July Report

July turned out to be a bit crazy. Because a) crazy work load; b) summer camps.

So summer camps are absolutely wonderful. The only problem with day camps is that you have to drive your kids to and from. When I was planning this, it seemed doable - and it was doable. Just stressful. We tried to "bunch" camps as much as possible, but at best, 2/3 kids were in 1 camp and the 3rd kid was either home or at another camp. So - lots of driving/shuttling kids means the work day is fragmented and it's hard to get work done. Normally, it wouldn't be too much of an issue, but we had an explosion of work in July and not enough people to do it. 

Kids did the following camps:

• Tennis camp (1 week, 1 kid)
• Soccer camp (1 week, 2 kids)
• Theater camp (3 weeks, 1 kid)
• Theater camp (same as above but for younger kids; 2 weeks, 1 kid)
• Occasional 2-5pm gymnastics practice that's about 25 min drive away (1 kid; she only did it twice and then decided competitive gymnastics was not her thing).

Tennis and theater camp overlapped.

It wasn't all on me - husband did a lot of driving on the days he was working from home. My parents helped with soccer camp pick up and took kids to the pool in the afternoons. It was just a combination of a ton of work and not being able to focus on it for long stretches of time - and I got somewhat stressed out.

We had 1 week in Ocean City, NJ, with husband's family. There were 16 of us (8 adults, 8 kids) in 1 house. It worked out fine. I planned to work 2.5 days - rode my bike to the library (much more comfortable and more quiet than in the house). Kids loved playing with their cousins. Grown-ups enjoyed walks and late-night conversations (no late-nights for me, though - I was absolutely exhausted by 9:30 and ready for bed). The ocean was fantastic - the water felt great and the waves weren't too rough. We all did lots of swimming. Our kids got a bit burned one day (sunscreen and all), when we met up with some friends on the beach and all got a little carried away and didn't get out of the sun in time. Nothing too bad - C probably got the worst of it and has a little bit of skin peeling on her nose.

How was your July?