Summer 2014 - week leading up to Labor Day weekend

Monday, August 25th - Friday, August 29th 
This past week was pretty exhausting.  It is pretty obvious that I got out of "work" mode and mindset this past summer, so this week seemed to drag by.  I remember waking up on Wednesday morning and feeling like my level of energy seemed closer to it being a Friday than a Wednesday.  Oy.

To boost my spirits of having to work, I tried to make dinner way more enjoyable and put forth more effort into meal planning instead of just throwing something together when I got home from work.  This worked for about two days, but hey, that's a start, right?

Here's my favorite meal from the week:

SO DELICIOUS.  It's definitely a meal that just tastes like summer.

In other non-food-related news, Ryan thoroughly enjoyed his time at Oma and Opa's this past week.  One day when I went to pick Ryan up, he told me "Julien is my best".  AWWWWWW.  They apparently spent the afternoon throwing rocks into a big bucket of water and watching them splash all around.  So much fun!  Oma said this occupied them for a long long time :)  Another day, all three boys went down to see Mr. Frog and Peter Rabbit:

We took a couple of after-dinner walks and spent some time outside this week:

I love this boy :) 

Daddy showing Ryan how it's done.

I really miss spending my entire day with Ryan.  I don't get up with him in the morning or get him dressed, I don't fix him breakfast...it's really sad that typically, I only see Ryan from 4pm until he goes to bed at night.  And part of that time, Ryan ends up falling asleep because he won't nap at Oma's (why nap when you can play with Julien and Levi?) and so he'll fall asleep on the way home and will sleep from 5:00pm until 6:30 or so.  It makes the weekends so much more important in terms of spending quality time with our little family and doing stuff together.  LUCKILY, we have a 3 day weekend coming up to spend lots of time together!

Summer 2014 - last weekend of summer

Man, I'm stretching out this summer break.  This past weekend was my last weekend of summer.  School officially starts tomorrow.  SO, I guess the 180-day countdown to Summer 2015 begins tomorrow! :)

We started the weekend off by making bacon and cheese biscuits - SO GOOD!  Going to have to make this more of a priority on the weekends :)

Chowing down!

We decided to venture out to the Cary Lazy Daze festival.  I'd never been before.  Neither had Joe.  Neither had Ryan (obviously).  We met up with a friend and we laughed - oh, how we laughed - and had a great time.  Am I going to go there again?  Probably not.  I don't need anything that was being sold and it was HOT outside.  Like humid, hot, sweat-rolling-down-your-back HOT.  I think we spent more time in the air-conditioned movie theater just hanging out in the lobby than anywhere in the festival.  Either way, there were memories that were made there and laughs for years to come :)

Ryan playing in the "snow"

Family photo!

We came home and Ryan and Joe had some snuggle time.

My two favorite boys!

After Ryan took his nap, we went to one of his friend's 3rd birthday party!  Ryan had such a fantastic time - eating cupcakes, playing with water balloons, driving the car, jumping on the trampoline - what's not to love??

Mmmmm, chocolate cupcakes!

Testing out the suspension.

Ryan didn't like that I made him stop jumping to take this picture.

Since Saturday was such a busy day, we decided to take it a little easy on Sunday.  Someone was being a little silly this morning:

He's got this thing with wearing my shoes.  And Joe's shoes.  Really, anyone's shoes but his own.

We went to the park after breakfast since it was a BEAUTIFUL day today (seemed very "fall"ish in terms of the weather).

Silly boy!

Ryan and Joe doing "elliot" (think E.T.) on the swings.  Love!

Taking a break from all the sliding and swinging.

We ran some errands the rest of the day and grilled for my official official kids-come-tomorrow last night of summer.  All in all, it was a fantastic weekend - can't wait to pack next weekend with more fun events and silly moments!

Funny things Ryan said this weekend:
--"My hands are made of...me?"
--"JOOOOOEEEEE.......JOE, log off of the computer and come downstairs"
--"Helen, are you laughing....because I called you 'Helen'?"

Summer 2014 - Back to work

Uggghhhh, I'm back to working full-time.  My first full week since the beginning of June.  It honestly wasn't too too horrible, but the real test will be next week when the students come back.  Ryan seemed to have a fantastic time at Oma and Opa's house throughout the week.

Building towers at Oma and Opa's.  Still a lot of fun!

