Summer Days Ahead

Well, here we are in June 11th and still in semi-quarantine. King County just got approved last week for a "modified Phase 1" - there are some restaurants open now with 25% capacity (50% patio capacity), hairdressers open at 25% capacity (which is basically just making their lives super hard as they try to manage the new requirements), and my very favorite announcement - PET GROOMERS ARE OPEN! Jasper is going in tomorrow for a much needed spa day, that dog needs a cut so badly! He is just a big hairy beast these days, and we haven't bathed him in over a month. Oops! Another thing that opened up in this phase is some limited socializing, we are now allowed to hang out outside with 5 people outside our household. I feel like there is a bit of an air of people returning to some form of a normal life, although realistically there will be restrictions still for months to come. The Canadian border remains closed, and I heard that it will likely remain closed at least until the end of July. My personal feeling is it will be closed all summer. Such a strange summer we will have ahead of us! Honestly I wish they would just announce whether it will be open this summer, I am having a hard time mentally preparing for summer not knowing if we are travelling to Alberta, or to BC for our camping trip with Bobbi and Jer in August. I wish I just knew one way or another so I could get my head in the right space. 

We are ready for a summer at home, our pool went up this past week! Finally, after days of back breaking work shoveling sod, the pool pad was ready. Brian really wanted to rent a sod cutter, but that turned out to not be an easy thing to do. I don't mind the odd labor intensive project (emphasis on the "odd"!) so I got out there and shoveled for hours. After shoveling out the sod, we had to get some gravel and sand to smooth and level out the area. So much work goes in before you even get the beast up, and then you have to take care of the water! On Saturday we finally got the pool put up which  was very exciting! We started filling it on Sunday and since our hose is crazy slow and the pool is big, it took two days to fill. The water was cold, but the excitement of having a pool was bigger than that so the kids got in right away. We need some better weather so the water will warm up quicker, our solar heater can't do much without some sunshine! I am looking forward to some summer fun ahead!