Day 1419 | 12 Years
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Celebrating 12 years with this guy. It doesn’t get much better.
*Special thanks to my mom and dad for watching the boys. Such a fun weeknight treat!
Day 1418 | Father’s Day
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Sometimes Father’s Day and our anniversary lands on the same day. When this happens, it becomes even more apparent to me how lucky to have this man in my life. He’s truly my best friend and the best dad. And I’m not even exaggerating.
Even though Father’s Day this year was harder than any other we’ve lived through, it makes all of us hug each other a bit tighter.
And an extra special shout out to my dad for all the sacrifices, love, and laughter he’s provided for me over the years. I love you.
Day 1417 | Best Friends
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Have I mentioned lately how truly lucky I feel to have two kids that are best friends? It’s going to make summertime shenanigans a lot more enjoyable...that’s for sure!
Day 1416 | Say Cheese
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These little nuggets are loving their hand-me-down cameras (except that one with a new iPhone...that’s no hand-me-down). My boys go through phases where they can’t go anywhere without them. Someday I’ll make a photo album of all the “artistic” scenes they capture.
Day 1415 | Tuesday Night Blues
/A day late, but that’s how it goes sometimes. The whole family met for some Tuesday Night Blues at a park across the river from us. It was a beautiful night for an outdoor concert and yummy picnic.
Day 1414 | Artist in Residence Mural
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Check out this new sweet mural in downtown Eau Claire. We’ve been watching the empty wall transform over the last ten days and it’s been fascinating. We even made it over for the official “unveiling” and got to meet the artist and get her autograph. Living downtown is the best.
Day 1413 | A Small Family Gathering
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After three separate *and huge* family/community events yesterday, I was just too tired to throw together a blog post. The photo above is of my dad's side of the family (he's one of eight siblings) including a very small number of extended family (nine to be exact). All of his siblings, all of their kids, and all of their kids' kids made it to a 90th birthday celebration for my Grandma. It was pretty incredible to see all these people in one photo. And we all really like each other. Isn't that amazing?
Day 1412 | Crystal Cave
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Carpe summer! Some people might decide to take it easy on the first day of summer vacation and ease into a more relaxed existence. Not us! We seized Summer 2018 with a trip to Crystal Cave. The tour of the cave was interesting and informative. The sifting for gems was a big hit. And the company couldn’t be beat. If this is any indicator for the fun in store this summer, it’s going be one for the record books.
Day 1411 | School’s Out
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Summer has officially begun and we're ready.
Chase had a great last day of school. He was all smiles running around with his little friends at his first-ever last day carnival (he missed it at his school in DC because of this). He loved having his friends and teachers sign his shirt. And he's thrilled about the idea of being a first-grader (eek!) next year.
Robbe cannot wait for Chase to be home every day. You'd think he's be *a little* bummed about missing out on momma+Robbe time, but he's not. I'm trying not to take it personally because, as Robbe pointed out today, Chase is his best friend. Robbe and I made the most of our final solo morning together, though. Of all the activities I offered (and there were a bunch), Robbe decided to have a coffee/hot cocoa date with daddy at his office and go to the pet store to shop for his uncle's new puppy. Always thinking of others, that one.
All in all, a great end to a great school year. And now it's summer break. How did that happen?
Day 1410 | Art Portfolio
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Chase is bringing lots of stuff home from school these days. Some of the “treasures” are not so awesome. Some of them are, though! He brought home his art portfolio—many are pieces we hadn’t even seen yet—and it’s pretty great.
Chase has never been the artistic type. Despite many attempts, he just hasn’t been drawn to drawing (see what I did there?). He made some impressive strides this year, though. And, most importantly, he really liked using his creative brain in this way.
Above are two of my favorite pieces of his collection. The drawing is titled “Landscape” and features Chase and Robbe together. The sculptures are part of his exploration of pottery and are a dinosaur and a broken dinosaur egg (or a bowl), depending on who you ask.
Day 1409 | River Crossing
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It was a little cool and cloudy yesterday but we made the best of it. We met some friends to explore the neighboring city of Altoona and it’s new River Prairie development. There’s a lot going on over there: a fun playground, some of the sweetest scootering hills we’ve encountered, and this fun river with tons of rocks scattered about for crossing. We’ll definitely be back.
Day 1408 | Safety First
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Robbe loves to call people out on their lack of helmets when riding bikes and motorcycles. Good thing we’re always practicing bike safety in our family. And we look really cool, too.
Day 1407 | Dabble Day
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Our amazing library hosted a Dabble Day today and we were actually in town to participate. The boys drove some nails into a stump, learned how to write with a feather + ink, decorated some bookmarks, played with a coding robot, and we even ate at a food truck parked outside. It was a pretty great way to spend a morning.
