yard so we got to play outside more than at any of the other shops. We had a cat at that shop- his name was Higgins and he was huge. One day when we were at that shop my mom took us to the mall, and when we were at a pet store, she let me pick out my first pet bunny, which we brought back to the shop that afternoon. I named it Hershey Kiss. Don’t worry, it lived at our house! (Unfortunately it soon ate rat poison we didn’t realize was under our kitchen cabinets from the previous people, and Hershey died, but that’s another story for another time.)

Behind the closed bay door is a ramp into the shop area, big enough to drive a truck onto. My sister and I used to sit on moving dollies and race each other down the ramp and out into the parking lot, being careful not to run over our fingers. My dad did a custom paint job on his car in that shop. And it was in that very parking lot that I learned that my grandmother had passed away.

Back then we were always covered in dust and dirt. We amused ourselves with the tools at hand. We watched our parents work together to build a company that could sustain and thrive their family.

It’s a strange sensation to stand there 30 years later and gaze at the door- the feeling that it is familiar and foreign in the same breath. Our childhood experiences were unique, and looking back I am so thankful for my not by the book, unusual, outside the box memories!

Every once and a while we have to take a survey at work, a kind of measurement on the health of the organization and the people working for it. The questions range from whether you feel you are given the resources you need to do your job, to if you feel your job within the organization is important. One of the questions we all kind of make fun of is, “Do you have a best friend at work?” It seems like a silly question to put on the survey, but in spite of that, I have been blessed to be able to answer “Yes” on that one every time.

Gail is my best friend at work. In fact, outside of family, I’d honestly say she is my best friend.

She and I became friends over our growing baby bumps back in the day. I was pregnant with Big E and she was pregnant with her son. They were born about ten weeks apart. A few years later I had Baby E and a year after that she had her daughter. We’ve been navigating working-mom life together now for years. It has been a blessing to go to work each day and know that there was someone there that was on the same journey I was on, someone that could understand the victories and the failures of juggling a family and working full time. We’ve shared stories, advice, joys, and heartbreaks as we’ve watched our kids growing up.

Leaving Gail is one of the saddest parts of leaving my job.

This evening after work we got to spend some time together. We went and got pedicures. It’s been years since I’ve had one (professionally, that is, C gives me pedis sometimes, so you know…) The chance to just hang out outside of work, with no kids and no responsibilities was simply wonderful. I wish we had thought to do it sooner and more often. 😉

Mom friends are important. They keep us sane. They are our sounding boards. They talk us down from our ledges. They make motherhood less lonely. They are indispensable and I am incredibly grateful that God gave me such an amazing friend in Gail!!

Apparently when left to my own devices I eat things like nachos or pizza or ice cream for dinner. Tonight I got a nice big bowl of ice cream in hopes I could wander the boardwalk and enjoy my dinner, and perhaps do a little people watching. But I got my ice cream and went outside and it was raining and there were no people, so my best laid plans came to naught. I sat for awhile and ate my meal and watched the rain fall on the empty sidewalk in front of the ice cream shop.

I’m home now and feeling a little under the weather again so I’m heading to bed early tonight. (And no, I don’t blame my dinner… it was perfect!)

Day two of being away from my family and I really am quite lonely. I went to the grocery store on the way home, but with no one to feed but myself I landed on a meal I mercilessly mock my husband for… chips and salsa. I wandered the store longer than necessary before making my way back home.

My only picture for today is one my sister sent me of the kids’ new shoes. I like how bright and fun C’s are and her little pose makes me smile. Actually, I can see both of their personalities shining through this seemingly mundane photo. Goodness, I miss them.

I thought I would be productive tonight, but I ended up sitting on my bed, eating my nacho dinner and binge watching a show I’ve already seen. Not the constructive evening I had planned, but that’s alright. 🙂

I wasn’t feeling well on my drive home last night, but I chalked it up to having missed dinner. I stopped near home and got a bowl of soup and made it the rest of the way home. By the time I crawled into bed I was freezing and even under my huge blankets I couldn’t get warm. Then my stomach started to churn. I hoped falling asleep would make it all go away, but within an hour I was up and sick. Ugh.

After a very restless night I woke up with an incredible headache. I ate some toast and got sick again. I called out from work and literally spent the rest of the day in bed. I kept falling asleep and waking up with the headache in full force. Finally this evening it subsided and I was able to eat dinner.

With only two weeks of work left, I was disappointed to lose a day, but I was very thankful that it happened when the kids were at the new house and I didn’t have to juggle mom duties while also being sick. I’m hoping I can still sleep tonight, considering I slept most of the day away.

Meanwhile the kids had fun at home. (I guess I should start calling the new house home soon, right?!?) They got out the hose and sprinkler and spent the evening running through it. I sure do miss them. It is going to be a long week!

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of when Tim proposed to me on the Brooklyn Bridge in the middle of a monsoon. Little did we know the journey we were about to be taken on, but I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. Tim is an amazing husband, father, and best friend and I thank God that he brought us together!

I also need to give a shout out to my own father, the man that taught me so much and loves me unconditionally. And also to my father in law, who accepted me into his family like a daughter. I love them all so much. My children and I have been blessed with such strong, loving men in our lives!

So Happy Father’s Day to the three most important men in our lives!!

After the activities of yesterday, we decided to have a slow, lazy day. We spent much of it just sitting on the front porch listening and watching the birds. Baby E got to try out a pair of binoculars, while C took the opportunity to ‘tattoo’ anyone that was willing.

This evening I left them all behind at the new house and headed home. They will all stay there for the week and we will be reunited this weekend. Driving away from the house was hard, as I just wanted to be with them. But the week will fly, and then it will be only one more week of work after that. 🙂

I wanted to do something special with the kids this weekend to celebrate finishing the school year strong. I knew we would be at the new house for the weekend and I thought it would be a great opportunity to explore around our new community and make some memories. I have been wanting to find some outdoor spaces for us to escape to, so I researched some local parks and found a few that were either near a river or smaller tributary. Since water seems to be our happy place I chose a park that had good reviews and boasted some nice walking trails near a creek.

One of the things that I want to make a point of now that we will be homeschooling is to incorporate learning into our every day lives, so what better way that to make our hike our very first homeschooling field trip?! We packed up some snacks, bug spray, notebooks, and pencils and headed on our way. My mom and sister joined us for our adventure.

We were certainly not disappointed by our little park. It was in an out of the way corner off of a neighborhood and it had a small parking lot. A short walk down a path took us to the creek’s edge. Because of all the recent rains, the water was higher than it normally would be, but we could hear some rapids upstream and decided to investigate. I told the kids to keep their eyes open and we pointed out different things like how the shade was keeping us cooler, how the ground was still muddy from the recent rain, and how we found sea shells much higher on land than we anticipated, leading to the conclusion that the water had been running much higher very recently. The kids picked leaves and examined bugs. The felt the cold water and we discussed which direction the water was flowing.

We found the remains of an old bridge and even an old canal system, both of which still had stones and bricks intact. We even saw trees that had grown around bricks and lifted them off the ground. We identified different footprints, like raccoon and deer. When we got tired we sat down and ate a snack while the kids took out their notebooks and drew and journaled about what they had seen.

They all drew the rapids and the trees. C also drew a spider and the deer tracks. We got to watch a group of kayakers get a lesson and then load in their boats and push out into the water. C drew a picture of that as well.

We only had two mishaps, both involving poor Baby E, though. He placed his hand down on a rock and didn’t realize there was a broken beer bottle there and ended up slicing a small cut into his palm. Thankfully “the blood stopped bleeding” pretty quickly. A little while later he decided to run down the trail and tripped on a rock or tree root. He face planted on the trail and got a bump on his head, poor thing. But he was a good sport and did his best to keep up with his older siblings.

There were miles of trails, so we only scratched the surface. We were definitely exhausted and very dirty by the time we left 2.5 hours later. The kids learned so much, and I definitely think it helped for them to journal along the way. They brought home seashells, clamshells, walnuts, and leaves to examine.

On the way home, C wrote us this sweet note. We definitely made some wonderful memories today. It was an amazing way to start our homeschooling adventures!

I see that Big E spent his time wisely today by creating the most awesome paper dragon! 🐉 🐉 🐉

Whoever thought making the last day of school also crazy hair day did not take into consideration all of us photo-obsessed-mamas out there that just wanted a before and after shot of their kids’ school year! This morning Big E asked to sport a mohawk, and C wanted a bunch of pony tails.

This school year has been a tough one guys, but my kids did an amazing job at rolling with the punches. If you remember, we moved out of our townhouse shortly after school started. Initially we had thought we might move to our new house in January, so we did not anticipate managing an entire school year from my in-law’s basement, but it worked! I am so proud of how hard these kids worked! I know it wasn’t easy and we never quite felt settled, but they were so resilient. And in just a few more weeks I get to see them all the time! I CANNOT WAIT!

Tim got them off of the school bus this afternoon and took them out to the new house this evening. I have spent my time packing up clothes to take when I head out there tomorrow after work. They will be spending the next week or so out there, which means I will have nearly a week without them. As much as I will be soaking up the quiet, I am going to miss them!

Today was also Baby E’s last day at his daycare. I have been so grateful to have such a wonderful place to drop my children off every day. He has learned so much over this past year and he is really coming out of his shell. I know he is going to miss his teacher and his many friends.

Last night we took some time to sit down and do some ‘homeschooling.’ We had recently picked out a book at the library about sharks. We spent about 20 minutes going through the first half. We lingered on each page talking about the information we were learning. When we were done, I asked the kids to talk about the book and about anything they hadn’t known about sharks before reading it. Then they sat down and drew a shark for me. The great thing was, they didn’t realize how much they were learning. When we called Tim a few minutes later, C couldn’t wait to share that she learned that Great Whites roll their eyes up in their heads when they eat and Big E described that sharks had different teeth to do different things. I’m looking forward to many more teachable moments in the future!

I love that her shark is waving!

The yellow on the bottom left are the fish the shark is eating. Apparently this Great White is a messy eater since he smeared fish guts all over his face! Those teeth, though!