Things have been much busier this summer than I ever expected! I’ve had so much to write about but not made the time to post.
On the personal front, my oldest two children went to overnight camp in NY for a month (a last minute decision), and I drove up with the kids for visiting day last week. They are having an amazing time and it’s so gratifying as a parent when you’re able to provide your children with special opportunities that they really appreciate. Something funny happened when we visited dd, though I can’t say what the significance is. She’s attending the same camp I went to 21 years ago, and out of the 18 bunks available, ended up in my old bunk (the bunk numbers have been changed so I didn’t realize it until I got there). Ds8 noticed that lots of campers wrote their names on the bunk beds, and asked me if I wrote my name on mine. I told him ‘no, I didn’t do that kind of thing’. And even if I had, it’s been a long time since I was there, beds were moved out to other bunks, and it wouldn’t have been likely it would still be there. Not even two minutes later, he told me, “Mommy, I found where it says your name!” Even after he read it to me, I couldn’t believe it, but sure enough, someone else in my bunk at the time had written her name, followed by the names of three others (out of 10 or 12) who shared the bunk with her, and below it said ’86’. And my name was one of those. And guess which bed it was written on? My daughter’s very bunk – out of the hundreds of bunk beds in the camp, she ended up sleeping in the only bed with her mother’s name on it! Interesting, isn’t it?
Then we were home for a day, and needed every minute of the time to get ready for the two day family vacation to a family amusement park/campgrounds in PA we went on next. We never go to amusement parks, because I generally find them artificial, commercial, and wanted to wait until the kids were old enough to appreciate it and not become jaded. This was a great time to go since the baby is 16 months, and the next child up is 5, and tall enough for most of the rides. We got passes for the nighttime, which was good since there was a heat wave and I don’t know how much we would have enjoyed it if we had gone during the day. The kids had an amazing time together – I manned the stroller, and dh went on the rides with the kids. Even though I’ve always loved amusement parks (particularly roller coasters), I was satisfied to watch everyone from the sidelines this time. Everyone had a great, great time. The campsite was okay – not the kind of place we would go just to camp, but good as a convenient location to access the park from – and I learned my lesson from the last camping trip. We got the site closest to the bathrooms and water, and that was really practical! Trying to sleep on a camping cot and being 7.5 months pregnant was not fun or a successful experiment – I tend to not be a picky person, but in this case I was in so much pain (sciatica) that it took me over 20 minutes from the time I woke up until I could move my legs enough to get out of bed. I transferred to the passenger seat of the van after three hours, and just reclined it back. I didn’t get much sleep, so later in the morning, when the kids were up and having breakfast, I crashed on the floor of the tent and slept soundly for a couple of hours before we went back into the park.
We got home from that on Thursday night, and then dh and I spent the weekend at home together without the kids – we usually go away but this time we’ve had so much travelling that it seemed more relaxing to stay put. We spent all of Friday unpacking from the trip, packing the kids up for their time away, and trying to catch up on all the things waiting for us when we got home.
On the business front, we’re having our new site built, as well as making changes to the business structure and product name. The main reason I haven’t posted in so long is that the blog has also been transferred here, and I haven’t had the time to try to figure out how to post to the new site.
But now I’ve done it and will be back to posting more regularly!
Avivah
