**Note: This letter has a VERY long story near the end that describes our biggest vacation adventure this year. Feel free to skip over it. I am not trying to make this blog post like a book with great writing, but I DO want to write down things I don’t want to forget…..hence the forever-long paragraph story that I don’t care about taking the time to proofread or make better. I just want to remember what happened. I am sorry about its length though. **
Mason, Rylan, and Elli,
This month had big endings and big starts. We all finished the Awana year, and Mason, you finished first grade. And we kicked off the start of summer with our vacation to Williamsburg. Before all of that, we also had one family baseball day; Grand Prix; the Awana girls’ sleepover (where all of you came with us for the part at Sherando Lake); a spur-of-the-moment trip to PA; Grandparents Day (Mommy and Daddy got to see the practice!); Mothers’ Day meal at Sanzones; family date night to Table44 and walking around Staunton; and field day on Mason’s last day of school.
We’re also trying to get in 100 Days of Summer Fun during summer break; Here’s what we’ve done so far (in May):
Day 1- picnic lunch in the front yard (it was VERY hot, so the boys gave up on eating pretty quickly and moved to the water);
Day2- family baseball night;
Day 3- life group picnic at church; Day 4- family bike ride; Day 5- night swim on vacation in Williamsburg; Day 6- Virginia Beach; Day 7- ice cream in Williamsburg; Day 8- exploring a bamboo forest in Williamsburg
Mason, you’re pretty happy that 1st grade is over. It was not your favorite time so far in your life. Some adventurous things you’ve done this month are having a giant mud fight with Rylan in the front yard (which was going well until he got chunks of mud under his eyelid and he was scared he was going to be blind forever); shaving off your eyebrow with my razor (definitely without our permission); and cutting your own hair VERY short in certain places while I was mowing (also, without our permission) and, in turn, getting yourself the shortest hair cut of your life so far. I hope summer will be a fun and relaxing re-set time for you. I think we’re both determined that second grade is going to be better.
Rylan, you had a date with Daddy going to a stream in Lyndhurst and playing in the water. Mommy didn’t get a date with you this month, so we’ll make June extra special. Like Mason, you were also a part of the cutting-your-own-hair-while-Mommy-was-mowing scheme. So you also have a short haircut, although it’s not quite as short as Mason’s. I can’t remember if I mentioned last month, but we did decide to sign you up for kindergarten. I’m not positive that it was the right choice, but I’m far from positive that holding you would have been better. So we’ll see how it goes. If it’s not going well, we can pull you out and try again next year.
Elli, you had a few speech things this month. One speech teacher came to our house with Miss Kari, and that assessment ended up being a little discouraging for you when you could barely say any of the words she was asking. You started getting sad, and that made me sad. But you are still saying new things every week! You say “Saah-i” (sorry) a lot. You say “Beep Beep!” when you need to get by anybody, which makes me laugh; you say it just as politely as if you were saying “excuse me.”
And now….vacation. We left home on Tuesday around lunch time after spending all morning cleaning out the van. We got to the resort place around 4:45 and unloaded our things inside. We got a great location this time on the 3rd floor and very close to the pool. I went to Trader Joe’s with Mason to get our groceries for the time we’d be there, cooked supper, and afterwards we went swimming. It’s a really fun and very warm pool that all of us enjoy. The next day we made our day trip to Virginia Beach. We first went out on the beach to play and get wet for an hour or so. Then we went back to the car, got our bikes (Mommy and Daddy’s bikes were on top of the van, and Rylan and Mason’s were in the back), then biked to a Hawaiian restaurant. Rylan accidentally poured a small pitcher of some sort of soy sauce stuff all over his shirt and lap almost immediately, and at the time I thought it was the low point of the day. But we cleaned him up and ate our yummy food, got dessert drinks, then biked over to the boardwalk. We rode our bikes from 30th St. all the way down to 11th or so, where there was a playground. I decided to explore a little farther while Daddy stayed with the three of you to play. I was looking for those statues of 3 sea animals where there had been a picture with Mommy, Aunt Heidi, and Uncle Tony when we were little. I found the 3 fish, and then 3 turtles just a couple blocks down. And then I realized that the playground that we’d gone to several years ago when we came to Williamsburg was right at the end of the boardwalk. I went to give all of this information to Daddy, we left to get pictures at the 3 fish, and then I rode beside you two boys while Daddy was getting Elli to meet us at the 3 turtles. We got there, and while I was pulling my right leg