Reality, Back to

It's now been officially one year since I quit my job and took on the role of CEO for the Harris household. I'd planned to write a post checking in, thinking and reflecting on how I see my life and new "job" since this time last year.

However. This week has been such that I fear I would write a post that skewed heavily towards the more challenging aspects of this life and I don't want to preserve that representation. So, maybe later this week.

Instead, I'll go ahead and tell you how we spent our 4th of July weekend. Saturday we sat down to plan out the three days off, discussing which household projects we should tackle, what chores/errands needed doing and then fell silent, each lost in thoughts of boring responsibility. Then Chris said, "let's go to the beach." And I agreed. And we did.

There's a municipal "beach", by which I mean a sandy beach on the shore of one of our many (ten thousand, so the rumor goes) lakes, about five minutes from our house. I optimistically bought a summer-long pass for the family pre-season, for the whopping price of $20. Anyway, after I tried to take the kids by myself last week I was feeling a little discouraged about the usefulness of said pass but when we took the kids together it was a blast. Great facilities, the water was clean and warm and there was a place to set up camp in the grass instead of the sand (oh how I hate sand). Brighton swam like a fish and Pacey puttered up and down the shore, building sand castles with me.

I snapped this photo of Brighton wearing my sunglasses and suddenly 12 years had passed and I was seeing her as a teenager. Yikes.

Anyway, great family day at the beach followed by an awesome evening with friends. Since we don't have actual family here, we've adopted a family of sorts consisting of two sets of friends and their kids. Our kids are the oldest and it's nice, finally, to be back in a place where we are more flexible and can keep the kids out a little later without major meltdowns and, for the most part, get to eat our meals in peace.

B and our friend, L. I can just see these two causing trouble
together 10 or 12 years from now.

Pacey and Sally, the dachsund. Pacey loooooves Sally.

C and my good friend Sharda's baby, Desi

Daddy's cheerleaders/critics

Sunday we split up and Chris took Brighton swimming again while I took Pacey to see Cars 2. He wasn't super into it, and I was a little surprised at the gun violence. We made it about 2/3 of the way through, which was plenty, and it was fun spending some one-on-one time with my boy. I last took him to the theater about this time last year to see Toy Story 3, and I was pleased to see that since then he gained enough weight to keep the chair in its proper position rather than getting sandwiched in it. 

Monday we played it pretty low-key and just grilled and did some sparklers and pop-its. As the kids get older I would like to do some more of the novelty fireworks with them. We always did them with my dad in our backyard and those are some of my best summer memories. 

All in all a great weekend, but now the kids are suffering post-fun letdown and are unbelievably crabby, and I keep finding myself mentally composing Craigslist ads for them. How long til school starts?