Nearing the End

When I was a school kid, I remembered summers as long and lazy.  Now as an adult and a parent, summers are packed to the brim, and I find myself puzzling over the logistics of our family life.  12 weeks of summer, 4 weeks of summer camp for Linus, weekend warrior antics, and non-stop visiting family-- so far we've managed to keep our cool.  

We wanted summer to actually feel like a break for Linus, and to give ourselves time off from all the chauffeuring.  Instead of signing him up for camp the entire summer, we let him stay home a few weeks and spend days at work with me or Mattias.  I see a budding shelter veterinarian in the making... 

All three boys also got extended weekends at Farmor's house.  But the biggest success of the summer, by far, is that the boys are really learning how to swim.  They're breaking through their biggest barrier, getting water in their eyes, with the aid of snorkel masks.

They've also experienced the joys of our local mini-golf/arcade, Golf Land.

If I'm gonna go low-brow, I might as well throw in a gas station Slurpee while I'm at it.

This July 4th we had the joy of celebrating with my our Swedipino family, at a fireworks show in Milpitas.  When I looked around at the crowd of mostly immigrants, there to celebrate the birthplace of our country, I never felt more American.

I also took the boys to their very first baseball game to see the San Francisco Giants.  Sweet Magnus went around telling everyone he was going to see the World Series.

No Giants game is complete without garlic fries and a ton of sugar.

On our 11th anniversary we spent the afternoon catching up with friends at Golden Gate Park.

Afterwards we dropped all three boys off at Uncle Alvin's house for their very first sleep over.  No time to shave my legs, I threw on a dress, slapped on some lipstick, and called myself "ready."

We had a lovely dinner at Aziza, a low key Michelin starred restaurant in the Richmond.  The food was lovely and had the best presentation I've seen in years.  We wanted to make the most of our night of freedom, so dinner was followed by a couple hours of karaoke at our old hang out in Japantown.

We are saving our family trip until the very end of summer, when Mattias and I are over some very critical hurdles in our jobs.  We also have had a lot of family visiting from Sweden we prioritized spending time with (more on that to come!) Only 3 weeks left until school starts...