Hi guys 😂 It’s me. I’m here. Whew! That was an unexpected (and unplanned) blog hiatus that I took. The end of the school year back in spring was so much busier than I’d anticipated… I feel like post-spring break, life just flipped on hyperspeed mode and I barely had enough brain space to make sure all my kids were at the places they needed to be, on time every day. Blogging definitely took a backseat! But though posts have been few and far between, this little corner of the internet has been on my mind all summer. I didn’t WANT to neglect it! So here I am, finally able to sit down and update now that the 22-23 school year has started. I decided to just do one massive post with a giant photo dump for each month. Get a cup of coffee, your favorite snack, and settle in!

may

So, my kids basically ended school before Memorial Day weekend back in May.

It was a huge milestone for our family because (1) the littlest one was graduating preK and (2) the biggest one was graduating from elementary school and moving onto middle school.

The big one graduating hit me hardest because she’s been at that elementary school campus since she was THREE years old and started attending the Early Intervention preschool program there. She spent 8 wonderful years with the staff and administrators at that location, growing and learning and making friends, and now she’s moving onto a new school.

Another parent turned to me at one of the 5th grade end of year activities and told me E was essentially the mayor of our elementary school because she knows every single person, teacher, teacher’s aide, staff member. I have to say… she’s not wrong!! I rolled up to E’s middle school orientation a few months later in August and the staff person checking her in knew who she was!? She was like “Ohhh, hi E!!” and I was like 😳👀 who are you, how do you know my daughter and how does she know you? Apparently she was a staff member at the elementary school but not in any of the classes E was ever in… but E would still go in and say hi sometimes so she recognized my daughter. LOL.

june

In June, we kicked off summer break with a visit from halmonee & harabuji from SoCal. They came up to watch our girls in their respective end-of-year recitals – voice recital for E and dance recital for A! A’s recital was a huge production/show that her studio puts on every year so she had costumes, makeup, all the things and she had two different shows to dance in that week. It was so stinkin cute!

It was also my FIL’s birthday so we did a little celebration at our home for him as well. It’s hard to buy a gift for someone who literally has everything he probably wants/needs so we settled on matching jerseys for him and “the grand heir” as he calls D (because he’s the oldest and first grandson LOL).

In June, little A also got into a little accident while at one of her summer camps…. I got a call from the camp on a Friday afternoon. J & I were on our way to get lunch together for a little date and when I saw the phone number calling on my screen, my heart sank because I just knew that something had happened and I wasn’t going to be getting lunch anymore 😂

Well…yea. She was playing “the ground is lava” and jumping from tree stump to tree stump, miscalculated, ate it, and hit her head on the corner of said tree stump. The gash on her eyebrow was pretty deep so we decided to take her to the ER because we weren’t sure if she’d need stitches.

Thankfully no stitches, just some skin glue and steri-tape buuuut… now that it’s been a few months, I can tell you that she definitely has a scar on her eyebrow 😭 wahhhh my poor baby girl. I’m religiously applying this stupid expensive scar gel cream every day on her in hopes that it’ll minimize the appearance. Fingers crossed – pray for us guys!

In June, I also got to head to TGCW in Indianapolis with two of my besties! This conference/girls trip was planned for 2020 so it’s been two years postponed. I’m SO happy we finally got to go! It was the most refreshing time of sitting under the teaching of God’s word and worshipping with thousands of other women from all over the place. Who wants to come with me in 2024!?

The rest of the month of June was filled with lots of swim team and summer camps. I say this every year but I really overdid it with the kids’ schedules this summer and I DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS AGAIN. I keep forgetting that swim team alone is a huge commitment for D but now that he plays club soccer, he’s more than busy enough without camps. REMINDER TO SUMMER 2023 SOPHIA: NO MORE SUMMER CAMPS FOR D.

july

In July (thankfully) we were able to take a much slower pace! We kicked off the first week of July with a family vacation to Oahu with our dearest friends, the M’s. Ever since they moved away to SoCal 5 years ago, we definitely don’t see them as much as we want to but doing these little family trips together has helped ease the distance!

There was a lot of time spent at the beach together (duh)…

As well as a few afternoons at the pool…

And a few other excursions such as visiting the Pearl Harbor Memorial, snorkeling, and swimming with turtles!

I was so happy to finally be able to get D his coconut with a straw. This was something he was so excited about back in kindergarten (2020) when we were gearing up for our family spring break trip to Maui. He would not stop talking about how he was going to relax on the beach with a coconut and a straw. When we went to the Big Island last year, we could NOT find one of these fruit vendors anywhere. So FINALLY, 2+ years later, he got his coconut with a straw.

And then we flew home and on the day of our flight, A woke up with a fever and not feeling too hot. Turns out it was COVID (yes for the second time). I tested our entire family and D was positive too although I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t tested him. 🤪

We quarantined for a few days at home – A was literally completely fine after a day or two – and it worked out because the week after Hawaii I hadn’t booked any camps for the kids anyway. July was much slower than June for us in terms of kids’ activities… both girls got fresh haircuts in preparation for back to school.

