Swimming with the boys most afternoons. Temperatures have been over 110 degrees (!!!) most days and the pool is the only place to be. A few friends have invited us over to swim in their pools and I've found a local public pool that we love. As soon as I get in the water life instantly feels 100% better even if we've been having a great day. Ahhhhhhhh. Plus there's the bonus of wearing out the boys.

Scrambling to read all the books that I have out from the library, eeep! I've been doing a bad job managing my holds and they all came available within a week. I've been trying to listen to more audiobooks and was listening to and enjoying Circe but couldn't finish before the loan was up (it's long!) and now listening to Small Fry (the most recent Happier book club pick). On my nightstand are: The Library Book (highly recommended from Sarah and I'm enjoying it), Bitter Orange, City of Girls, and A Trick of the Light. Oh and I have Recursion, the latest from the author of Dark Matter, on my Kindle. Oh my!

Flipping through my collection of old Sunset magazines. I've been saving them for years because they have great recommendations for travel and camping in the West and often good recipes I'd like to try. But the stacks are taking up closet space. So I started the very satisfying project of looking through issues and taking photos of travel and design ideas and tearing out recipe pages. I take a stack of magazines with me any time I know I'll be sitting idly awhile, like on my flight to Austin, the boys' swim lessons, or recently when I took the boys to a trampoline park. It'll also be a perfect activity for sitting at the park with the boys when the weather cools off. It's so enjoyable!

Appreciating that Chris has organized our giant collection of Legos! We have alllll of Chris's Lego's from his childhood plus the boys have many of their own Legos. The situation was overwhelming to me. Now we have labeled bins and can rotate sets. It feels much more manageable!

Mentally planning for the school year which I also consider to be my writing year. Cedric will be in pre-kindergarten this year (how??) and my plan is to send him 3-4 days/week. The program he's in is completely flexible so each week we can pick which days and how many days he goes, it's amazing! I like to have a consistent schedule but it's nice to have the option to change our days if needed. I might tweak the days of the week that he goes to see if I can get more done on my work days plus have better quality time with Cedric when he's home. Some days last year I felt like we ran a lot of errands, and he's a great errand buddy, but I'd rather that not be our routine. Another strategy I want to implement is to try to stack any appointments I might have into one day and send Cedric to school an extra day that week instead of cutting into my work time. It's crazy how one appointment can zap your productivity for a whole day.

post recent haircut, embracing the grey!

Thinking about growing my hair out for a while. In this hot weather it's so nice to easily put it all in top knot. I seem to grow out my hair every few years but can never stand it for too long. When my hair gets much past my collarbone I feel like the bottom quarter is thinner and then get frustrated with it. My stylist says my hair is really healthy but I think my hair just doesn't love being long. Do you have hair like this? Any tips?

Delighting in the boys enjoyment of classic audiobooks like The Boxcar Children, Henry Huggins, and The Mouse and the Motorcycle . My mom had some audiobooks for the boys during our visit and they listened with rapt attention, especially during their rest time, so we've continued at home. It makes me so happy! They are devouring the books so I think I need to start doing more library books (so far I've bought them through Audible). They enjoy relistening to them though so that's a bonus.

Listening to Molly of Denali (the boys are in love with this new-to-us podcast, we've listened to the whole thing many times and all sing the theme song), Hot and Bothered, and The Memory Palace (each episode is short, moving, and often leaves me on the verge of tears).

Hope you are having a good July!