A Visual Tour of Summer Thus Far

I haven't been around here much this summer, but we have been very busy, nonetheless. I haven't written about it as we've lived it, but I want to share some of my favorite photos from the summer—so far.

Let's start with the face I found in the wall of the bathroom at work.

He looks sad, doesn’t he? I suppose that’s because he has to live in the bathroom.

Okay, that one was a little weird, I know. This next one is better. We took Jack and Quinn to Medieval Times for their birthdays, but for various reasons, we had to do it in June instead of in May, their birthday month. So shortly after school let out, we collected one close friend for each of them and took them to the castle.

I only wish Medieval Times didn’t cost a million dollars, so we could have added a couple more cute backs of heads.

We also found more cut-rate ways to enjoy summer.

It’s the world’s worst swimming pool.

We should remember that this is also the summer of new white kittens. I have several billion photos of them. This one includes Sam.

This is Pickles. Pickles is ridiculously cute. Sam is okay.

We went to the Baltimore Aquarium one day. Jack's favorite part may have been the one part that had no animals.

I love it too.

We colored Sam's hair now and again with varying degrees of success.

He did, however, successfully spend the summer growing his hair.

As always, we had a lot of interspecies interaction.

This went better than either the gerbil fight that resulted in chaos and a tetanus shot OR the gerbil escape that resulted in chaos and cat vs. gerbil vs. human shenanigans.

The fourth of July was fun. We used to walk down the street to the park to watch local fireworks, but since we moved, we couldn't do that this year. So instead, we spent it on the roof of Alex's office building. It was cool.

ut not as cool as Jack in this photo.

And here is Sam looking patriotic and handsome.

And here is Quinn celebrating hot dogs.

Jack didn’t care for most of the food, so he ate a lot of plates like this, leading me to make multiple jokes about Cracker Jacks.

It was a really cool night. Furthermore, there was a strategically placed flag that made the fireworks even better.

We also went to a little zoo where you can feed animals.

I think Quinn dropped this particular pellet, resulting in one very disappointed goat.

There was, however, at this same zoo, an aviary where you could feed budgies. Everyone REALLY enjoyed this area.

This budgie, for example. His enjoyment was palpable.

Jack got pooped on a little. He was all, “What do I do?” and I was all, “Wipe it on my shirt,” because that’s what moms do.

This was Quinn’s favorite part of the zoo day.

Sam loved the bird fight over his bird food.

In case we ever need to suddenly flee the country, we got passports for the group of us. In some sort of miracle, all three of my kids cooperated for their official photos. I'm thinking of asking the post office to take our Christmas card photo.

Alex already has a passport, but he’s definitely part of the fleeing the country plans.

We went to a concert where the National Symphony Orchestra played music from Pokemon video games while they showed Pokemon footage. Shortly before intermission, Quinn had to urgently go to the bathroom. Then he had to urgently eat a soft pretzel.

Pretty sneaky way to trick him into a symphony concert—that he actually enjoyed!

We also went tubing on a river, which each of my children enjoyed in a different manner.

Sam took the mellow approach.

Jack preferred an in-river experience.

And Quinn was FULL immersion.

You may have noticed that my kids like water. So we got on the wait list for our neighborhood pool and got a half-summer guest membership. We are working hard to get our money's worth.

See how hard they’re working?

I've still been struggling to run, but I'm working my way back—and I even ran a race that I had to get up at the crack of dawn for.

almost skipped this race because I was tired and didn’t want to run, but I made myself do it and it felt great. I’m trying to remember that feeling.

This has also been the summer of music for Sam. I feel as if I've been spending all of my free time driving him and his bassoon places.

He had a camp where he performed in his very first woodwind quintet. I don’t have a photo of that to share here though because the nature of a quintet means there were four other people in the photo.

Did I mention the kittens?

These two kittens are like magic. They are so sweet, with each other and with us.

And with that, I leave you with one last photo, taken today. Hopefully the rest of summer will provide just as many good memories.

Happy Summer!

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