In high school, I wore out the Eagles Greatest Hits album on cassette, driving around in my Mazda 626 with it on volume 11. I loved every song on it except "James Dean."
Our summer of 2013 was like that album. Almost everything was easy and sunny, but we had our own "James Dean."
Our summer in review: the greatest hits and the stinker, part 1.
1. THE STINKER. Hit a 3-foot tall pole going 20mph and it hurts. And breaks your bike in half. June 3, the 2nd day of our summer, Chad did just that. His left thigh hit the pole, he flipped over the bike and landed on his head and back. He fractured 3 transverse processes in his spine (these are the flipper things that stick out from the lower vertebrae), got a concussion, and had an intra-muscular hematoma in his thigh. He spent the month of June on his back, in the recliner, and hobbling about. It sucked.
The songs we liked...
2. THE GREAT PURGE. Just before the bike wreck, Chad moved out of his office in the Central West End. Our garage was chock full of desks, chairs, printers, office organizers, an ice maker, a fridge. And given that our basement was already full of a lot of junk, we staged a big sale. My Dad came up in mid-June to help since Chad couldn't lift anything. We made several hundred bucks and called it a success. It was a lot of hard work.
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| Garage sale-ing is exhausting |
3. SNOW CONES. We visited our local snow cone hut, Tropical Moose, on a weekly basis. We used to visit the local custard place, but since Charlee can't eat custard, we've transitioned to snow cones. Our favorites:
Chad - monkey snot
Paula - peaches and cream (peach syrup with heavy cream on top)
Kate - monkey snot with nerds
Claire - root beer
Charlee - pink lemonade with sprinkles (note: she ordered blue when it matched the shiner she got on July 4th)
4. OUR NEIGHBORS. We love our street and all of the kids on it. Our girls spend the most time with the Mispagels who have a 6 YO, a 3 YO, and a 1-1/2 YO. All summer, 5 of the girls spent time every weekend at each others' houses.
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| Movie night at the Bookidis house |
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| Claire, Molly, Charlee, Maddie, Kate in our backyard pool |
5. The PERP WOOD POOL. Our community, Kirkwood, has an amazing aquatic center. We call it the Kirkwood pool. Charlee calls it the Perpwood Pool.
With 3 pools, a lazy river, and 2 water slides, it's like Wet N Wild in your own backyard. It's only missing poolside cocktail service. We wore out our season passes this year, and the girls became much better swimmers. By the end of the summer, none of them wanted to be in the kid's pool. They preferred jumping off the side of the 4-foot deep lap pool, and exercising their real swimming abilities. Only Charlee still needed to be held most of the time.
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A very rare, uncrowded day. It was in the 60s and raining. We stayed about 5 minutes.
The only day I could sit and watch the kids without having to be in the pool.
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...stay tuned for the B sides
