My gosh, it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged! I’d like to say I was having too much fun, but honestly, that’s only a portion of it. Here’s what happened over the summer…
Summer break began, and we hit the ground running. We had a week or so break (the kids attended a VBS at my son’s school) before we all caught colds – just in time for my daughter’s birthday and our anniversary.
Just as we started feeling better, we were hit with a few days of earthquakes, one of which was a 6.6. Despite the fact that the quakes were 170 miles away, we felt them pretty good down here. We felt rolling that lasted quite a while. But here’s the crazy part: something about the earthquake triggered me, and I felt sick and dizzy for more than an hour. I decided to do research on the off chance that there’s a connection between earthquakes and epilepsy (which I have if you didn’t know). I found a study (here), with this conclusion: “EP patients were more likely to mistake the earthquake spontaneously for a seizure. This indicates these two experiences are similar and provides a glimpse into the subjective experience of a seizure for those who have never had one but have experienced an earthquake.” It’s absolutely nuts! I then did a bit of reading about how earthquakes might help with seizures because they work similarly. So that was … fun.
Next up was VBS (Vacation Bible School). Our theme this year was “Power Up” – basically an 80s video game theme. I’ve taught first grade for the past 9 years, and for the past 2, I’ve been the head teacher with about 25 kids in my class for the week. I planned out the schedule, crafts, told the stories, and coordinated the book we make to send home. I’m super proud of the book we make – each day has the Bible story, a coloring page, and a scrapbook page, as well as some intro and conclusion pages. At the end of the week, the kids take their books home. Kids and parents love it!
Right after VBS, we were able to spend the day with two friends with kids (for a total of 3 adults and 9 kids – plus a bird and hamster). We had such a great time with everyone! After, I caught another cold, which morphed into bronchitis. That hung on for a few weeks until I got antibiotics. In the middle of that, we finally got around to having a birthday party for my daughter. It was low-key, but still fun, so it was perfect.
Right about the time, I went to the doctor for my bronchitis, my daughter went off to sleep-away camp for the first time. She had such a blast! Something that was really cool (for me) was that we had the ability to email our kids. The leaders would print out the emails and deliver them each morning. It was a whole lot easier than having to mail postcards or letters in advance.
After that, we had about 2 weeks to jam in as much fun as we could before school started back up.
My kids’ favorite babysitter has worked at Disneyland for the past few years, and is moving on to a new job, so she offered to sign us in for the day. (HECK, YEAH!) We got to go visit Galaxy’s Edge, which was SO COOL. I absolutely loved the ride, but my kids hated it. Ah, well.
Another day I took my kids to visit my best friend from childhood (we met when I was six, and were still friends). She lives in the area where we grew up, so taking my kids up there was like a blast from the past. Plus, it was a lot of fun to hang out with my friend overnight. I also got to spend the day with another friend and her kids – her daughter is about the same age as my daughter, so it’s lots of fun for all of us!
We normally try to do a week-long family vacation, but with me being sick and the flood of work my husband has been having, we just couldn’t get it together this summer. So, we ended up taking three days the weekend before school started to stay at Great Wolf Lodge, one of which is less than half-hour from us. If you haven’t been before, this place is crazy. One of the blog reviews I read stated that it is like Las Vegas for adults, and it totally is. There’s a full indoor water park, in addition to an arcade, mini golf, mini bowling, laser tag and more. My kids’ favorite part though was Magiquest. We bought each kid a wand and then loaded it with the game. Their goal was to run around the hotel (the two lobbies and floors 4-6) and find pictures, crystals, treasure, etc and turn them in to a goblin/princess/fairy/whatever. My daughter got through the first stage of the game (there are three), which took her like 4 hours. The room we had also reacted to the wands, which was great for about ten minutes, then I had to take the wands away. They had so much fun!
Finally, school started back up this week! I’m so excited because it means I actually have time to breathe and get things done. And *hopefully* do some real writing. My daughter just started 4th grade (which was my absolute favorite year of school growing up), and my son started his second year of preschool at a new school. We’re all doing a lot better with a schedule, but we’re still in transition mode, which means we are still recovering from the schedule change.
Aaand that’s it! I’m looking forward to getting back to blogging and writing! <3
That was fun to read. 😊 Felt like I just caught up with you!!
Glad you guys had a great summer, minus all the illnesses!! Fourth grade was my favorite too, I loved my teacher.