Summer has officially arrived here in the Martino household! The kids finished up their last week of school and this past week was their first full week of summer! We have a nanny for the summer and I am already loving it! She is awesome. I super love not having to get the kids ready in the morning or make them lunches. It gives me time to go walking in the mornings with my friend Kailee a couple days a week. We meet up at 6:30 am at Aviator park and walk laps for about half an hour or so. The temperature is so nice at that time of the morning right now and the time always flies by as we chat. I'll be missing it this week since her husband is out of town!
One morning on our walk, Kailee and I saw this big old tarantula crossing the sidewalk! I looked it up and apparently they're native here. It was probably driven out of the fields nearby because they're building something right behind the little woods on the edge of Aviator park now. It makes me sad how much is being developed around here but I feel like it's inevitable because there's definitely no drive to protect the wild here- everything is about growth and development. Yet another reason why I don't feel like I fit in particularly well here in TX.
Anyway, we started summer off with Emery's birthday and a family camping trip to Lake Ray Roberts. The weather was great and the campsite was perfect- not too close to any neighbors, quiet, on the lake with a good fire pit and place for the hammock- and it would have been just altogether fantastic except... Isla doesn't sleep in unfamiliar places apparently. She did fine when we went camping last October at sleeping in her pack n play. But now that she is a little older and having nightmares (already!) I guess it is just way too unsettling for her. So we got there Saturday afternoon and set up camp and had walking nachos for dinner and buntinis from Nothing Bundt Cake to celebrate Emery's birthday but then while I was attending to something, Eric didn't watch the kids quite close enough and they all got wet in the lake. Soo we had to change them into their pajamas and I was like, might as well do bedtime now. But it was still quite light outside and the kids were all riled up. If it was just the older two it would have been totally fine and we could have just let them chat and play in the tent until they fell asleep but Isla wanted me to stay in there with her. And it took them all an hour and a half to fall asleep! But then they were all finally asleep and Eric and I got some time together to relax in the hammock and talk and be together and I was like "ok this is working out ok, hopefully they'll fall asleep faster tomorrow." But then, about two hours after the kids fell asleep, Isla woke up. And she was not having it. She didn't want Eric to comfort her she only wanted Mommy. She pushed Eric away and said "No! No Dada! Mommy!!" And it wasn't enough to just be able to see me sleeping near her on the air mattress, she needed me to hold her. She was being so loud and I'm sure disturbing all the campsites around us and so I ended up just holding her. All night long. Sometimes she would let me kind of slide her off of me onto the air mattress to lie right next to me. But she stirred and fussed almost every 10 minutes all night long. So I was a complete zombie on Sunday and was like, "I'm not doing that again!" so we came home before bedtime on Sunday.
The kids had a great time camping though. Their favorite part was going to the beach at the lake. They swam in the lake and played in the sand and just had a great time. Levi got bored when we came back to camp for Isla to nap though and so we were all ready to head home after dinner on Sunday.
So yeah, that was the first weekend of our summer! Then this past week went really well and the kids had fun with Nanny Sally who took them to the Frisco library and the splash pad and piano lessons. And then yesterday we had Emery's birthday party which was so cute and the girls all had a great time. I attempted to make a mirror glaze for her cake and it turned out not at all how I was hoping and honestly a little bit of a disaster but it still tasted pretty good and everyone was complimentary anyway. I'm looking forward to this week- Emery's got a little music camp, the kids have their last gymnastics and ninja classes for a while, on Friday Valerie and I are taking the kids to see the new Little Mermaid live-action movie, on Saturday we've got a swim party to go to and a ward family temple trip in the evening and then Sunday is family dinner! This is how we summer around here :)
