Good riddance, Summer 2021

It's past Labor Day and we can happily say good-bye to one of the harder summers I've experienced. We started with a full DITY move that began when we bought our house right before Mother's Day and ended when we returned from Pennsylvania and did a full clean-out of our Kansas rental the last weekend in June. 

There was nothing easy about it. I speak for myself, but Scott carried an even heavier burden. But for real: some of it has been ugly. 

We did some DIY in the new house and we never, I swear, even had a chance at getting actually unpacked. Scott started work in Missouri around June 28, after only having 9 days off after graduating his Kansas course. That 9 days was spent driving to and from Pennsylvania and cleaning out the house in Kansas so we could hand over the keys. 

Come July, we had furniture at least. 

We celebrated Wells' birthday and we did what we could around the place (we bought it with the intention of fixing it up, remember?) and Scott prepped to leave for 5 weeks away. 

Meanwhile, Scott's father was in hospice care and we were trying to navigate being responsible for that from multiple states away.  Scott now entirely owns his dad's house and property instead of just half of it as he did before, so there's been a lot more to it than *just* losing a parent to a long illness. I do feel like Scott has the weight of the world on his shoulders with this because he's just on his own. I never thought I'd want to live in PA again (i do not, btw), but I'd love to be in Pittsburgh *this* year because maybe we could get some of this sorted. It's really hard when *you* are responsible for something and have to live states away for your job and you work 15 hour days and vacation days aren't a thing and ...I could go on and on.

Come August, we were hit with heat wave after humidity wave after heat wave. Scott's father passed away and, really, here's the list of everything that went wrong just that week. 

Honestly, August wasn't much better. There's even more to the story that I'll get to eventually here. But my mom came out for 3 weeks and took over caring for Wells so I could take care of random tasks that I can't do with him by my side. Like going to work, 

Wells did start preschool and that was a success. 

i don't have a lot of hope for school pics

School is going well enough.

Scott is here now at this exact moment and not away on some sort of deployment (for now...this is not a given so I'm trying to just go with it.)

The weather is cooling off (eh, kinda). 

How about you? How was summer? I was, clearly, not a fan. 

Long live #fall. 

June Travels

In mid-June, we headed back to the east coast for a few days. 

This was coupled in with our PCS move from Kansas to Missouri, so there was as strategy involved.

I was planning on leaving with Wells in my car on a Tuesday, stopping at my parents' house for a day or two, and then continuing onto West Virginia for Scott's sister's wedding. Then, heading back to Missouri.

Scott's timeline was to leave Kansas on a Friday (with dogs), get to West Virginia on Saturday (for the wedding), stop and pick up a bunch of stuff he left in Pennsylvania last summer (including a giant enclosed trailer that we needed in order to finish our full-DITY move to Missouri), and then be back in Missouri on Tuesday. 

This is what that all looks like, if you're tracking the movements: 

I am telling you the specifics because sometimes I think people make life seem real stress-free-like on the blogs and the Instagrams. Everyone has a Dislike Follow or two. It can be quite frustrating to know the blood, sweat, and tears that go into it, while some people make it look like everything just slid into place with white-glove service. Reality is what you will get a heavy dose of here. We're just really good at the messy stuff at this point, I think. Four years ago, I would've passed out at the prospect of all of this but, after 4 moves in 4 years, I'm kind of getting pickier with what I will fret about and what I will not. Worry and stress, yes. Hand wringing, no. 

So I was supposed to leave with Wells for this cross-country road trip and, coming up on that day, Wells had been running a very low fever for days. Not even like 99 degrees, but 98.9 and he was congested and coughing and miserable. Then...I got it, but had totally different symptoms: sinus pain, sore throat, absolute exhaustion. I was really hoping I'd just be better by wedding day and, if not, I would just stay in the hotel room by myself or stay at my parents' house and Scott could grab Wells. There wasn't much I could do about it, truthfully. We couldn't not go. By Friday, it was definitely a sinus infection...just pressure and pain, not necessarily a gross cold or cough and no fever. By the time we hit Pennsylvania, Wells was as good as new. 

We went to show Wells amusement park rides. He had an absolute blast and I'm surprised I was able to tear him away. These are the exact same rides I went on as a toddler, so that's why I wanted to go (well, that's kind of terrifying right?)

He did NOT like having that wristband on. He treated his arm like it didn't work and did everything with his left hand. It was very awkward. 

We headed to West Virginia next, where Wells got to play ring bearer for the first time. 

(the wedding was, perfectly, at a farm)

I did not expect him to make it through the ceremony and he did not. We watched from afar. 

We spent a lot of time in hotels, just me and Wells. He's getting really good at it. My parents gave him this garbage truck as an early birthday present and it joined us in every room. 

He wanted the truck to be covered up, on the floor, and to have juice* before bed. 

*Sometimes I feel like the Juice Czar. He gets juice so, so rarely. When we're driving somewhere that's more than 30 minutes away, he does not get milk in the morning. Wells still gets so carsick, so this does seem to help. He gets like 25% juice, 75% water in a cup instead. So we always travel with a few juice boxes. 

The garbage truck got full-strength juice. 

Memorial Day Weekend

 

Garden. What's the over/under on success here?

He ate that whole hot dog.

You spend more time wandering around looking for things that you do actually completing tasks. 

Bathroom re-do is done.

The backsplash is a pleasant surprise. I really like it.