Well, it's been an interesting week or so--though probably not as interesting as it should have been.
Last Friday we went to Buffalo to celebrate our niece and nephew's 21st birthday. It's hard to believe they've crossed over that last legal milestone and are pretty much full-fledged adults now. They were born right before Craig and I got engaged. At that point it was pretty much a foregone conclusion it was happening, so I was essentially accepted as a part of the family by then--which worked out well because we spent most of Father's Day in the hospital as they were being born six weeks early. They were tiny, about 4.5 and 3.75 pounds if I recall correctly. We didn't know the genders, so finding out it was a boy and a girl was very exciting! A few days later we got to go back and hold them, and they were by far the smallest babies I have ever held! And now they're both taller than me, one by over a foot!
We went to a well-known Buffalo hangout near my in-laws' for the celebration, and I had seen a couple photos of the Buffalo chicken sandwich from there and really wanted to get it. Fortunately it worked out for Craig and me to split it, because this is just insane:
The bun is not small. That chicken breast was a solid 9+ inches long.
I spent most of the evening chatting with my mother-in-law while the boys hung out in the bar, which was just fine with me. We had a wedding (and an early christening) the next day, so I had no need to sabotage that by drinking that night. Of course, Jacob almost got handed a shot, so there's that. Ugh. Thankfully he knows better. We headed to my parents' after that and settled in for the night.
My cousin's baby girl was being baptized at 10am, so we were up and out pretty early. I had been battling a cold for a couple days--I could feel it coming but had been successfully fighting it off with zinc, so I got up extra early to take a COVID test, just in case. It was fine, thankfully. The baptism was short and sweet, but it was good to see some family. I wish we could have gone to the celebratory picnic after--the boys went with my parents--but we had to get to Craig's cousin's wedding and it didn't really make sense for us to drive all the way back to the northtowns in between the ceremony and reception. The wedding was lovely--a little long and with a priest that barely spoke English--but the church was so beautiful. We also went there for our first COVID-era wedding in November 2020, which was the groom's brother's wedding where the reception had to be moved at the last minute and cut into two shifts to accommodate increased COVID restrictions.
After the ceremony we ended up at Panera for some lunch, stopped at the mall so Craig could get a new belt (his suddenly started peeling really bad), and then went to his parents' house for a while since it wasn't far from the reception. I was completely enchanted by this dahlia in their front planter. Isn't it perfect?
The reception was lovely. They had large gourmet popcorn bags as favors, a giant bowl of shrimp cocktail for an appetizer (plus amazing passed appetizers), a different way for doing a guest book (leaving messages on a phone--though I fear the music got too loud for that later in the night), and a "Taste of Buffalo" bar for late night snacks. It was just nice as a whole and we enjoyed catching up with family. We clean up pretty nice...
It clicked in my head in the middle of dinner that the groom was in fact our ring bearer, and our flower girl was there as well, so given that our 20th anniversary was less than two weeks away, it felt appropriate to get a picture of the two of them together!
Throwback to 20 years ago...man, does time fly.
Our flower girl got married five years ago and now has two kids of her own, so it shouldn't be a shocker that they're all grown up, but still...it's hard to believe we've had the same amount of time to age as they have! Then we got a picture of all of us!
For reference...
Crazy, isn't it? It was quite the dose of perspective to realize how quickly 20 years can vaporize before your eyes. In many ways we probably don't feel much different than that bride and groom in the picture (in other ways we are completely different and freaking exhausted), so to realize how much has actually changed--if only based on what those two kids look like now--it's shocking. I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on this for our actual anniversary, but it was quite the visual to look at the pictures side by side.
One cool moment at the wedding was when they did the anniversary dance, where all the married couples go out to dance and slowly get called off the dance floor by years. First the bride and groom, then one year, then five, and so on. My parents gave one a pretty good run at my cousin Lori's wedding last year, but Craig was at a tournament with Jacob so I couldn't do that one. This time, Craig and I lasted a while, although we just fell short of the 20 year mark...by 11 days, darn it. But there were a bunch of seasoned couples out there still, and it took into 35-40 range to whittle them down. Eventually it was down to two couples, Craig's parents and another couple. The DJ started calling off years one by one and as he got around 49 and 50, the other couple walked off, leaving Craig's parents the winners! They just hit 51 years a little over a week earlier. Not too shabby--but very well earned, for sure! Craig's dad raised a fist in celebration and it was cute to see them have a little moment of victory since it definitely hasn't been easy at times.
Oh, and one of the coolest little touches at the wedding was the basket of light-up foam sticks they brought out for dancing. They were just simple white foam with a "Haley & Dennis" sticker on them, and they lit up red, green, and blue with three different light patterns. It was such a fun, festive touch for everyone dancing!
We were just about ready to go when Jacob called and then texted us saying that Carter was sick. I panicked a little knowing he'd just gotten over a stomach bug and that those are my mom's kryptonite, but it turned out he was just super congested. Luckily, by the time we got back to my parents', he seemed to be a bit better. The next morning was Father's Day, and while I wanted to get up and go to church, I was just exhausted. It wasn't like I drank a lot and it wasn't a super late night, but I think a crappy sleep the previous night and a busy day just wiped me out. I guess I'm just not as young as I used to be. Not to mention that I was still using Zicam to fight off the cold, so maybe that was running me down as well. The extra sleep helped, though. The boys went to the outlets for a bit in the morning, and then after everyone got home, we headed out to lunch at Anderson's with my parents and then went back to spend the afternoon with Craig's parents. They were actually alone for a few days starting that day, since the rest of family had left for our sister-in-law's parents' 50th anniversary celebration in Pennsylvania. We had a very nice, low-key day watching baseball and eventually getting some outside time. The boys were in the pool for a while.
