July Update

The day has come where I can leave my coffee in the car and not worry about it getting cold, something I do nearly every other month in Wisconsin.

If you’re wondering why I continue to drink hot coffee in the summer, well, it keeps me cool.

We’re almost halfway through the summer and it’s occurred to me that it might be going too fast. I say that now, but if my kid tells me they’re bored, or asks me what they can do one more time, I will have to remind them that it is not my job to entertain them.

I start getting a rough idea of what my summer is going to look like as early as Spring Break. Vacations and visits with family must all be considered and blocked out in advance. The rest might get filled with camps and one-time events, but there should be some wiggle room left. Besides, there will be days when the heat index suggests with the subtlety of a buckling pavement that you really ought to stay inside and not go anywhere.

Here we are, well into July, and we’ve already traveled to the East Coast where we stayed for two weeks.

We traveled by car.

My kids don’t get enough credit sometimes. We strap them into the car, for days at a time on occasion, and they travel like troopers. I’m not saying they don’t complain, because they do, but neither one of my kids gets car-sick. I’ve never had the experience of having to pull over to the side of the road so one could be sick, or had to stop and clean up if we didn’t pull over fast enough.

The world is our oyster. The parts you can drive to anyway.

Do we irritate each other being stuck in the car for so long? Sometimes. Do we fall asleep? All but the driver, yes. But with never-ending pavement rolled out in front of us, we find ways to engage, even if it is pointing out windmills. At least we’re not tilting at them, although with kids that can be fun too.

We’re back now, for a whole two weeks before our next sorta grand adventure, and I’ve got to finish up a scrapbooking project I’ve had three years to work on. I want to have it ready in time for my youngest’s birthday next week, or when we plan to celebrate it, a day early. Basically, it’s a scrapbook of his first year. I showed what I had done to my husband and he said it gave him the feels. I don’t expect the 4-year-old to be too crazy about it, but his sister really liked her scrapbook book when she got it on her third birthday. Ahem.

And I got a chance to sit down at my sewing machine and work on another long-suffering project: my t-shirt quilt. I started piecing rows together, but sewing those rows together will have to wait. I have to decide how much I care about corners meeting up because I really don’t want to add strips between the rows. Like really don’t want to. I’m not even sure what kind of backing fabric I will use either, but I don’t have to worry about that for a while.

Then we leave town again, or the kids do. Does this mean I’ll have time on my hands for more exciting stuff on my to-do list? Or will I be too busy sleeping? Wait and see!

Best wished to you halfway through this summer season. Hang in there! Too soon, we’ll be knee-deep in school supplies and pumpkin-spiced everything.