June highlights {family wedding, holding down the fort, camp, Kennywood}

1) wedding! on the first weekend in June, Nick's cousin was married in an absolutely beautiful ceremony (he played the organ for the wedding, and then chauffeured some of the family to the reception in the station wagon). it's always so much fun to spend time with his family, and the reception venue was stunning -- held in the grand hall of the train station, which has since been converted into apartments and an event space. 

cousins in the back

a wagon full of Wills!

2) holding down the fort. Nick and Cecilia went on an epic pilgrimage to Europe with our dear priest friend's church for twelve days in the middle of June. the whole family was invited, but we didn't want to drag the little ones along for a trip of that length and pace. Greta said she didn't want to be away from home for that long either, so it was decided that Nick and Cece would go. I still am not sure it was the right choice to let Greta decide to stay home -- I think she would have learned a lot from the trip, but on the other hand, if she truly was miserable, we didn't have an easy way to get her home early. and I think it was so good for Nick and Cece to have one-on-one time together. I'll be sharing more pictures from their trip in a separate post, but here on the home front, I strategized how to solo parent for almost two weeks. 

Cece in Krakow, Poland!

visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa

I think the key to solo parenting is to set expectations very, very low -- so I planned to use paper plates, make easy dinners, get pizza or takeout a few times, and just lean into a slower pace for the time Nick and Cece were gone. Greta came to work with me a few days while the babies were at daycare, and we went out to lunch and got Starbucks and had a movie night just the two of us. then Greta left for her own week at sleepaway camp, and it was down to me and the babies! we went to music class, I unabashedly used screen time to be able to get my workouts in, and even arranged for a babysitter to come over and watch them one afternoon towards the end of the stretch so I could get a massage. 

Olive Garden for lunch with my girl

we walked over to Starbucks afterward and she sighed and said, "I think we both needed this". I have to agree, it was very nice getting lunch and coffee without wrangling the little ones!

dinner al fresco with my bonus neighbor child. I sat on the porch and read my book and didn't have to worry about spaghetti falling on the floor!

music class with scarves

summer music class is the best!

the lollipop drums are a big hit. (also, Ellie's daycare teacher braided her hair -- I am not that talented!)

the lawn care was the one piece of the puzzle I was most trepidatious about. Nick initially said he would hire someone to mow the lawn while he was gone, but I thought that was unnecessary. so, we had a few lessons on the riding mower before he left and while I definitely did not make my edges as precise as he does, the lawn survived! 

I had made just a few passes back and forth across the lawn when our neighbor came flying out of the house to take some pictures of me in action to send to Nick. actually, in the future I might trade jobs with him -- I'll take riding on the mower over folding laundry!! 

also had to send Nick this picture of his lilies in full bloom

3) camp. Greta went to her fourth year of sleepaway camp and loved it so much that she actually signed up for a second week in July. the camp is completely tech free and while we are constantly trying to reign screentime in at home, somehow at camp, they don't seem to miss it at all. they have cabin decoration challenges, polar plunges in the pool at 7 AM, and countless hours spent mucking around in the creek. it's just the best. 

waiting in line to check in. 

Elizabeth really wanted to stay at camp too

the camp uploads photos every night and it was always fun to see what she was up to!

pickup at the end of the week!

the babies happened to be crawling through at the time Greta struck her pose, so I made them stick their faces in the little windows

we all missed Gaga very much!

4) Kennywood. the school amusement park day was rained out at the beginning of June, so several of Greta's friends decided to go together on a different day. this happened to coincide with Nick and Cece's travel day back home, so I was solo with the babies and Greta -- I usually wouldn't have attempted this, but with so many other people there, Greta was able to go off and ride the big rides with her friends while I hung out with the babies. it was hot but the lines were fairly short. Victoria is at a sad height where she can't ride many of the kiddie rides but she was well aware of what she was missing, watching Elizabeth ride (unlike last summer when she didn't really know the difference). but she still was able to ride a fair amount and loved it! 

please note the belt bag. 3 going on 13

basketball buddies

the stroller fan was put to good use this day

I had never been on the train before and it makes a fun loop around the park!

vintage Kennywood rides

closing out the day with the helicopters

5) bonus round. Greta asked one night if we could meet up with her friend at one of the parish festivals and so we did! it was funny to see the parking lot of our school gym transformed into a fair. (our school is not associated with the parish/diocese but has a great working relationship with them and the building we currently use for our gym and athletic activities used to be its own stand-alone elementary school.)

this little Ferris wheel was deceivingly fast!

 

the grocery store was having a great sale on the best ice cream ever, so I had to stock up. 

I follow a Facebook group for Aldi, my actual preferred grocery store, and the reviews of this dress were outstanding. for $12.99, I figured it was worth a try. the dress is so soft, flattering, and it has pockets! I wore it to work one day and got so many compliments on it that I went back to Aldi on my way home, while still wearing the dress, and bought it in another color. 

Nick's friends get together every few months and have a blind taste testing party for various foods -- they've sampled hot dogs, BBQ chips, French onion dip, and pickles. this time they invited the ladies to join as they sampled frozen pepperoni pizzas. the results were quite surprising!

we had 18 types of pizza to get through!

we rated each slice on a scale from 0-5

then Nick imported everybody's data and created an Excel spreadsheet to tabulate the rankings because we are so very cool. the overall winner was Motor City, which was then debated because it was the only Detroit style crust we sampled. coming in second place was Culinary Circle, which you can find at Shop'n'Save, and shockingly, Tombstone ranked fourth overall with DiGiorno coming in eighth. 

and finally, just for the sheer cuteness of it all.