Summer

This time last year I was starting 100 Happy Days and gearing up for my baby showers. This year I’m just trying to stay on top of things around the house and anticipating Forest’s first birthday in 3 short months. 3 months, y’all! I was looking at the photos and videos from the days surrounding his birth and thinking that we didn’t take enough video! But, I think I’m going to put together the videos I do have and share them on his birthday. I forgot how tiny he was! It’s easy to forget sometimes.

Our summer is full, full, full…at least the first half. We haven’t planned the second half yet. A month ago I sat down and came up with a rough came plan for our weekends until mid-July. With three sets of grandparents and two sets of aunts and uncles, everyone wants to make the round to see the baby every 2-3 months. With balancing all of those visits, plus trips for ourselves and time at home, it is essential that we get some kind of game plan months in advance. Forest is getting better at travel, though by the end of a trip gets really fussy about having to be in the car yet again, so we’ll be able to make trips to DFW more often where we can see groups of people at a time instead of having everyone filter through down here one weekend at a time.

I’m looking forward to a vacation we’re taking with my parents to Port Aransas in July. I haven’t been on a vacation to the beach in years, muchless to Port A. I’m excited for Forest to visit the beach, too! I’m thinking of all the seafood to eat (no shrimp…don’t eat shrimp!), shopping, salt marsh explorations, soaking in the sun, jumping waves….ahhh, yeah!

We’ve had such a wet spring here already and this last week or so has just really done us in. I’m sure a lot of y’all have seen the flooding issues around Texas. Thankfully what you saw in Houston did not directly impact us much. Though, the day after all of the major flooding in Houston proper, we got some rain that closed off roads around our house and office which had our office closed on Wednesday. The pond came up into the yard, higher than a usual small ‘flood’ but not as high as July 2012. A week ago I mowed our yard and had to avoid a few spots because they still had standing water and it was rather mushy. I was planning on mowing again this weekend but everything is still saturated too much, so I’ll be postponing it until later this week. I think we’re supposed to have some sunny weather this week which will help dry everything out a bit.

The garden is quite a disaster, too. Well, the flower garden is mostly in order because I’ve been busting my butt with it the last two months. I only have to mulch 1/2 of one bed, and it’s a small bed, and finish pulling the weeds in the path and around the beehive. I need to get my suit on for this and do it one evening. It might take two evenings to do, though. The vegetable garden, however, is an utter disaster. Chris had kept it pretty maintained until March sometime and it kind of got left to Mother Nature after that. I started working my way through that yesterday but it is going to take some heavy duty work. The beds will be easy to pull but the path is more compacted and the weeds are harder to pull. I can’t work out there in the evenings because our baby monitor signal doesn’t reach that far out when he’s sleeping upstairs, so I’m really relegated to work out there on weekends or maybe if I come pull weeds for 20 minutes during my lunch break.

Anyway, here’s a list of some summer ‘goals’ I’d like to accomplish:

+ Read three books. I miss reading a lot. I seem to spend my evenings catching up on blog reading, or my new habit—watching YouTube vlogs—, but I could spend 20-30 minutes reading a few times a week. When we went camping at Brazos Bend a few weekends ago I read the last several chapters of Outlander in anticipation of the last two episodes of the tv show so. Reading it really made me miss reading in general and I think I can bust out some books now.

+ Work one day a week for 1-2 hours on editing my book. I already started this one. I realized one day that I didn’t have to sit down and do it every day…sometimes I get in that all or nothing mode with creative endeavors. If I work one day week on it the book will eventually be completed! Small steps!

+ Continue to stay active in the heat. I haven’t run in a week or so—all this damn rain—but the last time I really ran the heat and humidity was pretty rough at noontime. I may be switching to rollerblading for the summer. I have a 5K on the agenda with a friend sometime in August and I really need to get my running up to that level by then. I can run a little over 2 miles straight at the moment, but haven’t pushed myself for 3 yet.

+ Organize my studio. If it takes me all summer, that’s fine. I just want to make it useable for fall and winter when I have a lot more time indoors.

+ Get the garden and yard in maintenance mode. I have a few ‘big’ things I want to get taken care of and then I want to get into a mode where I’m just maintaining it instead of having to do major work.

Those are the big ones. We have several house projects and organization projects that need to get done around here. Plus, I’ve got a list of blog posts I want to write…oh, it’s never ending!

What’s on your agenda for summer?