Currently / 6.20.23

A brief(?) roundup of the last month…

We celebrated Jose’s birthday, and our 14th wedding anniversary. He flew to Denver for work on his birthday, and was still there on our anniversary — so we celebrated his birthday early with an Astros game over the weekend, and honestly just kinda ignored the anniversary other than giving each other a card. (We REALLLLLLY need to find a reliable babysitter. I cannot remember the last time we had a date night and it is SORELY NEEDED.)

Emma and Charlotte wrapped up 5th and 1st grade, respectively. There were many parties and celebrations and all the hoopla. I went solo to Charlotte’s 1st grade celebration due to Jose’s afore-mentioned work trip, but he made it back in time for Emma’s 5th grade graduation by taking the last flight out of Denver and getting home at midnight (and back to the house at 1 am). Emma was selected to give a speech and did a wonderful job, and I have all the feels about her moving on from elementary school! I’m also glad that Charlotte has 4 more years there because it’s really a great school.

Then BOOM — we went to Europe!! We booked this trip back in late January/early February and chose these dates mainly because it slotted between school getting out and a quilt workshop I was already contracted to teach on June 10, and I clearly did not consider how hectic it would be to leave the country a mere 48 hours after school got out — school let out at noon on Thursday, and we were headed to the airport by noon on Saturday. (I mean, whew. That last week of school was a doozy. Good! But a lot.)

We flew from Houston to Amsterdam and spent 2 nights there, then hopped the train to Paris. We spent 4 nights in Paris, then took the train to London. We spent 4 nights there, then flew home. We saw a bunch of the highlights and thoroughly enjoyed forgetting about all the stresses and obligations of non-vacation life. I will write more about it…hopefully soon? No promises, but I do want to document it. In the meantime, I did share some photos on Instagram, both in my feed (Amsterdam, Paris, London) and as a saved highlight.

We got home on Wednesday the 7th and BOOM — life resumed its hectic pace. Jose and I went back to work, the girls jumped back into swim team and started camp, etc etc. Jose had been a bit sick our last two days in Europe, and then two days after we got home, Charlotte came down with a fever that kept stubbornly hanging on. After 3 days I took her to the pediatrician, where she tested positive for…the FLU. In June! Our best guess is that Jose had the same thing, although not quite as bad.

Charlotte’s fever forced her to miss the swim meet that weekend, but I took Emma and then spent that afternoon teaching the quilt workshop that I’d agreed to nearly a year before. (Thankfully Jose was able to take care of Charlotte, and the workshop went well!)

Charlotte finally started feeling better — so of course then I started feeling worse. I had a nagging sore throat and then my eye started showing classic pink eye symptoms. Awesome. Our doctor friend told us that adenovirus has been going around and causing things like sore throat and pink eye so heyyyy, apparently we had more than just the flu circulating in our household. I laid low for several days and thankfully the pink eye hasn’t bothered me too much…although it’s not 100% gone yet, which is annoying.

Last weekend we had another swim meet in some pretty brutal heat, but we survived…only to come home and have the power go out 20 minutes after we walked in the door — and it stayed out for nearly 6 hours! At first I assumed it was some sort of rolling blackout because it’s hot as hell and Texas’s power grid is awful, but as it went on I realized it must be something different. (It turned out to be a pretty localized failure across the street that only impacted ~35 houses.)

Jose and I were putting ice into coolers to unload the fridge and were about 20 minutes away from bailing to a hotel for the evening when the power came back on at 9 pm! Hooray for the power guys! It was starting to feel warm in the house, but overall I was actually impressed at how cool the house stayed on a 100 degree afternoon with no air conditioning. As soon as the power went out, I closed all the window blinds and I think that helped a lot.

We wrapped up the weekend on a high note (literally) with a trip to see Wicked. When I asked Jose if he wanted to go to an Astros game for Father’s Day, he suggested this instead — and so of course we all jumped onboard! The show started at 7:30 and Charlotte fell asleep towards the end, but Emma made it through the whole show and we all enjoyed it.

So that’s our summer thus far! And there is a lot more fun to come…