Get outside!

Sometimes I just NEED to get outside, to spend a few hours in the dirt and the sunshine to reboot. Last weekend I told C that I didn't care what else we did, but I wanted to hike and find a waterfall. So we did, and it was AMAZING. We hiked to a gorgeous fall, swam, and came home dirty and sun-kissed. It was exactly what I was looking for.

And the next day, we sent Eli off for a week at Scout camp! This is his third year, and I was really struck by how big he is. I miss him a lot (more than I thought I would) and I really hope he's having a good time. He signed up for Wilderness Survival and Rifle this year. On one hand I hope they're as awesome as he hoped and on the other I'd really like for him to come home with all his original parts. 

Baby Scout :( 

Fourth and then some

What a lovely long weekend! Averson and I spent the morning reading and drinking coffee by the pool. I don’t care how much C bitches about pool maintenance. Quiet mornings out there, before it gets too hot and before all the heathens wake up, are as close to paradise as I can imagine

Averson gave me an inspired makeover. She used a beauty blender to apply my eye shadow and called it a “life hack”

Most of us spent the 4th proper at a friend’s house. At one point I yelled “Hey! You guys need to share the blowtorch!” And I really cant think of any way to top that moment

Eli spent his own money to take Abba to the rodeo <3 p="">

And the girls and I played with filters and face paint. Real life hack? Acrylic craft paint as face paint! It stayed on all night with no smudging, and wiped off with a wet cloth. Game. Changer. 

THIRTEEN

And just like that, he’s an official teenager. This kid who made me a mom, who can bring me to my tears alternately with frustration and a love so deep it sometimes hurts. He is such an amazing, unique soul that I struggle to find words to describe him. 

Birthday donuts

I love this so much. He’s taller than me and VERY close to special-order shoe sizes 

We celebrated by having his friends come over to swim and watch The Waterboy. Then they all played hide-and-seek and it was the thirteenist birthday ever. 

Date night

We're still trying to squeeze in semi-regular date nights and trying to branch out from the standard movie and dinner. Bingo remains a clear front-runner, but this week we finally cashed in a Groupon for a local cafe that offers movie-themed cooking classes. I booked it months ago, and then promptly forgot all about it until it popped up on my calendar last week.

We watched The Muppets and made cucumber and onion salad, Swedish meatballs, and Hassleback potatoes. Our tablemates were basically an engaged version of ourselves. We learned all the tips and tricks (parboil your salad onions to bring out their sexy lavender color and inherent sweetness!) and made a delicious dinner. I got just buzzed enough off of my ONE beer (because I'm the coolest). And C got to rock his Stormtrooper apron. We can't wait to go back :)

SO MUCH CHEESE

My one beer + his more-than-one beer =

I totally ate like a quarter of this before I remembered to take a picture, so my tablemates and I had to restyle the plate to cover the gaping hole. Look at those sexy onions!

Girl Scout Family Camp

We spent Father's Day weekend at Family Camp with the Girl Scouts and we had SO MUCH FUN. I always fantasized about going to camp. Every summer I would wistfully review the catalogues that got sent to our house for tennis camp, horseback riding camp, camp camp, and wish that I could pack up a footlocker with items carefully selected off of the packing list. I'd make great lifelong friends, write postcards, and my mom would send me care packages. It would basically be the plotline of the Baby-Sitter's Club Super Special. But alas. My only camp experience was going with a school friend and her mom to visit our PE teacher, who was working at tennis camp for the summer. It wasn't until adulthood that it dawned on me 1) why we would do that 2) why her dad was so mad when we got home, and 3) why her mom and our teacher needed "private time" in her cabin while my friend and I slept on the floor of the girls' cabin.

But I digress...

Like I said, we had so much fun at camp. We took our little tribe of families, plus one set of grandparents, and took over an entire campsite. The girls all slept in one tent together, and no one freaked out and the girls actually went to sleep at a relatively normal time. The adults had a blast hanging out together and doing the camp activities. C even talked all the girls, and one of the dads, into doing a polar plunge on Father's Day morning. My highlight was hitting a bullseye on my first shot in archery while C was canoeing with the littles, and having another dad tell him about it by saying "be careful, she can probably kill you stealthily." And then I got a bullseye patch because, Girl Scouts.

Men Enough to Girl Scout

Tie-dying! 

Fire Building with six year olds. It's basically survival of the fittest at this point. 

We took a hike to the original cabin and did art on some very cliff-y rocks.

She was really living her best camp life

Prepping for Polar Plunge

Canoeing!

Syd at the archery range. She got a bullseye too! 

