Well, there's plenty that we have been doing. We went to a going-away party for some friends of ours last weekend. It was a pool party / backyard bar-b-que, and we had a good time. The girls stayed in the pool until I was sure they had grown gills. Maggie is really improving on her swimming - she swam the entire length of the pool several times. Gracie gets sidetracked and treads water a lot - she forgets to put her body horizontal in the water, and so she makes no forward progress. She just jumps right in though, so she still makes me a bit nervous.
The girls seem to be setting in well. We haven't put their rooms totally together, because we are planning on getting some new furniture for Gracie's room. She's got the daybed that we originally bought for the guest room in our first house, and it's a pain to make. I want to just get her a standard twin. We are also planning on replacing the den furniture and the kitchen table. They are both over 10 years old now, and have started to show their age. When we are going to go shopping, I'm not sure.
My surgery had to be rescheduled for the 14th of July due to some conflicts on the calendar. I'm trying not to think about it too much, and luckily for me, there is plenty of other stuff to think about.
The girls finally got to meet some kids in the new neighborhood. There are twin boys across the street that are in Maggie's grade at school, and I met a lady with two girls close to the ages of my girls a few doors down. They go to a private school, so the girls haven't met them yet. We saw on the address list that one of the boys from Gracie's class last year lives across the block, and a girl in Maggie's class lives on the next street over, so there's no shortage of kids here - we just haven't seen them all yet.
The girls have had Girl Scout twilight camp this week - from 6 - 8:30 every night. It's made for some late bedtimes, and the girls don't really sleep in much in the morning, so they have been a bit grouchy. They are having a great time at camp though. They earned badges about insects, birds and geocaching so far, and they have one more to go. I've got a whole bag of badges for each of them to put on their uniforms, but that has fallen so far down on the priority list it might not get done until school starts. Gracie's birthday is coming up quickly. She has chosen a Pump-it-up party for this year. We've reserved the 1:00 time slot on her actual birthday, so getting invitations out is now at the top of the priority list. It's all these things that slow down the unpacking and settling process.
Although I could probably focus on just unpacking, I want to enjoy the summer with the girls as well, so I am making an effort to do things with them that are fun too. Trying to find that mythical state of being "in Balance." The buzzword of the century, isn't it. This morning though, I tried really hard to see things from the girls point of view and do the things they wanted to do. We used their new binoculars (they got them at camp for bird-watching) and played hide-and-seek with their stuffed animals. They wanted to go to the park, so we did. They wanted to hike on the walking trail, so we did. We listened for birds and tried to find them with the binoculars. We threw sticks and stones in the stream. I found a blossom from a mimosa tree and let the girls feel how soft it was. I enjoyed their wonder and delight and ignored my own inner voice that was whining about the heat. While the summer days seem to drag by when there is so much work to do, as long as I can find moments like this to enjoy, I can find the energy to make it through the next day of whatever I don't want to do so that I can make it to a moment like this one.
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