I wouldn't normally post this picture but I took this blog off search engine results a while back (at the kids' request) so few people will see this anyway. Jacob was enjoying the warm water on the waterfall and just being silly (and he "had to have" this somewhat short pair of swim trunks), and it cracked me up because the picture made it look like he was modeling...haha.
Then Carter got into perfecting his cannonball. It's hard to do in our pool without a deck (or even a steady ladder), so he was in all his glory trying here.
After many tries, I think we finally got a winner...and Craig's dad was eagerly cheering him on 😁
Fortunately, we had Monday off for Juneteenth so we had an extra day to settle back in for the week. We actually got in some pool time at our house even though it felt pretty chilly still. I did enough yard work--mostly trying to salvage my garden that got raided by an animal that chewed through the fence (!)--that it felt doable. I was lucky enough to find some mature replacement plants at my local nursery, and they were even on sale so I got two cukes, an extra zucchini to go with a tiny one that made a comeback, and even a spaghetti squash since so little was coming up in the rest of my garden. We finally got some rain, too, after about three weeks with nothing, so what's there is now growing well. I mostly just floated on a raft in the pool while the boys played basketball and did a whirlpool, but it was nice to finally get in there after weeks of cold weather. This past week was warmer, at least.
Tuesday was Carter's last full day of school and also Jacob's 15th birthday. I had mentioned previously that he really hadn't given us many gift ideas other than his insistence we go back to Disney, so we really didn't have much for him. He ended up staying home from school that day because he didn't want to go on a field trip to Seabreeze (not sure he is my child!), so we took him out to lunch (Chipotle) and dinner, which ended up being steak *and* lobster at Outback because they had a good deal running. Lucky kid. We'll make it up to him by buying random things he likes in the coming weeks, but we ended up with no pictures and the day was definitely a bit lower key than normal. Unfortunately, by that night it was clear that the cold I'd successfully battled for days was coming back, and this time it wouldn't be stopped. Darn it.
I woke up feeling pretty terrible on Wednesday. I was really congested and tired. I had a pre-scheduled doctor's appointment that morning that I really wanted to go to, so I pushed through to get to that. It was Carter's last day, a half day, and since the timing of my appointment was better to take Jacob to school, I had to do that and leave the picture taking to Craig.
Jacob only had Field Day on Wednesday and he didn't want to go, but since he skipped the field trip the previous day, we wanted him to go and just be supportive. We encouraged him to take his doctor's note to stay out of activities, but of course he didn't listen and the whole morning ended up being a mess, between him refusing to get up, being extra late, spilling breakfast on himself, and just generally making things difficult. It was horrible. He was super late to school and I was late to my doctor's appointment as a result. And of course, he ended up aggravating his injuries (mostly a sore knee he's been dealing with) because they did some long walk scavenger hunt. So he was pretty furious with us after that, even though we had told him how to avoid it and he chose not to listen or advocate for himself. We can't win sometimes. I only ended working about half a day that day because I felt so terrible, and I was really trying to rest up to feel better for an event I had the next day.
Thursday Jacob just had a moving up ceremony, which he also wasn't excited to attend, but we felt he should be a part of it. Craig went with him. He didn't have to be there until late morning, but somehow still ended up in a rush to get out the door. As a result, we forgot to take the official last day picture. So clearly I was just #momfailing all over the place with him this week. Two major milestones and neither got documented! I woke up feeling a little bit better and fortunately medicine finally started working for me. I was nervous about making my event--I had to feel good enough by about 1:30 to do it--but the medicine came through and I was able to go. It was a work event in Syracuse with my two bosses, and I was supposed to be driving all three of us. But it was for LOBSTER. All you can eat, in fact. I hadn't made it to this event since probably 2018 because of COVID and one year when Jacob's birthday fell on the day. But it was always amazing--go through a tour of our printer's facility, then eat lobster and steak and have drinks of choice. They used to have root beer floats where you could keep the glass, but that didn't happen this year. But we did get an amazing fuzzy blanket in our swag bag, and I also won a $25 gift card! We had such a good time just chatting in the car and at the event, and the printer employees are so fun and friendly at this event that it's almost impossible to not have a wonderful time. We left full and happy, and there was even a lovely sunset to watch on the way home.
My cold was so much better the next day that I no longer needed medicine. I'm still a little congested, but it's minimal and nose blowings are productive, so I'm good for now, I guess. We were originally supposed to be in Pennsylvania this weekend for basketball, but we've officially called it quits on this year so Jacob can get healthy. It's been such a mess. We've had him checked and there doesn't appear to be structural damage to his knee, but he just keeps aggravating it. It's a tough balance between staying conditioned and giving it rest. We had a pretty quiet weekend, in part because the weather was unpredictable and it was tough to do anything. We did a lot of work in the yard, the boys got haircuts and hit baseballs for a bit, and we hopped in the pool for a bit before thunderstorms came through on Sunday. Oh, and I finally took Jacob's picture...
Next weekend things get interesting again, but for this week we navigate having both boys home for summer vacation and my last week of my work's fiscal year, which is always a little crazy. I'm still woefully behind on finding ways to keep Carter occupied this summer. He should be getting his summer school laptop later this week, and I need to make a list of things for him to do other than screens, starting with sorting all of his school stuff. He can practice his viola, build things, practice writing...we just need some structure. We're just winging it for this summer, I guess, and I'm thinking my annoyance will up the urgency to find something--anything--to get one kid out of the house at any given time. The next step is figuring out how to get Jacob working papers and to see if we can find anything to get him gainfully employed for a few hours a week this summer. Next week my brother and his kids are back east and I'm off work all week, so we are definitely looking forward to that.
Summer is officially here and now to just figure out (as usual) how to make the most of it without wishing it away. On we go...
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