August 2022

 Family Fun

—Jake & Jill visit: In the first weekend of the month, Uncle Jake and Aunt Jill came out from Texas to visit us for the first time since Lukas was a baby (and the first time seeing them in person, period, since 2017). They were also here in a semi-official capacity with the Crunchyroll Expo, another convention that Annika and her friends wanted to go to — so we got free passes, which made it all the nicer. We adults hung out at the pool, mostly, and we all had dinners together. It was awesome to see them; the days of traveling to Texas for Christmas and Thanksgiving have passed, so we go longer between intervals than we’d like.
—Summer Games, cont’d: August is an excellent month for bowling (it’s air-conditioned in there), and we went a lot: the whole-ass Blade Team (some with their own passes, some with borrowed ones, lol); the kids and I with Ami, Manir & Amira; the whole fam together (getting into the pool when we get home); everybody with the Patels, followed by dinner at their house.
—San Francisco field trip: Before school started in mid-August, I had the idea to take the kids up to the city on the train and muck around for the day, but they didn’t want to go it alone, so we teamed up with Ami and the kids — the six of us had a blast, riding Caltrain up, walking along the Embarcadero, eating dozens of little fried donuts, barking at the sea lions, strolling into North Beach for brunch at Mama’s, trying and failing to catch a cable car and ending up walking to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream, and finally ending the day at the Hog Island Oyster Co. in the Ferry Building before taking the train home. A great way to close out the summer with some exploring!
—Screen time: We ate a lot of dinners outside at the bar, on account of how hot it was indoors, so R. and I decided it was time to get the kids into Survivor — which we’ve never missed an episode of — starting with Season One. It was a hit, although much slower-paced and more survival-based (as opposed to game- and strategy-based) than current seasons. And we finally let Annika start watching Stranger Things, with me, whenever Lukas wasn’t in the house; we could’ve let her do it sooner, but I really wanted to re-watch it and I thought it really might be too dark — but she loved it, and we powered through episode after episode, as fast as we could.

Kids & Friends
Dungeons and Dragons was a big part of the summer, with sessions at our house, Sam’s, Ben’s, Reid’s — even Annika got into it a little bit. We went biking and swimming a lot with Manir and Amira — sometimes at our house, sometimes at theirs. And as always, there was Emmett’s birthday party at the swim club — steaming-hot but a lot of fun for the kids (and for me, hanging out with my friends, lol).

First Day of HS, Last First Day of Elementary
—The school year’s first event was Freshman Orientation at Pioneer HS. I took Annika to the home of some of the Marshalls’ friends who live near the campus to meet up with Niamh, Raina, Aino, and Alana. The five girls walked over (with some of us moms trailing a block behind) and joined the throng, finding their assigned orientation groups, getting their schedules, etc. All went well, and when I went to pick Annika up at the end, she wanted to run through her schedule a few times until she felt she had it down; they don’t have lockers, so that wasn’t a factor, but her classes are all over the place, so she will have to criss-cross the campus a lot. She’s got Spanish I, Sculpture, P.E., Language Arts (aka English), Physics (aka Physical Science, not the advanced math/science class), and Honors Algebra II. She has at least one or two friendly faces in each one, which is a relief.
—BTS Tradition: We had one last swim afternoon at the Patels’ on the Tuesday before School started (Wednesday), per tradition, to have some fun and relieve anxiety, hopefully making for a better night’s sleep.
—First Day of Fifth and Ninth Grades: The time between drop-offs was shorter this year, so we had to quickly take the usual photos at Emmett’s house (practically in throwing distance from the elementary school) before sending the TK Crew (plus Amira, and Emmett’s younger brothers) off to the first day of their last year at Los Alamitos. I was not surprised by the mixed emotions — very proud of those boys, but so sorry to see the end of the LA years coming to a close. Then, we rushed to get Annika to the rendezvous point with Alana on a side street near the HS; the girls declined a photo op (lol), and walked down the block and out of sight. At pick-up, I had been braced for the worst — but each kid was in good spirits, Annika even more than Lukas; she liked her teachers, thought her classes might be interesting … it was a welcome difference from what I’d expected/worried about, for sure.