The Bunch Enjoy Summer

 

We have so much extra Christmas paper that we just use it to wrap everything.😂 We don't even notice anymore.

After our craziness of the past 9 months, slipping into the slow paced idolness of summer has been a blessing. Don't get me wrong, we have had lots of things we need to get done, but the beauty in that is we need to get it done on our time table. If we decide we just can't do it right now then we can put it off until a better time. We aren't living by anyone else's time table.  There is no basketball schedule, no school schedule, or any other schedule we have to go by.  It's fantastic! We have had a lot of time to enjoy things together. We have gone to plays, out to eat, out to the movies, played games, and a lot of other things. We plan to go race go karts and maybe take in a baseball game soon. Basically, we're all just healing together. A says she has serious trust issues and I tell her that I do too now. I am the only one who really talks or brings up L. I guess that's how they want to heal. I am fine with talking about and remembering the good times, which were basically all of our times together until last summer. I just hope L is staying on her meds, which are expensive so she's probably not, and that she is still going to school so she can build a decent life in a few years.  I also hope she snaps out of whatever crazy fog she's stuck in. She was such a a level headed, smart, confident kid (almost borderline too confident). It was hard to see her be so unsure of herself and combative. The kids pretty much just erased her from their lips. They'll talk about something that I know L played a big part in and basically just retell the story as if she was never there. I can't blame them. L put them through a lot and I know they are pretty mad at her. I am doing a lot better.  I don't constantly worry about her and obsess about making sure her predator pays for his actions. Make no mistake, I will make sure no one ever forgets how evil he is, but it's nice to sleep sometimes. I have completely lost faith in law enforcement, people in general, and the church, which is sad, but it is what it is and I am okay with that. I dealt with the hand I was given and can now be an advocate for change. 

T had a great week! He started his zoology classes at Frank Buck Zoo this week. I dropped him off at 9am with his little lunch ( it reminded me of preschool 😢) and he went on his own for the day. They would walk around and check on all the animals in the zoo and then focus on whatever was the animal for that day. For example, on the bird focus day, they fed the flamingos. Every day also had a lecture on that specific species AND they also did a dissection of animal from that species, which the school teacher in me was very excited about since we don't get any hands on dissections and instead watch them on YouTube to do our labs with. It's also why when he brought home his leftover turtle shell from his dissection on reptile day that I let him clean it off and proudly display it on the living room shelf. I am actually surprised that the cats weren't more interested in it. He leaves for summer camp in a couple of weeks and then has a couple more zoology classes and then summer will be almost over! He has also been playing guitar in church. He has been doing really well! I still can't believe how good he has gotten and he basically just taught himself with a You Tube class, though now he does take in person lessons, but his guitar teacher is pretty much just amazed by what he knows already. He also started shaving this week. He just had some long blonde scraggly hairs, nothing too bad, but he definitely needed to even things up. I can't believe how grown up my baby is. He only has 2 years left of school.

He had a fun time at his zoo class, which was taught by our neighbor's daughter unbeknownst to us!

Reptile day had more kids. I guess not everyone likes birds.

A has been crazy busy at work. Not only is the summer more busy just with people being off, but one of the Vet Techs takes her kids to Germany every summer to visit her family so they are also short staffed. I can't believe A has worked there for almost 2 years! We are still finalizing where her end of college celebratory vacation will be. She keeps changing her mind and says she wants to do everything. Most likely it will be somewhere beachy, but if we find a great deal on a Universal trip then we'll probably do that. She really wants to go to Harry Potter World again. We have decided it will either be in the US or a territory since we don't want to have get passports.

I decided to have each of the kids be in charge of meals one day a week. A picked some kind of pasta bake. I wasn't allowed to show her face because she wasn't "camera ready".😂

She made the filling and stuffed all the shells.

It was really good!

D had a happy Father's Day. We made him breakfast and after church we watched The Princess Bride with him. We had bought the DVD for him and our gift was watching it with him, allowing him to say all the quotes and anything else he wanted while it was playing with NO complaints. If anyone has ever watched this movie with him then you know what a sacrifice that was for us! He was relieved of all animal and house duties and just got to relax and do what he wanted. It was a nice day. He has been crazy busy this training season and he deserved an easy day. He had to go to the doctor today to get a splinter removed that had gotten jammed up underneath his nail. Ironically,he got a splinter on a day we did absolutely nothing with wood. He was cleaning up our supplies when we were done giving the horse her bath and somehow got a splinter. I am still not real sure how he managed that.

In addition to his movie, we also got him a blank music notebook for his songs he writes, and a new alarm clock (thanks cats). However this alarm clock projects on the ceiling and tells us the temperature and humidity so it is a nice upgrade.

Our horse, however, did so good! Usually we have to bathe her in shifts ( one day feet, one day hair, one day body, etc) because she starts getting antsy after about 20 minutes, but she actually let us wash everything in one day. I even got to shampoo out her tail and she NEVER lets us shampoo her tail. She looks so pretty with everything all white and shiny! I am kind of curious how she will do this summer since last summer she had a heat stroke and we almost had to euthanize her. I installed misters to help keep her cool, but so far it's been too nice to need them. They also predict we will have way less than the 55 days of over 100 that we had last year which should help. 

Look at that white mane! Isn't she pretty?