News & Notes, July 4th Edition

Between procrastinating on writing my last post, a busy week of three soccer games, and trying to fill our extra-long holiday weekend with fun, I have a lot of catching up to do.  

Our 19th anniversary was last Tuesday.  The good news is that the kids are now old enough that we felt confident we could leave them for a couple hours and go have dinner.  Only took us nearly 3/4 of our marriage to get there...haha.  I was a little disappointed right off the bat, though, because I was hoping to go out to Victor on our way and pick up my repaired wedding ring, but due to an extra long wait at the Wendy's drive-thru to pick up Carter's dinner, we didn't get on the road soon enough to get to the store before it closed.  My ring had a prong sheared off at some unknown point, and I noticed it a couple months ago when part of the ring felt rough.  The jewelry store is a full half hour away so it was hard to make it convenient to get there for drop-off or pick-up, so I was wearing a fake ring for a couple months.  It was the same cheap one with three fake diamonds that I bought right after we got married when my real rings were getting soldered together and didn't want a "naked" finger.  For whatever reason that one never felt fully comfortable like my real ring so I desperately wanted to get my ring back and our anniversary would have been perfect timing.  I was bummed it didn't work out, but we made the best of the night.  Craig picked up the ring for me a few days later, although I'm not thrilled with the alignment of the wrap to the solitaire so I may need to stop back one of these days.  Anyway, Craig did get me some gorgeous anniversary roses!

Although I sometimes wish that we had fancier palettes and ate at more interesting places, we ended up at a very pedestrian restaurant--Cheesecake Factory!  I hadn't been there in ages.  I couldn't even remember the last time--maybe I was still at my old job as we celebrated there a couple times?  But I was craving my favorite meal, so off we went.  We had a very nice dinner on the patio on a lovely night.  
 

We finished off the night with a trip to Trader Joe's across the parking lot to stock up on mac and cheese (Jacob's and mine), snacks, and wine before heading home to the boys, who I'm glad to report did not kill one another.  

As I mentioned, it was also a busy week of soccer.  I haven't mentioned soccer much because it's been a rough season.  We're more than halfway through, and Carter's team still hasn't won a game.  They've tied two, at least.  He's been stuck on defense most of the season, so no goals yet.  His coach is an older dad who's never coached youth soccer and makes it pretty obvious.  At least the coach's kid is a decent player so I can't get mad when he plays him a lot.  The team as a whole is tentative and isn't really good at passing the ball to anyone in particular--and in fact they have a tendency to do a throw-in right to the other team.  The one night last week they had an offensive explosion and were up 8-4 at one point, which was crazy since many games they barely score, but this other team wasn't great but had one kid that clearly should be playing travel instead and ended up scoring a ton (we think all but one of their goals), and the game ended in an 8-8 tie.  It was heartbreaking, and it's been a tough season as a whole.  Jacob and Carter like to play one-on-one after games, and somehow they don't seem to argue when they do that, even if Carter does get frustrated when he can't score.

I got bored waiting for them to finish one night and noticed some flowers nearby.  I have really bright pink coneflowers in my front flower bed, but I had never noticed these gorgeous flowers under the scoreboard at the soccer field.  I just love them so much because of how the petals on the first and third ones perfectly offset the center!  And that second one is just...wow.  Would it be bad if I stole a few spent ones to let them go to seed and plant them in my garden? :)

This one is so odd.  At first I thought it just wasn't fully open, but now I'm not so sure.  I saw a fading one whose petals were a bit more open, but not by much. 

I took off Friday through Tuesday for the long weekend, and it was much needed.  I didn't start it out well because I had all sorts of big plans to work out, clean, run errands and be productive, and it just didn't happen.  I had an extra lazy morning and it just set me on a rough path for the day.  But we did end up going to the drive-in Friday night to see the new Minions movie, which was fun.  The weather was a bit more threatening than we would have liked, but we had already pre-ordered our sheet pizza from the gluten-free place around the corner so we had to make it work.  It did rain for a while after we ate dinner in our parking spot, and then again a bit during the movie, which made for some close quarters in the back of the van, but we probably dodged a bullet as the distant lightning indicated it could have been worse!  We almost stayed for the second movie but we knew it would probably rain (we'd have turned around and watched from our seats) and we knew we'd appreciate sleep more, so we left--which was probably smart.

