Saying Goodbye to Great Friends:-(

In the weeks since my last post, my life has been largely consumed with gearing up to say goodbye to our best friends here:-(. Our friends, the Daveys, have moved back to Australia after spending the last 8.5 years here. We met them back in February 2014 and have not looked back. They were a huge part of the community we have built here and they will be sorely missed. It has definitely not sunk in yet that they are gone, they were such a big part of our day-to-day lives. Kristy and I went to the gym together, went for walks together several times a week, and Brian and Andy worked together for many years, for long stretches on the same teams. On top of this we camped together, went out to dinner together, even did a few vacations together. They were our people. I am trying not to think about how sad I am to lose them, we always knew we were on borrowed time with them. Just trying to move ahead. We were very lucky to have them for the time that we did! They enriched our lives for that chapter, and I have no regrets about any of the time we have invested over the years. 100% worth it.

The small silver lining is that Andy will very likely be working for Amazon, and will come back here in a month or two to get started on his role at Amazon before transferring officially to Australia. So he will still be around for a short time! Their daughter Ellie is also coming back for a few months to work before heading back to Aus for university in February. So it's a bit gradual. But I'm still losing Kristy non-gradually, which really sucks. Anyway, I have said good bye to important people before and I know the drill. Just wish Australia wasn't so very far away! It has certainly jumped up on my list of destinations to travel to in the next few years, that's for sure!

Life has still continued on in spite of this sad development! Both Lynsey and Nathan hosted friends in our backyard for tent sleepovers, and our three kids also spend one night sleeping in there. Lynsey actually had a two night sleepover with her friend Ari. I took them to see Thor on one of the nights, and when we got to the theater, we were completely alone! Of course that meant the girls had to run around for a few minutes lol. 

Brian's parents were supposed to come and visit on the 19th, but they tested positive for Covid in their hotel at Merritt, 7 hours into the drive! Such a bummer, they had to turn around:-(. They both got it and Frances got quite sick, but they have recovered now thankfully. Now they are planning to come in September and hopefully Covid stays away this time! We have spent a lot of time with the Daveys of course, the last night that their family was over (last week Thursday) we let the kids make whatever size waves they wanted in the pool since we were going to drain it the next day. They had a blast! I have never seen waves that high, yikes! Thankfully the pool survived and they got a good head start in emptying the water! 

Brian started his new job last week! He is still working everything out, which is always an uncomfortable place to be, but he continues to believe this was the best move for him right now. He will get settled in and start contributing and hopefully relax into his role a bit. It's always tough to start over somewhere, but sometimes it is a necessary change to get to something better! Hopefully that is the case for him.

Lynsey made the volleyball team! Tryouts were last week, and she made the C Team. I think she would have liked to have made JV, and she was likely pretty close, but I think this is okay for her. I told her she needs to work hard and keep improving, she definitely has the potential to keep moving up. I'm just really happy she made the team and will have a chance to play again this year. Her friends made it as well which is a huge bonus! Hopefully she has a fun season!

Lots of other things going on this week in preparation for school starting on Tuesday, meet n greets at school, parent meetings and appointments. We are leaving Friday for Coeur d'Alene (our Silverwood trip) so hopefully the kids can enjoy this one last hurrah before getting back to work!

 

Pool days, kids camps, camping on Orcas Island

We've had a great last few weeks soaking up the beautiful summer! Lots of pool time, and both Nathan and Lynsey had camps the first week of August. Lynsey went to her first sleepaway camp down in Naches with her friend Maggie and had a great time! She did get a bit homesick, but it's the longest she's ever been away from home with no family around her. Nathan did a week of day camp at Sambica again and had a lot of fun as well.

Last week I spent quite a lot of time getting ready to go camping on Thursday. We drove up to Orcas Island Thursday afternoon to camp with the Daveys, Vanees and Lees. The weather was perfect - not TOO warm but warm enough to get in the lake and have a lot of fun in the water, and I wasn't cold at night for a change! Woohoo! It's such a beautiful island, we drove up to Mount Constitution again even though we had already seen it back in 2016. So worth another look! I have such a love/hate relationship with camping. I hate getting ready for it and cleaning up after it, but once we are there and set up it really is a nice break from regular life. This was the last big group trip since the Daveys are leaving for Australia at the end of August (so sad, hard to even talk about:-() so it really felt like the end of an era. I do think we will probably still do some camping, since the kids enjoy it (and I'm learning to tolerate it, thanks in large part to my rather large mattress and cot that I insist on taking which Brian calls "The Queen's Bed" lol). We will see how it looks going forward. It was a nice trip to end the era with in any case!

The next two weeks are going to be a mixture of fun and sadness. Brian's parents are visiting on Friday and staying until Monday or Tuesday, and then in two weeks, we say good bye to the Daveys. Lynsey's volleyball tryouts start next Monday as well, so fingers crossed she gets herself on a team! 

By the way, that last picture is supposed to be a picture of the pod of Orcas we passed on the ferry ride home:-/. I of course was not able to capture them, but it was very cool to see them! Very lucky ferry ride!