Took a walk down the street to go see Mr. Frog and Ms. Bunny.

There were more pictures that I was going to post, but they somehow got deleted from my phone.  Stupid technology.  All in all, Ryan had a great time spending the days at Oma's and Opa's house.  Every day when I would go pick him up, he would say "it's not time for me to go home" or he would directly tell me "I'm not going home right now".  Clearly, he's enjoying his time!

Summer 2014 - Happy Birthday, Joe!

Sunday, August 17th

Happy 35th Birthday, Joe!  What a day!  We woke up, and Joe opened some cards and presents:

As you can tell, he's very happy that I'm taking a picture so early in the morning.

Oh, he's happy now!  I'm just happy that my CC bill won't be due until October.

We ate some kringle (traditional Latvian birthday/holiday bread) and some breakfast casserole.

My favorite thing about birthdays and holidays - Oma's kringle!

Ryan's digging into the breakfast casserole.

Joe's parents came over for the afternoon/evening and took Joe/us out to dinner to celebrate this milestone birthday.

Ryan LOVED playing by the windows.

After dinner, we had an AWESOME cake (chocolate with peanut butter buttercream icing!) for dessert.  Ryan had been waiting ALL DAY to help light the candles, sing "Happy Birthday" to Daddy, help blow out the candles, and eat cake :)

Nobody's looking at the camera.

Much better.  That's a big knife, too.

It was a great day!  It's so much fun celebrating a birthday for such an awesome, spectacular person.  Joe is such a fantastic husband and THE BEST FATHER to Ryan.  They have such a cute and special bond and really, Joe is Ryan's favorite playmate.  I loved that Ryan was able to really get into the birthday this year and be so involved - last year, he could barely sing Happy Birthday (but was SUPER cute in his attempt!):

It's amazing the difference a year makes :)  HAPPY 35TH BIRTHDAY, JOE!!!!  I hope it was one to remember :)  We love you!!!

Summer 2014 - Back to work

Friday, August 15th - returning to work
So I went back to work on Friday, August 15th.  It wasn't fun and I could name countless other things that I would rather do than be at work (building towers and trains with Ryan being #1!).  However, I have to try to put a positive spin on things so I won't be so "womp womp" on this blog.  I really do like my job.  The actual job description and working with kids and this age group - I love it.  I really do like my school, too!  And probably the biggest - I really do like my coworkers.  They seriously can make or break a job, and fortunately, I feel like I work with the best people.  SO, going back to work wasn't all that bad - but just really difficult to do after such an awesome summer with my sweet boy!

So, what's a girl gonna do on her first day back?  Facetime with Ryan when he's waking up and getting ready for the day!  This really helped tremendously with the transition back to work.  Joe gets to get up with Ryan every day when I'm at work, so I'm limited to weekends and days off of work.  And just like bedtime, morning time is just as precious because Ryan is usually in such a good mood and is super cuddly and really happy and funny.

After work, I went and picked up Ryan and then came home.  We decided to stay at home and grill since we went out to eat for my last night of summer.  Ryan got some good water-table-time in (sans the water).

I was subconsciously trying to relive such an awesome July 4th by making Ryan wear this shirt.

We also went for our evening walk around the neighborhood, which again helped my transition back to work.  It's nice to know that there are so many things that will continue to be the same, even though I'm back at work.

It was a beautiful night for a walk!

I'm going to miss this in the winter :(

Saturday, August 16th 
After a morning run with Ryan in the jog stroller, Joe decided to finish up our summer mulching project (read: he really wanted to be able to get his car out of the garage and drive it since it's been trapped since the mulch arrived).  Ryan tried to help the best that he could.

Trying to fix the wheelbarrow.

"Daddy, I think it goes right there."

"Daddy, right HERE.  It goes right HERE"

We ventured downtown for a classic car show at the Convention Center once Joe had finished clearing the mulch.  It was pretty cool to see some of those really old cars on display.  Ryan enjoyed looking at the fountains outside of the convention center the most (shocking, I know!).

Looking at the steering wheel.

This car was OLD. And not in the best shape.  But still pretty cool!

Somebody's not very happy right now.

"NO, I'm NOT going to smile" and then he proceeded to cover up his mouth.  I think it's time to go home.

After dinner, Ryan and I started on our special project.  It's our tradition to have a french toast casserole on special occasions and holidays, and since tomorrow is Joe's birthday, we had to get to work!