Staying dry in the back of the van!

On Saturday morning I was determined to right the wrongs of my laziness on Friday, so I worked out in the morning and then dragged Carter out for some afternoon fun.  We needed to go to the library to get him some new books and I wanted to stop at Aldi for a couple things, but I greased the wheels a little bit with a new playground!  A friend of mine posted about this one a week or so ago, and then the town posted about it a couple days later.  It's new-ish but I think it's been around for a number of months.  It's right up near the lake and it was amazing!

 

See that climbing structure in the background in the photo below?  That was literally the hardest playground thing I think I've ever done.  That top horizontal log was probably a solid 5-6 feet off the ground, so there was a little bit of terror if you fell off.  I almost fell myself and had visions of broken bones for both of us!  But the ropes helped and it definitely felt like a victory to conquer it!

Carter liked being spider prey on the big web!

 
It was in the loveliest little spot along a little waterway going between Long Pond and Lake Ontario.  It was so pretty and peaceful.  Ironically, there was a house nearby (off to the far right, out of the picture) that got hit by a vehicle pretty severely back in March and the vehicle ended up in that water.  I remember seeing at the time that the affected house was on a little offshoot from the main road and suddenly it occurred to me that the house next to the playground that was missing some siding was that house!  But aside from that bit of knowledge, it seemed like such a peaceful spot.

There was a pedestrian bridge nearby to go to the little strip of land sandwiched by the channel and the lake.  It was such a pretty view from there.

This is looking toward where it empties into the lake

 

This is the view looking back inland toward the pond

 
Every time I go to spots like that it makes me want a boat, a kayak, or a paddleboard.  I had another moment like that on Monday (more in a minute).  I love having outside things to do--I'm not good at creating my own outdoor fun, so I appreciate our pool and playground time, but when I go to a peaceful spot like that, I long to do active outdoor stuff on the water.  I swear, if the paddleboards currently at Aldi get cheap, I might just have to buy one to keep until I figure out where to launch it!  Water like that creeps me out a bit but just keep your mouth closed and your life jacket on!

Carter and I enjoyed playing tic-tac-toe on the playground...

 
...and had to take a celebratory picture to celebrate climbing the structure I mentioned earlier, once we were safely on the cargo net!

Now how do we get ourselves back down?!

Carter loved his seat as King of the (Rock) Hill!

 
Back at home, we spent a lot of time over the weekend in the pool.  It was rather warm and mostly sunny, which was needed since the pool still felt oddly chilly.  I also did some massive weed removal from the cracks of our patio and some scrubbing of the siding around the back of the house to remove the algae that tends to grow in the areas that don't get a lot of sun.  Those tasks helped me get warm enough to swim!  The boys play a lot of basketball and I float.  Carter can now touch the bottom pretty easily but is doing great with his swimming as well. 

On Sunday night we went for our first round of mini golf for the summer.  It was a bit of a challenging visit because Jacob is getting serious about golf and was really frustrated that he wasn't doing better.  Craig and I also had really good rounds, which didn't help.  We all played well, even if Carter felt bad because he was a bit further behind the rest of us--but he actually did great with only a couple mulligans along the way.  Jacob asserted his dominance back in the arcade, though--he beat the record on the basketball machine 3 or 4 times!

This was the first one--he got it up well into the 80s and could have gone higher, but he'd stop as soon as he beat it so it was easy to beat again!

I got to try a new axe throwing game and got a couple bullseyes!  The boys played a giant Hungry, Hungry Hippos game!

Over the course of the last couple years, aided by Jacob's basketball records and a couple generally successful trips, we have amassed close to 10,000 tickets!  I've never even been able to look at the top tier of prizes with any amount of seriousness, so it's been fun to know at some point we can buy something pretty cool!  I was slightly obsessed with the giant stuffed sloths in hoodies but clearly that is not something we need--but it's fun to let my inner teenager dream!

On 4th of July morning, I wanted to go for a bike ride.  It was perfect weather for it.  I wanted a mindless ride, so I decided to go along the canal path.  My goal was Spencerport, but when that ended up feeling too short, I went a couple miles beyond that to Ogden.  My goal is to someday make it all the way to North Tonawanda via the canal path, which could take a couple days' worth of three 10-15 mile stints.  If only I had a partner to do it with me!  It's so peaceful and I'd love to see the entire route of locks and towns along the way.  On the way back home, I ran into the lift bridge in Spencerport lowering back down after one of the rental houseboats (also on my bucket list) passed underneath.  It was pretty cool, and I'm not sure I knew that this bridge raised and lowered in one piece as opposed to the ones that split down the middle and lift in an "A" shape.

My parents came in for the afternoon of the 4th.  We were hoping for good pool time but probably a half hour after we got in the sun went behind the clouds and never really came back out.  It got a bit chilly in there so we probably only lasted an hour or so!  Still, we had a nice time on the patio and ordered dinner in, then had a pie my mom brought.  They left before dark and we spent the night watching a movie and checking out the fireworks that neighbors a street over were shooting off.  I'm happy we weren't any closer--they were big and would have freaked me out anywhere near my house!  My parents left behind a partial box of sparklers they randomly found at the event they went to the prior night, so Carter and I went out before bedtime to light them.  

 
We had one more day off on Tuesday, and I snuck in another workout and some errand running.  I definitely have an Aldi problem--I've bought two maxi dresses, denim leggings, workout leggings, a cold brew coffee maker, six pairs of underwear, a phone holder for my bike and an amazing planter (some of it on clearance) in the past few weeks--but when it's cheaper than elsewhere and fills a need, why not?  Could be worse--the most popular impulse purchase right now is a $200+ wicker egg chair!  I think I need a break, though!  Otherwise, Jacob had some basketball stuff and Carter taught me how to play checkers (and promptly regretted it since I beat him--oops), and it was generally a quiet, somewhat dreary day to end our break.  

This week starts our journey back to summer normalcy.  Carter started his summer program on Wednesday, basically a summer camp version of the after school program.  I think he needs the daily stimulation and break from the screens, and so far he seems to be enjoying it.  Jacob had a half day basketball camp for three days this week, but ended up skipping Wednesday because he got hit on the top of his head with an errant half court shot on Tuesday during training and we're sort of monitoring his headaches.  If that wasn't enough, Craig hurt his finger blocking a shot in the pool on Monday so we seem to need our own medical ward right now!  I'm supposed to start going back in the office twice a week now but I'm finding it challenging to work around random life stuff.  It seems whenever I try to go into the office there's something that cuts my day short or makes me switch it.  I'll go in Friday, and I think my days are basically set next week with a couple events (food truck and meeting our new boss), but let's see if we can do them without life intervening.  

Basketball seems to be done now (this week's injury saved us a trip to Watertown when there were no hotels available), and Jacob already seems to have a team for the fall with his favorite coach.  Soccer has a couple more weeks left.  Most weekends have something planned through the end of the month, then we hit a couple family reunions and suddenly it will be into August and we'll have a mere couple weeks until our big trip!  Wait, did I even mention that here?  We officially booked flights and accommodations for Disney for the last week of summer break, but have literally done nothing since because meal plans aren't available and I'm nervous about buying park tickets without knowing weather and all that.  I'll have to bite the bullet at some point but it's all a little overwhelming and I probably just need to ask a Disney planner what else we need besides an airport shuttle.  It's exciting but scary, especially with a new strain of COVID lurking.  I've told Carter he doesn't need to wear his mask at camp (he still is at times, by his choice) because if he gets it ahead, we'll all be a little safer when we travel, but he might have to actively mask for the last week of camp so he doesn't get it then.  I'm a little worried about it all, and I know I'll procrastinate and panic if I don't hurry up and get started (I thought the same thing about uniforms the other day, too--and school supplies can't wait long either), so the end of summer might be a little nuts.  Time to start working through everything on our summer to-do list now, but at least I feel like we're making a good effort already on the fun side.  And my flowers are blooming and my garden is close to a first harvest so we are definitely hitting peak summer.  It's as close to normal as we've been in years, despite some lingering struggles, so I want to enjoy it as much as possible.  Let's give it a try...