We leave on vacation this week and are all looking forward to embarking on another big family getaway to the great state of California. Beau is excited to do some adventuring, I am excited to explore a new city I've never been, and the kids are just excited for the hotel room. ;) I'm busy around here, cleaning the fridge and getting all the laundry done, starting to pack bags, and making sure our devices are cleared off and ready for takeoff!
As much as I love the traveling thing, simple summer days at home with my crew are hard to top. We checked some things off our bucket list last Saturday and spent the whole days just us. We packed a picnic and ventured out to Hickory Hills park for some fishing, snacking, and nature journaling. It was the sweetest thing - earlier that week the kids made nature journals at the library as part of their weekly craft. Mila spotted them just before we were heading out the door for the park so I threw some colored pencils in the bag and went with it. They ended up being the perfect pastime on such a beautiful summer afternoon and their pictures of little monarch butterflies, blue gills, and dragonflies paint all the scenes of our day.
We caught four or five blue gill, Mila was nearly stung by a wasp (darn thing got caught in her shirt), and Cruz may or may not have peed in the lake two times before we packed up our belongings and made for the truck. The kids fell asleep in the truck and Beau and I spent an hour driving around the countryside, discussing the pros and cons of living in the country, as well as where we'd like to retire one day. It was an afternoon well spent.
Saturday night we made memories I won't soon forget. It was the perfect night for an outdoor movie, so I got our patio all ready and chose the Sandlot as the perfect summer flick. But before we started the movie, we "tested" out the sound and picture with some home movies of the kids when they were little.
Here is what I wrote on Instagram the next day:
"Last night, we sat by a crackling fire under a big blanket of stars and watched The Sandlot. But before that, we spent an hour watching old home videos while we waited for it to get dark. Their baby faces on the big screen, their little munchkin voices echoing through the neighborhood, and these laughs and big smiles as they took a little trip back in time made my heart want to explode. Sometimes, like when I spend an hour looking for a missing audio cable or when the computer decides to update itself for a half hour just as the movie is about to begin, I question the effort. But as those videos reminded me last night, time goes fast and they're not always going to be under this roof and they're definitely not going to want to spend their Saturday nights with us someday. So we light the fire, pop the popcorn, and teach them to grab this life with both hands...like fireflies in a dark, star-filled sky."
It was the sweetest of summer nights.
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