Day 1406 | Halfway to Summer
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One of our kiddos is done with school. The other has four days left. So close to summer vacation and non-stop quality(ish) time with these two. I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty great.
Day 1405 | Back Home
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We're home again. After six days of quality family time, we're back to reality.
The funeral was exactly what George would have wanted. The music was moving, the priest's message was captivating, and Chris and his brothers' reflections were touching, and funny, and heart-breaking.
We feel like we've been stuck between two places for the last two months and that continues. As happy as we are to be sleeping in our own beds and tackling our normal routines again, we're still drawn to Chris's home town and especially his mom. I imagine this divide will continue for some time.
Day 1404 | Painted Bricks
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The grandkids painted these bricks for Grandpa today. It was the perfect project to include them and bring them all together. Family is the best.
Day 1403 | Fruit
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During tough times, it’s nice to feel the love from friends and family. We’ve gotten lots of texts, cards, social media messages, and some friends have dropped off little goodies and even planted some of my garden. And there’s been fruit. Lots of fruit. It’s been a total dream. I love fruit but usually the boys eat so much that there’s nothing left for Chris and me. Not this week!
Thanks for showing us the love, everyone. You’ve brought sunshine to a gray week.
Day 1402 | Speech Therapy Graduation
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Our little guy did it. He graduated from speech therapy school. And it wasn't one of those "it's the end of the school year so all preschoolers graduate" graduations. This was the real deal. And a HUGE deal. Robbe has been working hard with inspiring dedication all year long to get to where he is and it shows. He met with his 4K teacher a couple of weeks ago and...wait for it...she didn't even recognize that he had a speech delay. One year ago, we started this speech therapy journey with a little guy that barely put four unintelligible words together. One year. Today he talks our ear off (and is completely intelligible) with the best of them.
We couldn't be happier for Robbe or more proud of him. And we couldn't feel more grateful to have stumbled into the extremely capable hands of Ms. Megan and Ms. Stacy through pure luck. It is not an exaggeration to say that you gave Miles (and our family) the best gifts of all. Thank you for giving our peanut the gifts of communication and expression. We are forever indebted.
Day 1401 | A Heart Breaking Farewell
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If you've noticed some less-than-chipper posts lately, it's for this reason: we said goodbye to Chris's dad, George, last week. It's been an impossibly hard couple of months filled with times of hope, total exhaustion, tears, and, thankfully, some laughter and reminiscing along the way. You will be terribly missed as grandpa, as George, and as Dad. We will say goodbye in this lifetime, but we will forever be filled with your love and spirit.
To read George's life perfectly captured in obituary form, click here.
Day 1400 | 1400!
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It's been a challenging couple of months around here. I'll go into more details soon (I promise), but for now I'm going to do what I always do...a one hundred day team recap. Never has this little family of mine been more important to me.
Sara
FAVORITES: Watching the transformation of my garden (thanks to some helping hands for making this happen this year), listening to Hamilton (still going strong), white wine season, enjoying meals outside
BIGGEST HURDLE TO OVERCOME: Launching the website I've been working on for the Chippewa Valley Book Festival for the last few months. It's a big guy.
DREAMS FOR THE FUTURE: Completing some house projects. At some point I'll actually have time to focus on the house, right?
Chris
FAVORITES: Quality time with the boys, the return of grilling season, rewatching Parks & Recreation, not paying for cable services anymore, rye whiskey
BIGGEST HURDLE TO OVERCOME: Fixing the bare spots in our yard with absolutely no idea about how to do that successfully.
DREAMS FOR THE FUTURE: Finally building the boys their backyard clubhouse. It's going to happen this year.
Chase
AGE: 6
FAVORITES: Legos, Playmobil (knights and pirates in particular), getting his haircut, reading or listening to The Boxcar Children books, scooting, his Perplexus puzzle, eating ice cream, playing spies
BIGGEST HURDLE TO OVERCOME: Riding a two wheel bike. I know he can do it...it's just "slightly difficult" and that's enough to deter him. Ugh.
DREAMS FOR THE FUTURE: Reading. I mean really reading. He's got the foundation, he just needs to put it all together.
Robbe
AGE: 4
FAVORITES: Legos, Playmobil (knights and pirates in particular), getting his haircut, reading or listening to The Boxcar Children books, scooting, sleeping friends, going to the library, eating ice cream, going for walks -- Notice any similarities between the two boys?
BIGGEST HURDLE TO OVERCOME: Waiting for Chase to get done with school (June 7) so summer can officially begin.
DREAMS FOR THE FUTURE: Graduating! It's actually happening on Wednesday. His teachers decided to keep him in the speech therapy program for longer because they could challenge him on the additional sounds he needs (the ones that aren't even "supposed" to have developed yet). But he's officially ready for the certificate now!
Looking back on 1400 posts:
