Project Life Roundup: Weeks of August 12-19/20-26

August 12-19: Not much going on for our family. Hubby continued to host band camp in his first year as marching band director. I sewed a billion flags (not really, just eight and they were basically straight hems more than flags). I presided over my first arts council board meeting. Hubby and I volunteered at our local street festival, working for some of our various non-profits we help with.

August 20-26: Hubby returns to school officially. The kids and I have plans to visit out of town, but it never happens because one thing after another came up. Ted has started soccer practice. We had middle school orientation, where Ted got to figure out how to open a locker and reunite with some of his buddies. My MIL took the kids shopping for school shoes, which she did last year and has decided is now her “thing.” On Friday, Ted was invited to a water gun battle as an end of summer celebration and the girls got to meet their teachers.

Project Life Roundup: Week of August 5-11

Sunday: I attended the ribbon cutting ceremony for the project I’ve been working on for almost a year.

Tuesday: Scarlett and Viv get their first haircuts. Scarlett has actually had a tiny trim about two years ago (she’s 7 now), but scissors have never touched the Viv’s hair until this day.

Wednesday: Daisy had karate and I had a meeting to plan a gala event in February.

The rest of the week we did very little in anticipation of everything kicking back into gear for the school year. I’m not ready.

Project Life Roundup: Week of July 30-August 4

Monday: Guess who’s birthday it was!!! Yeah, me. It was kind of a bummer of a birthday. I renewed my driver’s license, applied for a new social security card and went on a job interview for a job I didn’t want. Happy birthday to me.

Tuesday: We celebrated the birthdays from the past week, Scarlett, Hubby and me, with my in-laws.

Wednesday-Friday: I spent most of my time running up to our county seat so I could help with a grand opening of a project I’ve been working on.

Saturday: We had a girls’ weekend for the middle generation in our family. My sister, sister-in-law and cousins went and hung out on the beach and went shopping.

Project Life Roundup: Week of July 22-29 (AKA Vacay!)

Lots to wrap up this week. This will probably  make two layouts worth, there’s so many pictures and things we collected. Speaking of collecting things, that’s my challenge to myself – to collect the ephemera of our lives to put in our album. So far I have the Delaware State Fair program, the scorecard from mini-golf and the parking permit for the beach we went to on Saturday.

Sunday: We just casually scoped out the area. We’ve been there plenty of times, but not for a week-long vacation.

Monday: Beach! We had our first day on the beach and loved it. The girls are water babies and Ted, well, he’s not. A few weeks ago we visited for the day and he was brave and went out pretty far into the ocean, but got wiped out. Now he won’t venture out past his knees. That night we went to the Delaware State Fair, which is actually closer to our house than where we were vacationing, but whatever. We love going there, so it’s worth it. We ate fair food (though nothing deep-fried), pet the farm animals and checked out the exhibits. My kids aren’t ride riders, well, Viv would, but no one else, so we skip all of that for the most part.

Tuesday: Back to the beach. We planned to have lunch from one of the boardwalk joints and have a long day beaching it, but Viv can’t hang. She melted down as soon as we ate lunch and we left. Lesson learned. Four-year-old can only hang on the beach for about three hours.

Wednesday: Hubby had to go to a meeting, so we met my cousin and the kids she nannies for the summer at a nearby beach. The kids loved playing together and we pushed Viv to well beyond her three hours. I think it was the most exhausting day of vacation for me.

Thursday was Hubby’s birthday, so he got to call the shots (that’s how we roll on birthdays around here whenever possible). We mini-golfed and hung out at the pool and had crab dip for dinner.

Friday: My sister and sister-in-law arrive for the big family celebration. Besides Scarlett and Hubby’s birthdays, mine was coming up on Monday. So we partied and watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics (we discussed drinking around the world in honor, but decided a few representative countries would suffice. I help up my end with a German Riesling).

Saturday: The whole family went to the beach. And I mean the whole family – my mom and dad, sister and brother and all associated kids and spouses. It was fun for the kids, but a little hard on the adults, I thought. It was very crowded and hot. Or possibly by that point, I was sick of the beach. (I know!)

Project Life Roundup: Week of July 15-21

We started the week off with a visit to our extended family, mainly to see my grandmother, who loves visits from the kids. However, it turned into a tie-dying party since my aunt had some extra shirts from a previous tie-dying event.

We spent Monday visiting again before we headed home.

Tuesday, Scarlett lost her first tooth! The tooth fairy brought her $5 – either because it was her first tooth or she was out of one dollars.

Wednesday was Karate night, Thursday an easy night at home. On Friday, Hubby and I went to the funeral of his friend’s father. It wasn’t the first funeral for one of our friends’ parents, but it was hard because it made me consider my own parents’ mortality. They’re young. My mom is 20 years younger than this man was, but anything can happen. So I spent the day sad for my friend and putting myself in his place and freaking out. Traffic ended up with us taking the longest route imaginable home.

Saturday was Scarlett’s birthday! She’d been hoping to lose that tooth on her birthday (we’ve heard rumors that there’s a bonus reward for lost birthday teeth), but no dice. All she wanted was As Seen on TV crap and I didn’t have my stuff together in time to get that (most of it takes several weeks to arrive). Shh – don’t tell her, but I found one on Amazon Prime that will arrive today for her birthday party at her grandparents’ house.

Project Life Roundup: Week of July 8-14

See, this is why I need to write all of this crap down when it happens and not rely on my utterly useless memory to get it all straight. I can’t think of a single thing we did that week. Possibly because it’s summer and I’m trying to have a light schedule and we really didn’t do much. Also, possibly because it was a thousand degrees most of those days. We just hung out in the house.

Sunday, Daisy’s Girl Scout troop went roller skating. All of them were there for the first time. Daisy has more guts than ability, so she went all out and ended up bruising the heck out of my ankle when she couldn’t get her feet under her properly. She did work it out by the end of the day and was getting around pretty well.

Monday: A little rain shower leads to some puddle jumping:

Thursday: Storytime at the Library (as Viv says, “the lellow libaly.” She is in speech therapy for some of those sounds, so I’m not making fun of my four-year-old. I think it’s adorable and will be a little sad when she speaks just right).

Project Life Roundup: Week of July 1-7

Oh, did you think there were going to be pictures of a completed Project Life layout? Silly, silly. No, I’m just planning ahead for the day when I will actually work on my PL album. You know, in the future. I actually have a vague plan of doing it during a girl's’ weekend I have scheduled with my cousins, but then again, I also have plans of emptying the fridge of wine that weekend. So maybe Project Life will wait a little longer.

July 1: The two middle girls met the granddaughters of a woman we go to church with. They were visiting from California and were looking for some friends. It was one of those experiences my girls (who are 7 and 9) will probably have a vague memory of, but not much other than that. One summer, we visited some friends of my parents on our drive home from the beach. They had kids my age and we played on their swingset. I have no idea who they are or why we stopped to visit or really a single other detail about that experience.

Then we drove off to my parents’ beach house for dinner and an evening at the pool. The kids love to swim so convincing them to leave to go to bed wasn’t easy, but we all had fun.

July 2: We got up early to go to the beach to find it was cloudy and raining. It cleared up by 10, so we drove off in search of good parking (smart move – it was crazy just an hour later). My brother and his family were driving in to visit that morning and they joined us on the beach. I love for my kids to have a chance to visit with their cousins.

July 4: We actually had an invite to a party – and not just our family plus Hubby’s parents. No, it was actual people. We ate crabs and the kids rode bikes together. We left to go see fireworks in a nearby town that we’d never seen fireworks at before. We loved it – so relaxing and easy to get in and out of the downtown area. Definitely going back next year.

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July 5-7: It is hotter than the sun here. Saturday’s high is 105. The A/C in Ted’s room broke so he had to bunk with the girls until we got a new one (our house is older than everyone living in it combined and multiplied by 4). Other than that, we all just hang out indoors.