July was a busy month in our house! Miraculously, I met all of my July goals, but it wasn’t pretty. Anna, Mike and I got back yesterday morning from a whirlwind house hunting trip to CA. My sister E graciously watched the three older kids while we were gone! It was a very intense trip – we arrived on a red-eye flight early Friday morning, looked at houses all day Friday and Saturday, found one place that looked reasonable Saturday, went back to the one place we liked on Sunday for a second look, and spent the afternoon going over paperwork before flying back on another red-eye late Saturday night. Anna was incredibly patient with the entire process (she definitely enjoyed the benefits of being an only child for a few days). Anna slept on the overnight flight, and the kids were happy to see us Monday morning! Emma, Johnny, and Lily had had a wonderful weekend – playing at a splash park, picking blueberries and eating ice cream, and going to the library. Thank you, E!!! Mike and I are still recovering from the trip. We should find out by Wednesday if we got this place; otherwise it’s back to the drawing board.
Anna is all signed up with Early Intervention; she also has appointments with specialists in August to see what is going on with her left leg (she prefers not to use it, wherever possible). I took Emma’s advice and brought Anna’s new crochet baby doll on our trip, and the doll was great for wiling away long hours in the car, along with favorite board books. I signed the kids up for BBC’s Muzzy Online French class, and they are starting to pick up a few vocabulary words. I also have the kids signed up for a free trial run with Dreambox Math at Emma’s request, and may pay for a subscription if it continues to go well. Lily had a fun fourth birthday party with friends from school, and we have all enjoyed the slower days of summer. We had several heavy rainstorms this month that the kids really enjoyed watching, and the absolute highlight of the month were the baby deer – triplet fawns – that have been playing in our yard this summer!
Goals for August will be very simple, because – at this point – I don’t even know where we will be at the end of the month when we close on our house.
- Enjoy our remaining time in Massachusetts! Focus area: gratitude
- Organize our stuff as much as possible for the move. Focus area: responsibility and simplicity
- Get rid of as much stuff as possible before our move. Focus area: responsibility and simplicity
- Help the kids say goodbye to Massachusetts, and keep the transition to California as smooth as possible. Focus area: gratitude
- {Hopefully} figure out where the kids will be going to school this fall and get them registered. Focus area: education
It’s going to be an intense month! What are your goals for August?
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
Good luck! I hope you get your house!
Our first day of school is August 19th, I feel like back on the East Coast we never started school that early! I hope you get things settled out, I’d love to hear where you are moving to. Let me know if you need anything!
School here starts in September – never August (at least while we have lived here).
We didn’t get the house. I’m glad you commented, because I have a question for you. I’ll send you an email :)
Fingers crossed all goes as planned!!
Thanks! We didn’t get the house; trying to figure out our next move.
Aw man! We’ll keep you guys in our prayers.
Thanks! I appreciate that!
Oh, goodness. You have so much on your plate! I hope your experience with Early Intervention goes well, esp. as you will be transferring to a program in another state quite soon. That’s always stressful.
Thanks! They are going to do their best to help with the transition, but they have never worked with CA before, so it will be an adventure.
I LOVE reading your reflections from the past month and goals for the new month. Every month I find myself reading and thinking, I should do that. Of course, then I don’t! A major goal for me for August is setting up a smooth transition for both of the boys for when Sky starts Preschool. This includes doing a Tot School of sorts at home for Benjamin. My other goal is to find socialization opportunities for Benjamin and to focus myself on finding the right balancing act personally for work, blog, mommy, me…but that’s the goal every month.
Balance is something I work on constantly – and every time I feel like I’m close to getting it figured out something changes and it’s time to start all over again!
So glad you found something on the first trip! Sending good thoughts for your offer to go through!
Thanks! We didn’t get the house, so it’s back to step one for us…
Wow! What a month!! Good luck with the house – I’m keeping fingers crossed for you! I’ll be really interested to hear how the kids like Muzzy and I hope all goes well with Anna’s specialist visit. I love the photo of the fawn (as does Kooks who’s sitting with me at the moment)! How fun to have them to watch.
The kids like Muzzy, but don’t do it by default (they will play). They are picking up bits of French, but forget when we skip days. I need to be more consistent with it. More fawn photos coming next week (I couldn’t resist).
Triplet fawns! I’m in love…
How encouraging that you were able to find a house you liked in your first weekend of in-person house-hunting! Here’s hoping that’s all it takes!! So glad you and Anna did well on the overnight flights, and I hope you and Mike recover soon.
I certainly hope that you will get the house and will be able to plan your move! Your optimistic attitude is certainly making it easier for everyone. I am looking forward to Anna meeting your kids in person one day :)
Thanks! No house, but we’ll work something out. I would love to get together once we are in CA!
Oh my. That was a busy month. Good luck with the house hunting! I hope you get that house. My summer is relatively easy compared to the school year since I have two kids at sleepaway camp. My son enjoys being an only child as well! And it’s so easy when you minus kids from the usual amount.
My goals for August is to enjoy the relative calm, keep exercising, brace for fall, get ready for my mom’s 90th bday when we take a trip to CA to the relatives. It’s funny but it seems like our air travel follows the same geography! We will be driving to N. Cal as well to spend a few days there as well before returning to Boston.
I hope you enjoy your quiet month, and that your trip to CA goes well!
Wow! Sounds like a very successful trip! So happy for you. It really is amazing how fast things can happen when they must.
The deer would have been the highlight for us too : )
Organizing….. ugh, the bane of my existence right now.
What a busy month! I hope you get the place you want. That is great that your sister was able to keep the 3 older kids for you and Mike to go look at houses.
Good luck this month!
Thank you! It’s going to be a very busy month, but getting the house would reduce a lot of the stress.