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.
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