I’m glad to be back at home in California. Spending 8 weeks over the summer in Philadelphia was an adventure, but I love our walkable town, the support network here (small as it is), and being back where all my stuff is here in California. Being home also means I’m back to healthier routines, including walking more, and getting out of the funk I was in during the tail end of our visit.
We came back about a week and a half before school started back up, with Aaron going back to his pre-school and Adam entering Kindergarten on August 7th. It gave us time for our au pair, Gaby, to take them out on some local adventures around town, over to the seed library at the Hayward Public Library, and to San Francisco. That Friday I drove them over to the Oakland Zoo where I settled in to work for the afternoon while they enjoyed the critters, and caught up with them at the end of the day to visit with their final remaining elephant, and then go on some rides outside the zoo once the main zoo closed.
We also got all the cars washed (an at-home car wash for our 2000 Alero, thanks boys!) and even jump-started one of them, since we’d been gone so long.
That first weekend back we went back to all our old routines. Saturday morning Farmer’s Market, we went to a book sale at the library and then a garage sale, had lunch at our favorite cafe. On Sunday I took them out for donuts and then we made our way over to the hardware store to pick up a couple plants and some soil to complete the dream Adam had all summer: planting a garden. I had gone out to Home Depot earlier in the week to pick up a garden box that was on clearance, and we assembled it, but quickly discovered that we didn’t have quite enough soil to fill it. Later in the week Gaby helped him with planting some seeds, which I’m happy to say have started sprouting.
Buying soil!
Freshly assembled garden box
Unfortunately it wasn’t all fun, MJ had an accident at the end of July that severely damaged his shoulder (thankfully no breaks) and that’s still healing, but he has been in a lot of pain for several weeks. Plus, he’s had to work doctors appointments and restricted driving ability into his schedule, which hasn’t been easy. A lot more childcare has shifted to me, but at least we’re back in California where I have some additional help around the house overall, so I’ve been able to manage the extra load, mostly.
Still, life kept moving along! While working with Adam on his planting adventure, and coming home after 8 weeks away, I realized how much our yard had gone to the weeds. It was bad. And honestly I don’t have the time or inclination to manage it, as much as I’ve tried. We ended up hiring a gardening service that pulled out all the mulch and weeds from the front, replaced a whole section along our front walkway with white rocks, and completed some weeding and tree trimming in the back. It’s still mulch, but it looks a lot better, and our neighbors certainly seem to appreciate it, and so do I.
Front garden before and after
The start of the school year was rather anticlimactic. Due to the arrangement of classes this year, Adam has the same teacher and classroom as he did in TK, so there wasn’t much to prepare him for, and Aaron went back to the same preschool. They both enjoy school right now, so there were also no tears. Aside from me coming close after we dropped them off, Kindergarten is a big step! Plus, it was nice to see us all get back to our routines, I certainly enjoyed being back in my home office here. Now we just need to get back to all our big home projects, the first of which is doing some furniture shuffling. But first, my sister and nephew came into town, and added on a few more adventures to the tail end of our summer!