We're Still Here

Do you ever find, that even though you have been counting down the days to summer break and you can hardly wait for school to be out, you are still taken a little by surprise when summer break hits you full force in the face? That's how it's been around here. I'm kind of thinking that the last week of school should be half days so I can ease into it a little more slowly - you know, have a little time to clean up school stuff as it comes home, maybe work on adjusting to the summer schedule of jobs and practicing, etc. But as it is, summer break is in full swing (even if the weather doesn't say so.)

We definitely know it's summer when we can finally break out the hammocks! (This happened by at least mid-May last year, but took until mid June this year.)And we've been keeping everyone busy with yard work. Jonas is not exactly happy to have the job of mowing the lawn, but Peter thinks following him around with his lawn mower is pretty awesome.
This is one of my favorite pictures of the season. I'm so glad that they have each other even if they are 10 1/2 years apart.
You've gotta love the jobs that they fight over. Seriously, it can almost come to fisticuffs when we break out the power washer.
Good thing they've learned to take turns.
Peter's pretty happy as long as he gets to participate as much as the big kids, and being outside is an added bonus for him.
We also finally got to meet my cute nephew Colin. It was so fun to hold a little baby again. We had an afternoon at the park with the "Chicago cousins", complete with slurpees for all. Other than a brief visit at Christmas, this is the first time they've all been together since Matt and Anne moved almost a year and a half ago. (We had the park to ourselves once we scared off the other family that was there - with our enormous crew of 12 kids and 3 moms.)

Anne and baby Colin.

My happy little guy.

Clara and Peter hanging out on the bridge.

Doesn't get much better than slurpees and slides, does it?

Of course, there was the obligatory cousins picture - minus the baby who was happily sitting with his mom in the shade (and the cousins residing in Atlanta.) This picture makes me happy. I'm so glad my kids have similar aged cousins to hang out with.
And we have been full force into swimming since the first non-school day, as well. Swim team for the 3 oldest kids 5 mornings a week. I feel like we live at the pool sometimes. We've been trying to ride our bikes back and forth as much as possible. The big kids have ridden almost exclusively, (they don't like to have to wait for the little kids to finish before they can go home,) and Amelia and I have ridden whenever we don't have other time constraints like harp lessons or doctor's appointments. She has done really well and Duff and Peter enjoy riding in the bike trailer. (Although she is riding Jonas's old bike, we are doing our best to not have a repeat of this.) Plus everyone's 6 miles a day help bump up our family biking totals quickly.

Just in case being at the pool every morning isn't enough, we go back on the occasional afternoon for swim meets and spend another 4ish hours. (Yep, it's that crazy.) And we haven't even done any afternoon fun swimming. That will come as it heats up this summer. (If it ever heats up!)

Amelia

Samantha

Unlike another of my children whose name I won't mention, (but it may or may not start with a "J"), Amelia really likes swim team and meets.

A lovely photo of Samantha and her freaky goggles. Amelia has them, too.

Getting ready to dive off the blocks.

Amelia with her best friend, Hallee, and her best cousin, Ellie. It's nice when swim meets are a social event, too.

And now you may be wondering why there has been no mention of our Summer Solstice party since the solstice is in a mere 4 days. And the Summer Solstice party is our real, true, official kick off to summer. Yeah, well there's been so much going on inside the house that the outside has been severely neglected. We finally reached the conclusion earlier this week, that there was no way we could pull it off, so Summer Solstice has been postponed. (Well, not the actual summer solstice, obviously we don't have that kind of power, but the party. We are aiming for Saturday July 2. Look for more information here or via Shawn's facebook account.)

Just to give you a little idea of how bad things are in the house, I've taken a few photos. I'm hoping no one will call "Hoarders" and nominate us to be on the show, because this really isn't how we live. In fact, the mess has been making me absolutely insane. (Just ask my kids. They're wondering when the happy, fun, summer Mom is going to show up. I don't think she can even make an appearance until all this stuff is taken care of.) On a good note, we did finally get carpet in downstairs. (Woohoo! That was a banner day. It only took almost a year.) But then we have had to deal with everything that was boxed up and tucked away in the flood, plus all of girls stuff that we boxed up because they wouldn't clean up, and worst of all, boxes and boxes of stuff and furniture that has been in Shawn's dad's storage unit that now has to find a home. (Mostly here unfortunately.) There has been lots of arranging and rearranging of stuff and lots of cleaning out and purging, which has been so nice. (I don't know that we have managed to get out as much as has come in, but just give us time. I am in a major purging mood. I can't stand feeling like I'm being controlled by all the stuff.)

Shawn has been emptying boxes of family history stuff and trying to organize it in a more manageable way. (The storage unit was broken into some time ago, and everything was dumped out and gone through and the clean up involved just shoving everything back into boxes. Not ideal, but what could be done at the time.)
So now we have shelves of pedigree charts (books and books, actually), personal correspondence, photographs, personal histories and all sorts of other memorabilia. This would all be fabulous - and is fabulous- if I were any sort of family historian. But at the moment I find it all hugely overwhelming. We have found letters and pictures from the 1800's. I just don't think those things should be left in my care. And just what in the world do we do with all of this stuff?


That's what's in one room. Then my bar is completely covered with hundreds of old photographs, framed and not framed. Stacks of them. Once again, completely overwhelming to me.

And here is the family room. These are all of the boxes and bins that have been emptied in order to see what they contained or to see if they could find a new home.
Somewhere in there is a couch. Needless to say, some of our rooms are unusable for the time being and all the clutter makes me feel like my head is going to explode.
Seriously, there really is a couch under there! I wonder if my kids have figured out that we won't be having movie night tonight - for obvious reasons.
Wish me luck. Shawn seems to think this will only take a few more days to get under control and cleaned up. I think it's going to take quite a bit longer, but let's hope not because I need my house back so I can fully enjoy summer!