Feel Good
I've lost the plot of where I am and what even is time, but here we are. There's been a lot going (which you've probably surmmised if you've been following along with this year so far), and while that's not necessarily a bad things, times are a-changing and that is always just... a lot.
Taylor's been here for the past 10ish days, and it's been a lovely change of pace (wow I just had major deja vu writing this) and great to have her around and an extra set of hands to help wrangling Charlie and Hailey (and Georgia and Daphne), particularly while the kids are off school and in between that end and camp starting next week. I had originally wanted us to go somewhere and had looked at the beach or the mountains, and I hadn't been able to get my act together with the house uncertainty, but I realized a few weeks ago that actually we could join my mom's family at the Jersey Shore for my grandmother's burial and call that a mini-vacay.
The Shore is about an 8-9 hour drive (and a pain to fly to from here and honestly would take just as long), but I figured it was doable (the kids are great in the car and used to long treks).
On Tuesday though it occurred to me that it would be more doable to actually leave Wednesday night and stop halfway in DC and do a little whirlwind tour... so that rapidly became the plan. I found a hotel by the White House (funnily the hotel my mom's first job out of college was at), we got in late Wednesday night after a slightly harrowing drive through three separate torrential (and I mean TORRENTIAL) downpours, and then we booked it down the Mall past all the sights on Thursday morning before hopping back in the car to finish the drive up 95.
DC was great, the Shore was great - all in all, I am so glad we did it, despite the hours in the car and how hard it was to return back to reality on Monday.
My mom is one of seven, and there are 40-some members of the immediate family, and so it is 'always a party at the Michalowski's'... and this was true to form. My aunt and uncle have had a house at the Shore since the 90's that they kept after they moved away, and so we all have spent the past 20-30 years making our own memories visiting them over summers in various family combinations.
We did the classics - dinner at Klein's on the water, ice cream at Strollo's, the Avon beach, swinging in the backyard, a constant stream of food on the table, some ruckus nighttime group games (as Charlie said Sunday morning - 'last night was kind of wild')... and I left for the long drive home just feeling very fulfilled and grateful to be part of such a tightknit group and have been able to make those memories.
It's amazing to think of how much of a legacy two people could build and nurture and send off into the world.
Do Good
Somewhere in the middle of the past two weeks we also did a quick early celebration for Miss Hailey's fifth birthday at the Castle Park with some of her friends, and it was the perfect little intro to summer and lowkey birthday party that I am all about.
Her actual birthday is next week, and it's impossible for me to wrap my head around that she's already FIVE.
It feels like she was born a lifetime ago (it was like... two eras ago) but also like she was just a tiny NICU baby that I was hobbling back and forth across the hospital to hold.
I have a feeling the next two months are going to be chaos, and I feel like I'm about to walk (unprepared) into the flames, but here we go.
Look Good
I've been slacking on fit pics thanks to travel, but here are some hits. My new Nuuly just got here, and it's a good one.
