When Life Gets in the Way

We had such big goals for this summer. We were going to spend all summer at the water, working on the boat and getting projects ticked off. I was going to redo the whole website, FINALLY get my provisioning course launched, and get my ducks in a row in terms of content. I mean, when you're a teacher you get the whole summer off, right?

It's hard to complain about choosing my own schedule for almost 8 weeks. So what happened?

School got out on June 5. I had meetings and end-of-year wrap up until June 15. June 19 I left for Indiana and Coach Summit with my Beachbody family - 6 days of amazing inspiration and positive energy. I returned on June 24 energized and exhausted.

Waiting for Chalene and a PiYo workout. It's 6 am.

Meanwhile, our daughter got a job working in the gardens at the school where I teach. Three times a week, the gardens and the chickens got some much-needed TLC. This put a damper on our plans, but, we reasoned, we could still get to the water and Calypso for long weekends. Deltaville is 2+ hours from Charlottesville, and while we can drive there on a Saturday morning and come home on Sunday, it's really the kind of distance that makes a day trip a little tough. Since we've been able to stay at the house there, late Friday nights are more our norm, making waking up on Saturday a luxurious opportunity to enjoy the view in leisurely fashion before getting to work. But we do have to have the weekend free to be there.

Looking at those weekends, it's not all that hard to see what happened.

June 30 is Bee's birthday, so what the birthday child wants, the birthday child gets. Requests? Farmers' Market morning, dinner all together at a local Mexican spot, and a family movie night (Incredibles 2). No boat weekend.

Charlottesville farmers' market from above.

July 5: The whole family headed down to the river. What a treat to have everyone there together. We spent time exploring the local rivers via dinghy, took friends out for a sail, and just enjoyed the water. No work happening this weekend.

Family dinghy ride. Bliss.

July 14/15: Jeremy and Julian were in Ohio at FlightFest, a remote control airplane "convention" of sorts. On Sunday of that weekend, the whole family met up for dinner in Fairfax before Jeremy and Bee headed down to Charlottesville, while Julian and I stayed up for George Mason orientation. 

How can I have a child old enough for college? I just graduated!

July 19: Planned departure for our 2 weeks in Averill, Vermont. Return home late on August 4.

Averill is heaven. 

August 11: It's been almost a full month since we stayed home for the weekend, and it's nice to just putter around and get things done here. Home we stayed.

August 18: Julian's last weekend home. He requested a pizza night on Saturday night (I had a work thing until 8 pm on Friday) so home we stayed. He heads off to college on Thursday of this week, which is hard to believe.

Scene from a pizza night.

Life happened this summer. We played, learned, indulged in our own passions. We sailed a little. Spent time with family. Traveled a lot, in schedules that felt like tag team efforts. We worked on the house. Made a lot of lists.

But as for boat projects? Real, tangible progress on boat projects? That didn't happen like we thought it would. Will this push back our plans? Not in terms of the selling the house part, but I'm resigning myself to the reality that we'll spend a few months living down by the water in the fall of 2019, working on the boat to get her ready to go. That bunk needs to be done. The galley needs to be done. Those are the basics in any case.

Sometimes life gets in the way of life. The trick is to enjoy it. All tips are welcome.