"Are these pieces small enough, Mommy?"

Summer 2014 - Days 57 & 58

Wednesday, August 13th - Day 57

The dreaded feeling in my stomach keeps getting stronger and stronger.  Only one more full day of summer left.  Ok, enough complaining - I know that there are so many people who do not get a summer at all (really, summertime for teachers is really a nicer way of saying temporary unemployment because we don't get paid during the summer) - but MAN, it's going to be so hard to wake up on Friday morning!

SO.  Enough.  I woke up this morning and had every intention of going running.  I even set my alarm so I could wake up, go running, and have a little bit of time to myself before Ryan got up.  Great intentions, right?  In reality, hitting snooze on my alarm for almost an hour and fifteen minutes prevented any kind of run this morning.  Instead, I woke up, showered, and then got Ryan up and we met some of my coworkers for our weekly Wednesday morning playdate.  Have I mentioned how much I like my coworkers?  Ryan was super excited to see the regular Wednesday morning crew (he talked about them in the car on the way over).  I was excited to catch up with them and mope, groan, and complain about having to go to work on Friday :)  Either way, it was a good time, and I forgot to take pictures of Ryan again because we were both having too much fun.

After my coworker playdate, Ryan and I ventured out to Chapel Hill to meet another friend for a playdate.  It was such a nice day - very atypical August weather - and it seemed that lots of other people had the same idea to be outside.

Hugging the pole because "I love this park".  I'm not kidding.

Gotta see how these swings measure up to all the other swings.

two cute kids!

These rings are fun!

Alexandra, spot my double back, would ya?

Future King of the Rings

After the park playdate (and after getting my car jump-started because the battery was dead), Ryan and I ventured to the pool.  I feel like I haven't been able to spend as much time at the pool as I had hoped or initially planned at the beginning of the summer.  I think our beach/California trips and the cooler-than-normal weather in August had something to do with that.  Either way, Ryan really has warmed up to the pool.  He ONLY wanted to be in the big pool during this trip, so we played in the shallow end with his water balls the entire time.  He loved it :)

Where's my puddle jumper?

He only went in the little pool during break time.  I REALLY hope his love for the pool is as strong next summer!

After his nap and a tasty dinner of fish tacos (yay, Salsa Fresh!), we took our evening walk around the neighborhood and savored every last minute of daylight of the second-to-last day of my summer break.  Such a great day!

He did NOT want to be in the jog stroller.  At all.  

Thursday, August 14th - Day 58

Guys.  This is it.  This is the last day of my summer break.  Where have the past 58 days gone??  Eight weeks of summer (essentially).  Eight weeks during the school year don't go by NEARLY as quickly.  I am so thankful to have had this time with my sweet boy and am SO GLAD that I started this blog up again so I could keep track of how we filled our days.  This summer has really made me realize that I need to 1) continue this blog so I don't forget the little things of Ryan's childhood  and 2) take more days off work to be with Ryan.  I suppose those are two good outcomes of the summer, in addition to the countless memories we've made.

With a heavy heart today, Ryan and I started our typically summer day with breakfast.

Mouth full of rice krispies!

We then went for a jog and I tried to savor it (even when pushing him up the hills) because I know that running with him in the mornings is now going to be restricted to weekends.  So sad!  We then ran some errands and built some towers and trains when we got back home. We went out to lunch with Joe (because it will be awhile before this happens again on a weekday).

Daddy and Ryan making funny faces at each other.  LOVE!

Love this picture of us.  He makes me so happy!

Our turn for funny faces :)  

After lunch, we went to the park.  Best decision ever.  The park was basically empty, so Ryan had full reign over the playground.  And of course, he had a blast.  Just me and him.  I loved it.

One of my favorites from this summer.

My sweet angel.

After the park, Ryan took a nap (I took the opportunity to go get my hair cut).  When he woke up, he played with Joe for a little bit and then we went out to dinner to celebrate an incredibly fantastic summer.  We took a walk around the neighborhood after dinner, even though it was already getting pretty dark when we left.  I wanted to savor every last second of my first real summer with Ryan and I'm so glad that we were outside as the sun set on my last day of summer.

58 days of summer.  58 days of wonderful.  58 days of incredible memories.  I can't wait to do it again next summer!!!  June 8, 2015 can't get here fast enough :)