And one of the only pictures I'm in from the weekend. I call it "Camp Mom through Averson's eyes (and thumb)" Also, WTF is wrong with my hair and why didn't I put a damn hat on? But isn't my coffee mug cute? It's a Yeti and I love it with all of my heart.

All the things

I'm laid up in bed because I'm old and fell out of my front door, twisting my ankle epically, on our way to our first grown-up party in forever. The TV in our room doesn't work, so I broke out the laptop. And then I realized that it's been a million years since I posted.

We've been doing things! Non-falling-out-of-door things.

Averson is reading all the things and every time it makes my heart burst. (Also, I'm trying to fix my hideous kitchen and I'm pretty sure the yellow is awful. Is it awful?)

I bought a Cricut and I'm crafting all the things. I'm "upcycling" everything I can lay my hands on. I need some pithy sayings for wine glasses next, since I classily drank the wine my neighbor brought over out of a mason jar (aka our "good" jars)

Eli made me a heart for Mother's Day along with the sweetest bullet point list of the things he's grateful for. I totally cried. Then he asked for the heart back because he'd snuck it out of class ad he still needed to get it graded and if that's not the most perfect situation for us I don't know what is. 

 

Syd finished out softball and they were the champs! Softball was bittersweet, since she's the first grandkid to play and my dad would have been ridiculously excited about it. I'm glad she didn't let grief stop her, and tonight her coach presented her award and said that whenever he saw her play he thought, "Wow. She's a natural."

It's been so long, I don't even remember where I left off. Like, did I tell you about my fight with the HOA about my "vicious pitbulls"? Or how that led to the woman who'd been reporting us to get cited? Or how I took a new (temporary) job back in a prison, but it's an hour away and I'm driving all the damn time. But also it's really fun and some crazy stuff happens. A guy tried to climb the fence last week! Or in TMI news, how I went off birth control pills and realized that maybe I'm not as crazy as I thought I was? And lost five pounds almost immediately. 

I have to go back and figure out what I've left out. In the meantime, we have a week left of school and everyone is DONE. I didn't even buy stuff for lunches this week. I figure we'll just throw a bunch of random crap in a grocery sack and call it a day. We're going to family scout camp in a couple weeks and I'm stupid excited about it. And the pool is up and running! 

Books that leave you feeling happy, inspired, and optimistic

A few weeks ago my sister-in-law (the amazing creator of Punch Life Back) asked me for book recommendations. I LOVE giving book recommendations! Like, it's one of my favorite things ever. But she specifically asked for books that would leave the reader feeling happy, inspired, or optimistic. So I jumped on GoodReads to look through my read list to cull out a list of recommendations for her. Cue sad trumpets because happy, inspired, optimistic books apparently are not my key genre. Need a dystopian universe full of manipulative teenagers? I gotchu. Graphic, disturbing crime writing. ALL OVER IT. Happy, optimistic, inspired? Little bit harder to find. BUT! I found a few. And I'm also working on adding to the list because geez. No wonder I'm irritated and anxious all the time and feel the need to have two obnoxious hellbeasts. How many psychological thrillers is really too many? Asking for a friend (who is me)


So, without further ado

Books That Will Leave You Feeling Happy, Inspired, And Optimistic

Becoming
OMG. I pretty solidly do not love memoirs (I typically find them irritatingly self-absorbed which I acknowledge is the whole point of the genre) but this should be required reading for basically everyone. If you are starting to feel like the world is a dumpster fire, go read this book. It's amazing.

Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Oh how I love this book. It's my go-to book gift for people because it's just so perfect. AND, there's a bit of a dark side to it so it didn't feel super off-brand for me. I love Elinor and everything about this book.

The Keeper of Lost Things
Again, a little bit of a dark back-story but such a beautiful tome about legacy and being open to the world as it presents itself.

The Hazel Wood
Okay, this story is NOT super rainbows and unicorns but I love it and I'm including it because I love the premise. It's essentially a YA rewrite of several fairy tales and I enjoyed it for the creativity and story-telling. I'm including it because it was a fun book to read.

Dietland
This book falls under "inspiring." It's a story about a woman who is redefining her identity and how she sees herself and others. I loved it and it spoke to me on a number of levels.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
Okay. So technically this one is kind of sad. But also it's super heartening and I still thing about the characters as if I had lived in the house with them. I would say this book is perfect for someone who maybe is feeling like a bit of a misfit or who is feeling lonely. It's all about seeing the beauty in people and making connections.

Matchmaking for Beginners
This is another book about a cast of characters that you immediately fall in love with. Give me a brownstone full of oddballs and I'll give you a book that will make you smile.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
This one was a fast, light book about people who love books. I literally LOLed while I read this.


What books would you add to this list? And please let me know if you're looking for other book recommendations! I really do love it. It feeds my narcissism and bibliophilism