Here’s a little peek at what we’ve been up to this past month!
Starting the summer by losing Hobbes was so rough. He was a very social guy, and we feel his absence strongly in so many of our daily routines. We’ve been struggling to find a new normal without him.
Tommy was supposed to go right into a week of sports camp after school ended. I ended up switching him into the week after it because too few kids signed up for that first session. It was just as well because it gave us some time to process losing Hobbes and fit in a few fun activities right away.
The very first day of June, we met up with Jake’s youngest sister who was in town from Texas. We got rained out of the zoo and instead, met at a library with a great children’s area and then went out to lunch. We were straight off of losing Hobbes. The last thing in the world that I felt like doing was being social. But it was a good distraction, and the kids always have a lot of fun with her.
A couple of days later, we spent the morning at an indoor playground.
Then that night, we had dinner with Jake’s youngest sister and his parents while she was still in town. My mother-in-law made cupcakes for the kids to frost.
Tommy missed out on a trip to the children’s museum in May and really wanted to go during that first week of summer before sports camp.
Tommy, Olivia, and I went to Green Meadows all the time during the 2021 season. We only went once in 2022 and didn’t go at all in 2023. I’ve been so excited to get Green Meadows in the regular rotation this summer. We made this first excursion in June with Tommy’s birthday buddy and her family.
One of the many features at Green Meadows is kittens. We’re helping Tommy manage his grief and the fact that we aren’t planning to adopt another cat for a couple more years by visiting the kittens at Green Meadows regularly. Tommy is such a good age for it, and his whole day gets better when the kitties want to snuggle with him.
I got a few pictures of the kids while they were playing in the front yard while my parents were here.
I spent a whole day at the Milwaukee Zoo with the girls while Tommy was at sports camp.
We made our annual trip to the Wisconsin Dells in June. For the third year in a row, we stayed in a condo on Lake Delton. It’s been such a fantastic location and just exactly what we needed at this time in our lives. I wrote detailed posts about our first and second year trips there. I may write a more detailed post about this year’s trip later this summer.
The weather wasn’t as hot as the previous two years. It rained later in the week, so we front-loaded our outdoor activities and had more low-key days with a few indoor activities later in the week. While trips with young kids aren’t exactly relaxing, we always love the Dells, and it was good to get away from home for a week.
We see deer in our yard on a fairly regular basis. It had been years since we’d seen a fawn in the yard.
The kids and I did a short trip to one of the zoos.
The kids and I made another excursion to Green Meadows toward the end of June.
We ended the month with a visit from Jake’s aunt and uncle, who were in town from Iowa. We hadn’t seen them in over a decade. The older three kids had so much fun playing catch and running around the yard. Tommy did a great job learning Uno and playing all on his own with a few of the grown-ups.
You can find all of my baby/toddler updates for all of the kids as well as general family updates and other family-related posts in the family section of the blog.
