July 2021 memories in review

by admin

I’m getting this started on July 20, which tells you how I’ve felt about this month and how crazy it’s been.

(there are affiliate links in here)

July week 1

We started off the week with our new foster dog, and figuring out how to work him into our life. This has incredibly mixed results. He’s scared of men, but he’s slowly accepting the boys, but Jeff is still sus and he won’t get near Jeff (and yes, I did just use sus instead of suspicious, I have teen boys who play Among Us, it’s part of our family vocabulary now.).

The Artist was working on something with paint and came downstairs with paint on her nose, and it really threw me off. At first she was throwing a fit about me taking a picture and hid behind the plate (middle right), but eventually, she posed for me (bottom left).

We cooked a meal from Costa Rica, it was vaguely like Costa Rican empanadas, but in all honesty, it was more of “empanadas a la Ticia.” I later went back and tried the Costa Rican shredded beef and that was a big hit with the kids.

But, the most amusing picture, is the top left picture. We were in line to get fireworks and the boys were teasing The Artist, and I was taking pictures of them, and a lady in line behind us offered to get a group picture of us, and so I got a fun family picture by accident.

This was also when I got a message from a random guy on my blog Facebook page asking me to do something sexual because of the alternate meaning of my blog name. This sent me on a tailspin trying to figure out a new blog name.

As you can see, I ended up with Adventures in a Messy Life, and everyone is telling me either:

  • “messy life one. Much more you too as your stuff has an unpolished charm… that really was meant to come out positive not like a backhanded complement.”
  • “I also love “Messy Life.” It feels very authentic, which is how I perceive you and why I admire you!”
  • But then my blogging friends all said, “It makes me think of a cleaning and organizing blog.”

I guess you just can’t win them all.

As I’m working on writing this on July 20, my super helpful tech guy from David and Sallie are still working on final details. I was impressed when I asked him about doing this and he said, “You could do it yourself, and here is the step by step of how to do it.” But I was a little scared of doing it myself, and since there were some other hiccups, I was very glad I hired him to figure it all out for me.

July week 2

Actually, I might have gotten the message this week. I just know I got it just as I was attempting to finish the VBS for our Alaska mission trip. I mainly bring that up because I see one of the crafts I created for the VBS in the top left corner.

One rather hilarious side effect of having Romeo here is how similar he is at times to Mac, well that and seeing the crazy dog interact with Leezard. He’s half her size and they play like crazy. If by play you mean eat each other’s faces off.

This also means we now have two dogs trying to “sit pretty” to get our attention and be able to try getting any food we might drop in the kitchen.

Leezard is a bit more clingy as a result, and so I’ve got this amazing picture of her attempting to steal my chair, where I stubbornly insisted it was MY chair, and you can leave the chair.

I also managed to set my toaster oven on fire. I put some leftovers in the toaster oven, but I attempted to shove it in despite not truly fitting like that, and so the lid was touching the heater coils and it all caught on fire.

The kids have not let me live that down yet. It is brought up on a semi-regular basis to me.

At this point, I primarily only take one kid grocery shopping, but this particular week I took them all with me. Usually, I go to Sam’s Club with my Mom, but she’s up in Colorado helping my brother who’s been hospitalized from Covid for about a month now. So, we ran through the store, with all three giant teens, and the boys decided to act like they were tiny again and try to ride on the cart, which you can guess was not particularly helpful.

July week 3

This was the week of my blog transfer, which was a nightmare, and almost two weeks later still has some problems (I cannot get the old URL to redirect to the new URL).

I ran by the library and picked up a slew of 12th grade book and a movie from our local library, in preparation for the post I’m working on. My kids all thought I was ever so slightly crazy, and I probably am, but I quite enjoyed stacking them many different ways to try and make the best visual.

I may be every so slightly crazy.

Jeff has been wanting to play the Dungeons and Dragons board game that’s an adaptation of the Tomb module, I forget the exact name but it’s the one mentioned in Ready Player One. We figured if all else fails we can use the pieces from the game in our D&D campaign somehow.

I had fun putting together a new cover for my Facebook page, I strewed objects across the table that seemed appropriate for the idea.

I rather like how it turned out.

I spent several hours repairing the blanket Romeo, our foster dog chewed up. There were some truly impressive holes in the blanket, but in the end I repaired the entire thing.

One of the girls I disciple went on a vacation and she brought back stickers for all of us, and mine was so incredibly perfect. It’s a t-rex with a unicorn horn.

And the big huge picture is of Jeff and I when he took me out for an early dinner.

July week 4

The Artist and I headed up to Alaska for a week for a mission trip with our friends up there. The first full day was my birthday, so I got a surprise birthday cupcake as they sang me happy birthday.

In the mornings we drove up to Whittier and ran a VBS/archery school and the last day we went on a family hike. It was so AMAZINGLY COLD! The crazy thing is once you go through the tunnel to get to Whittier I swear it drops 20 degrees. It’s the weirdest thing ever.

Then in the evening, we ran a VBS/archery school for the church our friends attend and for the families, they work with (they work with Safe Families to help families at risk). That was crazy amazing because we had 40 kids! We thought we might have 20 kids, so I was doing a lot of scrambling to get the kids where they were supposed to be and make sure everyone got a chance at archery.

The skits were all super crazy, and it was fun to see the skits I’d written come to life, especially in Anchorage when we had so much audience participation. Audience participation really can make a show.

We got lots of hiking in, including a hike that went from sea level up to 800-foot elevation. That was exhausting, especially at the end of a full week of leading VBS with lots of high-energy dance songs.

I got several pictures with The Artist, including some which she was willing to let me share. Or at least didn’t growl too much when I shared them. I really like that picture of her all by herself, but she hates it. Oddly enough, she really doesn’t like pictures of herself.

Whereas I love pictures of myself, I’m totally down with looking like an idiot, so I took lots of rather terrible selfies.

We flew back Saturday morning, and by Saturday morning I mean we had to be at the airport at 4 AM, and didn’t get home until 7:30, actually almost 8 that night.

Not too surprising I was rather exhausted.

And that’s a wrap on our 10th-grade year

All of our 10th-grade year

The post July 2021 memories in review appeared first on Adventures in a Messy Life.

Back to Feed