Hello everyone! This morning is so rainy! I fell asleep to rain, and woke up to rain. It’s definitely the perfect morning for coffee.

We had two parties over the weekend and got to spend so much time with family, it was so nice. The first was Saturday when we attended my cousin’s son’s graduation party. We ended up running into an old friend from high school there, and spent some time catching up. It was good to see people we haven’t seen in years, and to celebrate Nick’s achievement! It was pretty chill, and folks just sat around munching on snacks and enjoying conversation. It was humid as heck though, but Michigan summers, what are you going to do?

Sunday was Mermaid Girl’s birthday, and she had a movie theater party! It was pretty neat. We got the whole theater to ourselves, and they had a spot in the front to have the presents/cake etc. All the kids got kid’s packs which had popcorn, candy, and one of those slurpee type drinks. We sang happy birthday and had cupcakes first, with the movie, which was The Haunted Mansion. It was pretty cute but a bit too long. I’m a person who misses the era of 90 minutes movies. Not every movie needs to be 2 hours, and this was one. It definitely reminded me a lot of the ride at Disney, which is one of my favorites.

However, the kids seemed to be having a great time! They didn’t really have to be quiet or anything, they could watch the movie and talk or whatever, since it was just our group for the party, and those of us non-kid people were family. It was less about the movie and more about the party – but it was cool to see a movie in the theater again. We hadn’t done that again yet post-pandemic, just because time, and Wyatt is not a movie watcher. In fact, he fell asleep during the movie on my arm and stayed asleep for about 45 minutes and woke up for the end. He did have fun at the party though, even though he took a nap there.

Can you all believe that it is mid-August already? I always get in a sort of funk this time of year. I looked back at my blog posts from last year and I had the same ennui. I guess I don’t handle this transition well, from summer to fall. Like it’s not quite summer, not quite fall, and generally I am excited for autumn to be here and to start school (like now!) so I think that is part of it. Like Sylvia Plath said “August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.” It does seem like an odd uneven time to me. I am still enjoying the rest of summer but it just feels off. Uneven. Odd. (I am sticking with Plath’s words on this one)

Despite this August weirdness, we have been enjoying our norm – going for walks/bike rides, the library, playing games, reading books, going to the park – just normal little everyday summer things. We FINALLY also got some ripe tomatoes and cucumbers from our very neglected garden. The tomatoes are humungous, quite ugly but quite tasty, and we had them as tomato cheese sandwiches, our favorite. Our gardens are all overgrown and weedy. Things had gotten very overwhelming this summer and the garden got lost in the shuffle. It makes me sad but there is always next year. At this point I am hoping for some cool, dry weather to just clean it all up and get rid of a lot of it.

Some random photos:

What have you all been up to?

Have a great week all!