A also got to do some shopping with me one day when D was at soccer with his dad, E was off at junior high Bible study, and she & I were trying to kill time waiting for E. She found some jelly shoes on clearance at Old Navy and was so proud!

Daisy got to have a doggy playdate with another Goldendoodle from the same breeder. This dog is actually how I was introduced to Daisy’s breeder … Bailey (the other dog) is the sweetest, cuddliest, friendliest dog ever and belongs to a family on D’s soccer team so I asked the mom where they got Bailey and … you know how this story ends. They romped so well together!

In July, we also got to take our kids to … FAMILY CAMP! This is our church’s version of a family retreat. It was my first time camping in a tent with our kids – they had an absolute BLAST. I came back home only reaffirming the fact that I am not a tent camping girl. We also took both dogs with us and they vomited ALL over their travel crates on the drive up to Tahoe which was not a fun surprise to arrive at the campsite with. Thankfully we were sharing a camp site with some of our favorite people and they literally did all the cooking for us. We just had to show up with our gear and clothes.

I just had to include this picture because I thought it was cute. I came out of our room to find A watching TV on the couch using her dad as her footrest. They were literally watching Disney Jr or something J would have no interest in so I’m pretty sure she forced him to sit next to her. 🥲

We celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary at the end of July with a date at the House of Prime Rib in SF. So good! J gifted me a cutie little Goyard crossbody. It’s in the prettiest Kelly green color. I don’t have a picture of it though 😂

13 years later and these are our monkeys.

And then we finished off the month of July with a trip down to SoCal to see cousins and grandparents! We haven’t seen our littlest niece since she was just a newborn and it was such a joy to hold her and squeeeeeeze her. Geez, I miss baby smells. (There is one cousin not pictured… I don’t know why but I don’t have a picture of him 🤪 I think he was too busy running around with E & D).

We got to take our kids to Medieval Times while were down in SoCal too! D was wide-eyed the whole time and kept asking me if this was real (like if the knights were actually getting injured) or fake so I had to reassure him that the chants for “Death Death Death Death!” were all just in good fun.

We also got to see our friends the M’s again since they live kind of near my in-laws in SoCal. They brought their kids over to swim at our place and then the grownups all went out to a double date to watch the Boys II Men & TLC concert at the Hollywood Bowl! It was so so so so fun!

And then we headed back home the next day! But made sure to get our HoneyMee fill in before we drove back up to NorCal 😉

And that was July! I wasn’t sure if I’d include this in this post or not but I think I will go ahead and mention it and then do a longer separate post later going into more detail. July is also when I started getting panic & anxiety attacks. They started happening once we returned from Hawaii and were so scary and confusing. I had to cut a massage short (**which if you know me is … insane because (1) I hate being a bother and would rather just grin and bear ANYTHING than make a fuss about it and (2) I LOVE massages**) because I felt like I was going to suffocate and couldn’t get enough air/couldn’t breathe. It was… intense. It’s another part of why I laid low for a lot of July – the first week after my initial episodes, I was completely exhausted and wiped out and couldn’t do much.

august

The first week of August was Day Camp (or VBS) at our church. It was the first year in a long time that I wasn’t serving so I got to do a drop-off/pick-up and enjoy some quiet time in the mornings. E was also doing the separate junior high day camp through church so it was a lot of driving for this mom 🙂

Day camp week is extra exhausting. Naps every day 😉

We got one more back-to-school shopping date in .. I took the girls because J is usually in charge of picking D’s clothes.

AND THEN SCHOOL STARTED 🥺

I just can’t believe that this gorgeous girl is in middle school..

And this little miss thaaaang is in KINDERGARTEN. With the SAME (amazing) teacher her older sister had! 6 years ago! When I was PREGNANT with her! Full circle moment for me, let me tell ya.

The first two weeks of kindergarten are all minimum days that our district calls “Gentle Beginnings” to get the kindergarteners acclimated to the school, routine, friends, etc. So I took A out to lunch every day the first week of school. It was a great way to connect with her 1:1 and I found that once we sat down for lunch at the restaurant, she’d start spilling all the details of the day and what she did.

E has been biking to school with the neighborhood kids …

.. and A & D have been continuing our tradition of walking to the elementary school in the mornings.

Dance class has started up again and A moved up a level.

And D is playing soccer FIVE days a week now 🤯 (three practices, one game, one extra training session). It’s a lot of us ladies waiting in the car while he sweats out in the heat.

E’s activities will start mid-September so … yup. That’s been the last few months for us! Now that I’m all caught up, I’m hoping to be back on the regular blog post routine! Thanks for being patient while I was gone (if you even noticed at all) and reading all the way through to the end of this post!