off of my bike (my left foot was already firmly on the ground) I felt like my leg was stuck on something. Since I didn’t want to fall over trying to get unstuck as I was only standing on one leg, I just kept pulling. I realized after that that my leg had been caught on a tiny metal piece sticking up on my bike…and pulling it had ripped my leg open on the inside of my right leg, near the knee. I instantly knew that I needed stitches when I looked down and could see inside of my leg. I tried to be calm and tell you boys that I needed Daddy and he needed to call 9-1-1. Thankfully we were in a populated area, so several people were offering me help within a minute. As Daddy got there, one man offered us his motel towels; another couple told me to put my leg up to try to control the bleeding; and a guy who worked on something at the beach put me in his four wheeler thing and called for help. After a little while, two lifeguards came to wrap my leg up and wait with us for the ambulance. The two thoughts that were going through my head during this were “When is the pain going to come?— I saw what my leg looked like, but it doesn’t feel like it looks” and “When am I going to pass out?” Amazingly neither thing ever happened. Aside from getting numbing medicine in there before stitching it up, the whole cut felt like little more than a scratch. I’m not going to include the picture Daddy took of it after they cleaned it in the hospital, before stitching it, but, trust me, it’s disgusting, and hard to imagine that it could have happened from what I just described. There was also fat from my leg everywhere, it seemed. Like….pieces of fat from my leg were on my hands and falling down my leg. Amazingly gross. So I rode in the ambulance by myself to the hospital while one of the lifeguards helped the 4 of you back to the car and gave you directions to the hospital. Thankfully you got there pretty quickly. I was only alone for a little while after the EMT left. When they took me back to get stitched up, you all got to come back there for a while; then you left during the actual process of cleaning and stitching, just to be safe. I had 6 stitches on the inside and 9 (we thought it was 10 until I got them out and there were only 9) on the outside. They weren’t close together or small tight stitches; it was more like big and spaced out; hoping that the leg would find its way back together. The doctor told me things like….I should have gotten in a knife fight, because it would have been a lot easier to stitch up; I was making him earn his pay that day; he would think twice before asking for a challenging wound to stitch next time; I should tell people it was a shark bite, because it was jagged like one. After we were finally able to leave, with my leg wrapped and crutches to help me move and avoid tearing a stitch, we had to stop and get supper and get my prescriptions filled. We went to a Harris Teeter that had a Starbucks inside and was beside a pizza place (we got both). While we were waiting for my prescriptions to be filled, we picked up some other stuff that was on our list to get at the store too. We finally made it back to the resort around 9 or 9:30 I think. Hobbling up 3 flights of stairs on crutches wasn’t very easy, but I managed. The next day we hung around the house, swimming (except for me) and playing foosball/ping pong for the morning (it was like record breaking heat for May during our whole vacation) and then went inside for the afternoon. Daddy got some things to clean my wound during nap time, and after we’d re-wrapped it, we went out to dinner at a BBQ place that someone recommended and then a soft serve ice cream place that had some outdoor games. We played miniature golf when we got back; the boys swam a little; and then we went back for bed. On Friday we packed up, went swimming one more time, got a yummy lunch close to Colonial Williamsburg (+latte afterwards), then walked to Colonial Williamsburg. You boys were not on your best behavior with Daddy while he tried to walk around (and I sat on a bench with Elli), but you did get very excited at the bamboo forest place we found when we were leaving. We drove through a big thunderstorm on the way home when we were near Charlottesville that was really scary (to Mommy at least). Oh and we listened to an audiobook of Seabiscuit during our trip that we all really got interested in. Nonni was very thoughtful and made us supper that we picked up on the way home too. And we finished our trip with Daddy driving into the garage while our bikes were still on top of the car…..and that’s all I’ll say about that. (The bikes were fine).
Here are the quotes from this month :)
“We found an old leaf stuck in a boulder from like infinity years ago. Like it had been from the Silver War!!”
“Mommy, uhh **MY** eyes.”
“I wish I could cut off all of your hair and make a chair out of it. And then I’d brush it every day so it would get comfier and comfier.”
“Mommy, PEEE??? MOMMY, PEE????”
“You got that shirt in 2003??? Wow!! That’s like when the Silver War was going!!”
“Mommy’s boo-bee nice.”
Alright kiddos, here comes summer! We’re gonna have fun.