What? Summer’s halfway done, you say? When did that happen?

Summer chez PM has been both full of good things and yet somehow free and easy all at the same time. We finished school mid-June (a week late thanks to all our snow days). Sigh. C’s get degrees, right? The Girl was bereft that the class rabbit was adopted out (well, happy for a good home, but sad for the goodbye), so we tried to mitigate by going to Bunnies in Baskets:

A “rabbit therapy non-profit organization”? Only in Portland, yes?

She loooooved it, but with only weekly sessions of “All You Can Pet for a Dollar,” she was wilting. So we took the plunge:

Meet Sitka the Guinea Pig!

Isn’t she ADORABLE????? OMG, we love her so much!!!

Ostensibly she belongs to The Girl, but we all take our turn. Even The Husband!

(We don’t talk about the “there’s poop in my bed” incident.)

She is truly the BEST pet ever. We were warned when we got her that solo piggies get very lonely because they’re herd animals, so we had to commit to spending at LEAST two hours a day with her. No worries there – she’s on someone’s shoulder/in someone’s lap/going on a lettuce hunt in an elaborate obstacle course pretty much our entire waking hours.

(SO CUTE!!)

We declared this summer to be the “Summer of Success” which means that each weekday, each child must do the following:

• Do a chore (ha, whichever ones I don’t feel like doing)
• Read for an hour
• Exercise for at least 30 minutes

(Side note: don’t you wish someone would force you to do those things every day? I think we’d all be much happier.)

The carrot = $$ and the stick = “no screen time until you’ve done your daily requirements” and it’s working quite well. The exercise is usually some kind of workout or else playing basketball at the community centre with a friend (The Boy) or being dragged through the forest with mom (The Girl). Sometimes it’s just a “family walk” (which sounds all Leave It to Beaver-y until I tell you that it’s really just making everyone accompany me to Fred Meyer to pick up a prescription).

The reading gets mixed reviews. The Girl likes it well enough, but The Boy looks at the clock, starts, and puts the book down EXACTLY one hour later.

(You guys – I can’t even. He has TEN pages left in this book. When I get to this point in a book, anyone coming in the room already knows not to talk to me because I’m eyeing the finish line and can’t be disturbed. The Boy? “Welp, hour’s up, I can put this sucker down.”)

The chores have been a welcome addition to our (well, my) routine. It’s been a bit eye-opening for some of us:

LOL.

(SHE’S SO CUTE!!!!)

All this “success” must be going to The Boy’s head because he’s been acting very strange lately, namely cooking and baking up a storm. The other day he decided to make fried chicken, so he looked up a Gordon Ramsay recipe, got the ingredients, marinated them in buttermilk overnight, and fried it up.

He’s also into baking, but he tends to get his inspiration after I go to bed (we’re on summer schedule here, so I let the kids stay up past midnight knowing that I’ll get 6-8 hours of uninterrupted work the next day before they even think about getting out of bed), so most of it happens without my knowledge. This morning I woke up to chocolate cinnamon roll dough rising.

The Girl’s baking forays are of the passive observer kind since we’ve been bingeing on The Great British Baking Show. Oh, it is SO good! Although we may have told The Boy that his cinnamon rolls were a bit “overproved” today. When she’s not being “successful” or getting her baking shows on or babysitting next door (she’s watching our SUPER CUTE 4-year-old neighbor girl for 10 hours a week this summer), she’s snuggling with the pig.

(ARGH!!! ADORABLE!!)

The Husband is keeping busy with gliding still. I went on my first ride and I didn’t die!! Woot!

We took an impromptu trip to Mt. St. Helen’s to meet a friend of mine from Minneapolis who was on a road trip, but unfortunately our plans to meet up didn’t quite work out. (Who would have thought “meet you on the mountain sometime tomorrow” wasn’t concrete enough? We ended up on opposite sides – relatively close per the old flying crow, but 4 hours of driving on the roads!)

(FYI – that part behind the clouds is actually missing.)

I’m keeping busy with work (we had a major software release go out end of June and I’m still recovering), hiking when it’s not a bazillion degrees, making chore lists, and my two book clubs. Between them and the usual summer reading, I’m required to be out in the backyard with a book for a fair number of hours each week, but I’m managing.

Next week is VBS and we’re all volunteering. Sunday is setup for all four of us. The Girl is on audio-visual/craft table duty. I’ve been roped in to something-something-registration-I-promise-you’ll-be-home-by-9-am. The Boy is a crew leader (LOL – he’s in charge of seven kids! We were a bit strategic and made sure his standard wrestling partners were NOT in his group). He’s been practicing a bit – he and I just started volunteering in the nursery once a month!

(Our youth pastor’s daughter. She’s hovering off-screen mouthing “don’t drop my baby!”)

And this is pretty much it until school starts in a month. We do better with a rhythm, so I think we’re all looking forward to school’s return. Additionally, it has been SO hot here (no rain for 30 days and only The Boy’s brownies get special dispensation to use the oven). We’ve got a camping trip in the hopper and a few other outings for August, but otherwise we’re just “successing” our way to September. And loving on our Sitka.

(OHHHHH, WORKING FROM HOME IS THE BEST!!!)