Running, Relaxing, and Rock Climbing
This post will likely be short and sweet as I’m about a month behind in writing about June. Our company recently acquired an organization that is complementary to what we do, so I visited one of their offices to help welcome them to the team. It was great getting to know some current and new colleagues and understand better how we will be integrated in the future. Prior to and since the acquisition, I have spent about 60% of my time working with our designers to convert all of their collateral, multimedia, and webpages over to our templates. This is a very time-intensive project and was above and beyond what I do on a day-to-day basis, so needless to say, things have been more hectic than usual. However, this project gives me very good visibility to other departments and people, which is a nice boost for my career.
Trent went on his annual guys’ “Canoe the New” river trip where they had a great time, as usual. There weren’t any crazy stories, from what I’ve been told…just a very relaxing weekend. While he was gone, I was a “stand-in dad” for Hanleigh’s Dogs for Dads event at her kindergarten class. We also enjoyed the annual end-of-year pool party at the Farrell’s house, which was very well attended by lots of friends. Everyone had a blast, the food was delicious and I’m pretty sure we were there for about eight hours or more…definitely a sign of a good time! Brayden continued her swim team while Hanleigh continued taking gymnastics. The school year ended with some awesome class parties and both kids had amazing report cards. As usual, Brayden got straight As and Hanleigh concluded the year with an assessment that she is reading six levels above what was expected by the time kindergarten was over! We are very proud that they are such good students!
I enjoyed dinner with my Mom, and Brayden and I ran our second 5K together. We donned our crazy socks, tutus, and brightly colored outfits (I have told Brayden before that you can’t take yourself too seriously when dressed up silly during a race, which makes it more fun!). This one was call “Race to the Taste” and included a one-mile cupcake run at the end. Being the planner I am, I brought a Tupperware container since I knew we weren’t going to eat six mini-cupcakes each throughout the race, so we enjoyed them over the course of the following days instead. That afternoon, we attended Chase’s eighth birthday party and then enjoyed dinner with Nina and Keith at a restaurant none of us had tried before, Essex. It was so delicious and we’ll definitely be back! We concluded that weekend with a fun afternoon at Noda Brewery with our friends, the Monteleones. The girls started the summer by attending a variety of camps, such as American Girl, theater, cooking (pies and cupcakes), and book club. Brayden loves to read so much that we ditched one of her morning camps in exchange for a book club moderated by her fourth grade teacher. I got together with a bunch of girlfriends for dinner and a movie (Rough Night) one evening, which of course, was an absolute blast.
We took our annual family vacation to the beach with Dad, Christel, Kyle, Erin, Cooper, Lori, Kennedy, and Sydney. This year, we ventured to Holden Beach and had an absolute blast. We had theme nights that consisted of luau, 80s, and playing games. Each family took turns cooking for everyone else and I’m pretty sure we gained some lbs on that trip…Dad and Christel might as well have been feeding an army judging by the amount of food we had each morning for breakfast. We played by the pool, had some competitive games of bocce ball on the beach, went to the Sunday night concert (Embers), watched a beached boat get rescued by the coast guard, played lots of games (Cards Against Humanity—which resulted in so many belly laughs we could hardly control our bladders, Speak Out, Scattergories, etc.), flew drones, rode bikes, jogged nearly each morning, and went ghost crab hunting at night. It was an incredible week. Thanks for the awesome trip, Dad and Christel! We can’t wait to do it again!
Trent took Brayden for an afternoon to Inner Peaks, a local, indoor rock-climbing facility. They had a fun daddy-daughter date and apparently, she did really well on both the auto belays as well as the ones where she was suspended with the help of Trent. She definitely wants to go back! We concluded the month with our annual Spurlin family reunion to the Virginia Creeper Trail. More to come on that in next month’s post.
Hanleigh-isms
- She was talking to me about a house and said, “There was a house and it was painted all gray, like everywhere, like a long time ago in the 80s. Because everything was black and white in the 80s.” I love how she thinks the 1980s was SO long ago.
- After she was being really sweet one day, I said, “You’re a big helper.” to which she responded, “Well, I’ll not that big.” So cute!
- She saw an elderly woman and said, “That lady is so old, she needs a fanny pack.” (this probably relates to her mindset that the 80s is SO long ago)
