Happy Birthday People

July has been good to us so far.  Jeff and Vivian both have their birthdays in July, so there's always lots of cake and general celebration.  This year, the start of July was particularly important because it meant that the four of us could be back together again as a family for the first time since May.  Jeff had been staying at a hotel after he got back from Colombia, but on July 1 we went to pick him up and drive to our Airbnb for the month.  The best part was that the Airbnb had a pool, so in he went with the girls.

I got excited to all be back together again, so the next morning I made biscuits with special gravy for Jeff.  It was wonderful to sit down together as a family again.

The Airbnb has proven to be very comfortable, and of course we love having the pool, but another bonus is that it's close to parks, so if we get up early enough before it gets really hot, we can have a nice walk too.

The temperature most days though has been rapidly climbing to the 90s, so we've been spending quality time in the pool instead.

Although we didn't do much for the 4th of July, the 3rd of July was a major event in our household, because it was the premiere date for Hamilton on Disney+. 

We've settled into a routine of pool at least once a day, usually twice.

Some quiet indoor activities during the hottest part of the day, and then Elena's new routine of reading the same two books every night.

She reads Pigs Make Me Sneeze and Oh, the Places You'll Go.  These are books she picked from the bookshelf in my parents' basement, but the connections to the current world situation are not lost on her.  "Gerald is afraid he can't be near his friend, just like with the virus."  We're trying to keep things as normal as possible for the girls, but they both feel the strangeness in our new day to day lives.

We did our best to make Vivian's birthday special.  I had brought the Birthday Queen crown in my suitcase, but I felt like she required something extra, so I got a colorful Happy Birthday banner.  She liked it :-)

Amazon and Mom helped out with presents.  Jeff and I knew that Elena was feeling particularly sensitive, so we got her a present too.

Of course Vivian opened hers first.  We've been trying to teach her about trees as an outdoor activity, so she got the Audubon guide to trees

We've also been playing lots of games, so it was time for some new ones.

And it was also time for an updated Marvel encyclopedia.

Now that Vivian has a year without uniforms, she's trying to find her "look", and Mom was more than willing to help out with lots of new shirts.

After waiting more or less patiently, Elena ripped into her present.

It only took a minute for her to become completely engrossed.  She loves animals.

Since it was Vivi's birthday, she was in charge of the menu, so after morning swim and cleaning up, we had shells and peas in the sunroom for lunch.

For dinner, she requested Thai food.  My family wanted to help celebrate her birthday, but we were also trying to do another full two week count from when Jeff got back, so we decided the best plan was socially distanced dinner outside.

At the end, Vivi got birthday brownies.

She also got birthday Nerf guns from Judy, so the next day Jeff took the girls to the lawn behind the pool for their first shooting lesson.

While they were doing that, the contractors were installing the granite in our new and improved kitchen, so the next day, we went to have a look.  We are so excited about how well it is turning out.

We picked tiles for a backsplash, but they're on back order until August.  It feels like August will be our month of finalizing our move in, and I hope that by September we'll be all settled in.  Our air freight has arrived, and our sea freight is due to arrive before the end of July.  Ironically, it's our storage items which will probably take the longest to get, because the don't have availability to deliver them until August, so our things from Colombia will get here before our things from down the road.

Jeff took the opportunity of Vivian turning 12 to talk more about the positives of serving in the military.  He's advocating for the Air Force, so they sat down together to take a survey to see which jobs she might like in the Air Force.  I have my doubts about anything coming of it, but I want her to have as many choices as possible.

Our second round of two weeks ended perfectly on the Monday that Vivian was starting her Virtual Camp Shakespeare.  She has online sessions every afternoon Monday through Friday for two weeks.  After our morning swim, the girls and I went over to my parents' house for hugs and fun. Vivian found a good spot to do her class, and Elena played with Safta and Grandpa.

Jeff came over for a special celebratory dinner followed by a combo birthday cake.  We weren't sure what to do about the numbers, so we decided on a birthday total.  When Elena figured out the addition, she started laughing like it was the best joke ever.  She is such a math nerd :-)

Next up was Jeff's official birthday.

He didn't feel the need to wear the Birthday Queen crown ;-)

Since we had figured out how to do socially distanced dining for Viv's birthday, we decided to try it again with some friends we hadn't seen in years.  One of them even made Jeff a beautiful carrot cake, his favorite.

It ended up being another great birthday to close out the week of birthday.  We are enjoying our pool, being closer to family and friends, and watching our house come together.  We have the rest of July in the Airbnb, and hopefully enough things show up to make our house habitable in August.  So far, July has definitely been a month that reinforces the importance of family and friends.

June 2020

Time has moved so fast and also so slowly.  It feels like our usual vacation at my parents' house until abruptly, it doesn't.  We started June off in quarantine in my sister's apartment.  We marked the end of our first week in quarantine with a Thai food celebration.

While we were eating Thai food, Jeff was getting ready to pack up the apartment.  I would send him pictures of the girls,

and he would send me pictures of boxes.

We made it through to the next Friday, and since the girls had done well with their school work we got a special dinner from Carlyle, including the steak Viv had been begging for.

While managing them on my own for two weeks had its tough parts, they are such good kids overall, that I really can't complain.

The Sunday before it was time to move into Mom and Dad's we got antsy and went for a walk,

all the way to their house, where we played on the grass outside.

Finally, HUG DAY arrived!

Hug day was also moving day for Judy, so we went to Mom and Dad's while movers came to Judy's apartment to move everything to her new house which luckily is not that far away.  The girls and I weren't much help though, because we still had online school.

The last week of school in a regular year is always a bit rough, but it was especially hard to get a good sense of closure in this strange online year.  The school put forth a great effort though.  Elena's class worked on a personalized, loving thank you for her teachers.

She also had an online, end of year ceremony that Safta "attended" with her where she got the award for the most curious person in her class.  This cracked us all up, because it was a great way to spin the endless questions she asks.

Vivian also had an eventful last week of school.  She worked with two other students on an end of year media project that could draw from anything they had learned that year and needed to connect to current events.  Her group decided to compare COVID-19 to the Black Death which they had studied in History class with me.  Hers was definitely one of the best presentations.

On the last day of school there was an online ceremony for the middle school.  There were some good speeches and lots of awards.  Some awards were for the entire middle school and were non-academic, and the rest were best student per subject per grade.  We are so proud of Vivian because she got the award for best performer for middle school and the award for best English student for her grade.  Way to go Vivi!

In typical Vivian fashion, she celebrated by having a lunch of mac and cheese and Guarana while chatting online with her friends.

I had a social engagement as well.  One of my friends from CGB was getting married online.  I provided appropriately high class drinks and snacks for myself and settled in to watch.

As with all large online gatherings (and all in person weddings for that matter!), there were some technical difficulties and some unexpected delays, but when they said their vows to each other it was beautiful, and I had to shed to a tear.

With so much to celebrate, we decided to have a Friday night celebration at Judy's new house, and since she also had lovely new back patio furniture to go with her new house, we dined al fresco.

As a finishing treat, we walked down the street to Baskin Robbins and let the kids try out some of their 31 flavors.

The girls love spending time with my family, and I think it's really helping with all the craziness that the world is going through.

It has definitely helped with the mission of keeping the girls busy during the summer holidays.  The first event was a visit to the Safta Salon.  Vivi wanted to cut her hair short, which meant Elena wanted to cut her hair short too, and I was sick of dealing with all the tangles, so I gave the project my blessing and took photos.

Vivian wanted video too, so she employed Elena for that.

It was a lot of hair.

But the girls were happy with the results.

Viv and I took her new haircut for a spin and went to get smoothies at Robeks.

With their snazzy new haircuts, the girls were ready for some summer fun, and Mom and I had gotten them lots of things to keep them busy.

 

Even though the routine was going well, we still wanted a special highlight.  Judy suggested Fancy Friday, which we all thought was a great idea, so we got out our fancy clothes.

The rest of June was really about keeping the girls busy.  I took lots of pictures to send to Jeff, so that he would know that the girls were doing alright.

The pool near my parents' house opened with some conditions in place.  They divided the pool into sections, and you could make a reservation for a section for an hour.  The pool isn't usually crowded anyway, so this worked out really well for the girls.

Vivi was also excited to help out with cooking her favorite meal of shells and peas.

I had to keep her busy, otherwise I would find her doing things like making a blanket burrito out of her sister.

Luckily no damage was done.

At the end of June, Jeff got a humanitarian flight out of Colombia.  He had to stay in a hotel, but it was such a relief to know that we were all in the same place.  We had an Airbnb with a pool rented for July, so we finished up June knowing that family pool time was just ahead, and we had kept busy and relatively sane through the end of June.