June 2022

Wrapping up the school year
This week-plus was chock full of happenings:
—Castillero honors night: Annika was one of the couple dozen or so kids (in her class of ~400) to receive an award for maintaining all A’s all through middle school; we are so proud of her!
—8th grade promotion ceremony: Annika wore the suit she’d worn to the school dance, and looked adorable even though the afternoon was hot as balls. She got a lei and a pukka shell necklace in Castillero colors for souvenirs.
—Field day at Los Alamitos: The kind of event that couldn’t be held during the worst of the pandemic, it was an all-day thing for the kids (with a lot of adult volunteers); Lukas had a great time, despite the heat (a recurring theme here!).
—Covid all around: R., to his great surprise, tested positive for covid — he, in his own words, “literally never goes anywhere!”, had no symptoms, and only tested because he was required to before he went into work one day to pick up something he needed for WFH, but still — you get a positive test, you have to do the plague protocols. (The rest of us declined to test, so we will forever not know whether we had it too. That’s how it is, two damn years into this.) Manir tested positive and missed the last day of school; he was so bummed, but Lukas edited him a funny video to cheer him up, which video is incomprehensible to adults but Manir loved it.
—End-of-the-year party at the Thomases’: Annika and the twins planned and co-hosted a party at their house, for which I did decorations and their parents did the food. They had a good group of attendees (no Raina, no Niamh, no Grace, but Mackenzie, Sydney, and a few new faces), and Ben was there so Lukas was able to swim and have fun (without a mask!!!!) while the teens had a chill good time. Lukas and I closed out the evening with The Princess Bride on the couch.
—Alyna’s high school graduation: We were in attendance with the grandparents and the Sunnyvale household as our favorite niece, in a dapper suit w/wingtips and vest, graduated with her Waldorf class of 12 students; the ceremony included the class performing an original tune that she wrote and played the flute in. 

Potpourri
Sam’s younger brother James passed out at blade team, and it was a whole thing — a fire truck came to his aid! Their mom is a nurse, so she had it handled (and he revived after about 30 seconds), but it was wild, and all anybody could talk about for awhile. The weekends were too cool for the pool (again), plus we spent the time moving out of our closet, preparatory to more renovation work to be done while we were in Hawaii. Speaking of which … 

Hawaii at Last!
After two years confined to home, more or less, we were off to Hawaii early the morning after Alyna’s graduation! The first day was just about getting back to the place; Monday, we went to our beloved beach club: We started off snorkeling (had clear and excellent conditions), had lunch at Napua (and saw the start of the smoothie unavailability crisis of 2022). Tuesday we did the beach club again, Wednesday we ventured up to Hapuna (again with the great conditions, and we saw a turtle swimming along right near us). The rest of the trip was just alternating between the beach club (snorkeling every time; once after Lukas and I had gone back to the cabanas, R and Annika saw an eel fight and a SHARK!) and Hapuna. Lukas was a stronger and less fearful swimmer/snorkeler this year; we built an epic sandcastle, went to Pu’eo’s Osteria, made much of dad’s Expensive Designer Sunglasses (lol - they were $13 from Amazon), ate on the lanai whenever possible, saw tiny lizards, finally had SmoothieQuest 5000 pay off, got rained out AGAIN at Hale Kai, hung out with the Grants during their 3-day overlap with our trip, had our last day lunch at Napua, and — regretfully — flew home. We finished the month with a lot of bowling and pool days with the Patels, finished the Kenobi series, and chilled on screens while construction rattled along in the background.