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- Well, Labor Day weekend has come and gone (does that mean that summer is over?)
We spent the weekend at my familys’ lake house and it was the most glorious Labor Day weekend I EVER remember. Zero rain (not even a threat of rain), temps in the upper 80’s, sunshine for days, it was perfection. We spent hours down at the water, went for multiple boat rides, kayak rides, tube rides, bike rides, sat around the fire, played cornhole – it was wonderful. - And then, we were able to extend the wonderful – we stayed at the lake house past Labor Day until Wednesday afternoon! We went hiking, the kids played in a creek (the highlight of their week) for hours, explored the Rock Maze, spent more time down at the lake – it was really so wonderful.
- The only not-so-wonderful part of the whole week was that Derrick had to leave Monday afternoon to drive down to West Virginia to work at the warehouse there this week. It’s been “go-live” week (in a nutshell, his company is switching all of their systems over to a new platform and after weeks of prep, everything “went live” this week). So, he had to be on-site down in West Virginia insanely early on Tuesday morning. He was hoping to come home on Wednesday, but quickly realized that he would need to stay until Thursday. And by Thursday afternoon, he realized he was going to have to stay until Friday.
A whole week without Daddy is rough-stuff. Thankfully, with spending half of that time at the lake house (with my Mom), that took the edge off, but we still miss him terribly.
It’s funny though – when Derrick took this big promotion earlier this year and started taking a few overnight trips out to visit his branches, those first few times he traveled were rough. They were so exhausting and hard (both mentally and physically).
But now, after we’ve done this and “practiced” all summer, we’re actually getting pretty good at the whole “Daddy being out of town” routine. It’s still hard, we still miss him so so much, but it’s not quite as exhausting as it once was. (Just interesting. It’s like a muscle – after working it and flexing it, you get stronger, and that soreness after a workout dies down.) - Also on the not-so-wonderful side, we accidentally left our school books at the lake house. I took everything with us, since we were staying a few extra days, and that was great! Until we woke up Thursday morning and I looked around for our bag of books and realized: they weren’t here.
Cue me wracking my brain to try to figure out how I left them at the lake house – and where did I leave them? We did school outside under the gazebo on Wednesday morning, did I leave the books outside or did I carry them back inside? If so, how did I miss grabbing them? Needless to say, our 4th week of school has been different. - I announced my fall mini-session day last week to my email list and then publically shared about it this week and within just a few hours, almost every single spot was filled! As of right now, I only have ONE spot left (which is amazing and so exciting!)
- My children have been obsessed recently with a show called T.O.T.S. on Disney+. It’s a super cute show, and now all they play is delivering baby animals to their Moms and “Pops” (which is what the show is about). Braelynn even went so far as getting a plain blue tank top at Salvation Army and using her fabric markers to create a “uniform” like the animals wear on the show – WHEW. When my kids go all in, they go all in!
- Today is Emily & Kyprian’s wedding! I’m so excited because DERRICK is actually shooting this wedding with me! He usually shoots 1-2 weddings with me a year (I’d have him come with me more, but it just is tricky with the kids. Go-figure: it’s usually easier to hire one of my second-shooters than an all-day-late-into-the-night babysitter.) But, all of my go-to seconds were busy this weekend, so for this particular day – it was easier to hire a babysitter.
And I must say: after not seeing him all week, it kind of feels like we’re having a prolonged date-day to spend the entire day with him shooting a wedding!
Stay tuned for sneak peeks tonight and next week!
