My oh my I don't gotta hit the lotto...

June 2021-episode I

June was the freakin' best and there is no way I'll be able to fit it all in one post. . I turned 30. We had an epic family reunion. We drove 3,000 miles. We saw tons of family. We went camping. It was good.

This will just have to be part one.

Alex is still transitioning to not taking a nap and occasionally crashes in random places. Honestly, I kinda love it.

My birthday!! It felt like a pretty normal day since I had my last day teaching TK, but that also gave Andrew and the kids a couple hours to finish setting up their birthday surprises. They were still gone when Matthew and I got home from school, but they had decorated the birthday wall with a bunch of my favorite things. After going inside and seeing it, Matthew came running back out shouting, "mom, you've got to see this!"

When Andrew got home, the let me open their gifts-new running headphones (Michael cut my old ones with scissors), gummy candy, and a hairbrush (that Adaline bought with her own money). They also picked up two slices of cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory of flavors I had picked out and got my free birthday Nothing Bundt Cake. Score! It was a low-key but awesome day and I absolutely spent part of it reminiscing about the spa trip my sister and I had already taken to celebrate my birthday early. I think this decade is going to be a good one!

A couple of the pictures that my TK kiddos drew for me.

Spelling is hard, but I still got the message and they still tasted amazing. Thanks mom and dad!

The next adventure was camping at Sequoia National Park/Kings Canyon with Keller and Chantel! But before we get to that, I had to set up some busy toddler activities for my kiddos so that I could chat on the phone to plan out meals and adventures with Keller. It worked like a charm.

Garden coming along nicely

We ended up having to pull out the brussels sprouts without harvesting anything because the weather got too hot for them (and they were covered in aphids) but it was a fun experiment to see how brussels sprouts grow.

I don't know that they'll ever outgrow the sensory bin stuff-I sure hope not

Alright-adventure number 2 for June! The day after school ended, we hit the road for Sequoia/King's Canyon. My kids have been doing so much better with carsickness since we got them all sea bands, can sometimes convince them to take Dramamine, and use an essential oil behind their ears, but Matthew still threw up about a mile before we got to our campsite. Ha! We spent the first day cleaning that up, setting up, exploring the campsite, and catching up with Keller and Chantel.

I'm glad I wasn't there for this one. I say no thank you to scorpions

Keller and Chantel brought a bag of "treasures" for the kids and made a map for them to find it in the woods near our campsite. My kids love a good mystery so they were all over this and loved choosing their prizes. Matthew picked a chess set and spent a considerable amount of time learning how to play during the rest of the trip. I'm pretty sure he could beat me already.

Enjoying the fire and watching Matthew play chess with Andrew

The next day our kids were playing at a nearby campsite so we went over to introduce ourselves to the adults and make sure they didn't mind our kids visiting. Luckily they had two boys and loved that all our kids were playing together. Whew! We ended up chatting for a long time because the husband was from Denmark (so he and Andrew had lots to talk about) and they had a similar parenting philosophy to us of raising independent kids and letting them roam/explore freely. We would have loved to become friends with them but, unfortunately, they were just a couple weeks out from moving to Denmark. Anyway, they asked if we had hiked up to the nearby waterfall, and we decided to do that next. We got our boys from playing by the river and, since they had soaked their tennis shoes, we had them put on their crocs for what we thought would be a short hike. I thought I understood where they said the hike went, so we just sort of jumped on a path and went for it. Matthew and Michael decided to ditch the crocs and just hike barefoot since they were getting so many rocks and twigs in their shoes, and I thought it was just a little hike, so that seemed fine to me. Well...a mile and a half in, we saw a sign telling us how much further it was to the nearest attraction...and it was many miles. We pulled out our phones and realized that I had led us in the exact opposite direction from where we wanted to go. So we hiked a mile and a half back and then just kept hiking-this time towards the waterfall. Again, I thought that this was a small hike so I figured we'd be fine even though we had just done 3 miles. hahaha 2 miles later we finally got to the waterfall. All I can say is that my kids are troopers and I have mad respect from Matthew and Michael hiking the almost 7 miles barefoot. They are amazing and every group we passed commented on it.

My wilderness men

Yes, the waterfall was lacking due to the minimal rainfall we had this year, but it was still beautiful and none of my pictures captured it at all.

He was ready to climb straight to the top of the falls

Right before she slipped and got soaked up to her waist (and this was when we still had 1.5 miles left to hike back)

Alex's hand LOL

The next day we visited General Sherman (the tree), drove through a different tree, and climbed on some rocks.

General Sherman

This was actually just the hike from the parking lot to the museum (which was closed) but it ended up being a favorite spot to explore with awesome views.

The kids got very good at lighting matches/starting fires on this trip

On our way out of the parks, we drove by General Grant and another grove of sequoias. We were too tired to get out and hike around, but we still enjoyed the views and how majestic they are.

Alex is still in the phase where he sticks his hand, and apparently stuffed animals, down my shirt. What a joy

So after finishing the school year and immediately going camping, we got home and had less than a week before we were heading off for adventure number three. Somehow, in all that chaos, we made time to head to the beach with friends when the forecast was "too damn hot". It is so nice to have the option to drive to the city and spend the day being 30 degrees cooler than if we stayed home. While I don't love the traffic, the day was breezy and lovely and the kids had an excellent time while my friend and I got to chat in our chairs.

lovely views of the golden gate too

Real life Spiderman. Did y'all do this when you were kids? I totally did, and I secretly like that my kids do to

Oh wait, I guess that's Spiderman. But seriously, how cute is his movie watching pose?

One last thing to keep us busy before we headed out of town-Adaline's dance recital filming! Rather than an in-person recital, her studio chose to film all the performances and compile them into a video. So while Andrew was home putting the finishing touches on packing the van for our road trip, Adaline and I were at the theater for her performance. I got to watch the video a couple weeks later and it was so fun to see how much she has improved and learned in the last 2.5 years that she's been taking ballet. She's taking a break from it for the next little while and we'll see where that goes.

We booked it home as soon as she was released because it was already past noon and we had eleven and a half hours of driving ahead of us.

The first leg of our road trip went great. We barely stopped and since everyone was asleep when we arrived, we could just toss everyone in a bed and go to sleep ourselves. We just had a couple days to visit, but we squeezed in a dinner with Andrew's brother's family, kolaches, lots of jumping on the trampoline/playing outside, paddle boarding/kayaking/swimming, and fishing.

Andrew took his responsibility very seriously

This felt like a big milestone to have our whole family participating-no one waiting on the shore with a baby. Matthew was quickly a pro in his one-man kayak.