I’ve been using that hashtag on all my summer pictures thus far, so I’ll fill this post with a lot of them. Our summer vacation adventures began immediately this year, literally on the last day of school.
To start off, I took the kids down to my mom’s house on the first afternoon of summer vacation. The girls had a half day for their last day of school, we walked home, had lunch, then loaded up and drove to Palos. We spent the night there, then headed down to Peoria the following morning for what has become an annual Miller family weekend. It was so much fun, and I’m really glad we made it down this summer after bailing at the last minute last year.
We got home from that trip on Monday, then turned right around and went on our own Wisconsin family vacation that same Wednesday. This, too, has become an annual trip, and we’re trying to find the perfect cabin/lake setup to go to each year. Ideally we want it within about 2 hours of home and on the water so the kids can swim and play daily. A clean, sandy beach is perfect for them, but we’re still looking for our “permanent” spot. This year’s place was definitely not it – dirty and cramped “hotel” room, not the best company for fellow patrons; last year’s place was awesome except for lots of ants in the cabin, but it was too far away at 6 hours. So we’ll just keep trying places until we get it right and enjoying memories together along the way.
We came home from that vacation on Saturday, and our car was stolen that afternoon. Super awesome, and certainly not a highlight of this summer vacation, but worth mentioning anyway as we’ve been dealing with that ever since. We were home from our lake trip for about 2 and a half weeks, Morrison took a session of swim lessons, I got the big 3 signed up for the library summer reading program, the kids had a couple fun backyard shower sprinkler days, we celebrated the 4th of July with friends and neighbors as usual, then I flew out to Colorado with the kids for a week-long visit. Thankfully Arianne flew back to help us fly out, flew home with us as well, then flew back to Colorado, because there is NO WAY I could’ve made those flights with all 5 alone. Simply getting on the plane would have been next to impossible once the twins were out of the stroller.
That was a really fun trip, too. The kids all love spending time with their cousins, my mom flew out as well so we all got to spend the week together, and I finally got to see Marissa’s “new” house. We took the kids swimming, to a tiny town with a little train they could ride, made pizzas and s’mores in their pizza oven, even had a Christmas in July dinner. It was a great time. Hopefully they didn’t regret inviting us all out with all the noise and Nat’s screaming!
So now we’ve stopped traveling and get to enjoy the rest of the summer at home. Ahhh… The kids have a number of fun activities coming up – swim lessons for the girls, a drawing camp for the girls, zoo day camps, and Della even gets to spend a couple days at Grandma and Grandpa’s house by herself for her birthday. Lucky duck! We have a bunch of projects in the house and yards that I’m looking forward to finishing up, so it should be a fulfilling next couple months. Maybe we’ll even get our car back one of these days…
I love summer vacation!
