Oh, June. What a month.
We started the month out as a family of five who was under a lot of stress and ended the month as a family of four, reeling but relieved of a lot of stress. It’s all a mishmash of emotions and experiences and we are still processing so much of what has happened. Because of that, June was a really crazy month for us. We did a lot, but it was a lot of enjoyable things that brought some life into our home.
We kicked off the month with Heavenly being done with school for the SUMMER! We had our annual water balloon fight to welcome her home from school and she was able to have some friends over to throw more water balloons and burn some school papers.
The first Saturday off school, Heavenly and I “ran” the color vibe 5k! You can read my full recap here.
This month marked the month that I was finally feeling well enough to leave the house. I made up a family summer schedule and really wanted to stick to it. We stay home in the morning working on various chores and doing some structured work. Then in the afternoons, we either go on a hike, to a splashpad or another activity on our summer bucket list.
I found out that the U-Pick strawberries had only a few days/weeks left, so I decided to take all the kids to pick strawberries one afternoon.
Ya’ll, that trip was a disaster! I think my kids LOVED it, but it was so, so stressful. Heavenly took my phone and started to take pictures of the strawberries, which she continued to do the entire time we were there. No problem, except she also picked and ate about half a row of strawberries. Kiah was very confused and was running around just trampling the rows of strawberries. Then, he discovered that he could eat them, and lets just say he probably ate more than Heavenly. Tera was little miss Police Officer Hines, yelling at her sister and brother to NOT eat the strawberries and policing them very thoroughly. She did pick a few, but the rest of the picking was up to me, while also managing my hooligans! The whole strawberry patch was probably extremely annoyed that we were there, and we didn’t last long! But we did last long enough to get some strawberries and we enjoyed the fruits of my labor in the form of several batches of muffins!
During the last week of May, and the first week of June we had made the difficult decision to ask the agency to remove Heavenly from our home. We knew it was going to happen, but we weren’t sure when. There were a few extenuating circumstances and then all of a sudden it all happened overnight and she left with the family on a Thursday evening. She only took stuff for one weekend out of town, so I set to work packing up the rest of her stuff for her. Let me assure you that there were NO garbage bag suitcases in this situation! Instead, she had an entire minivan full of her precious things.
That day was so emotionally intense, I don’t even had words to describe it.
Prior to all the crazy decisions with Heavenly, I had decided to take the kids to PA for a trip to visit my parents. You can read the full recap of that here, but some of the highlights were…
Starting out with quite the adventure on the side of the highway…
…we went to a library story time that was a total bust. CHAOS. But at least we got some good books from the library!
We spent warm afternoons at the pond…Kiah loved the sand, Tera loved the water!
We went to Claws n Paws wild animal park…a highlight of our trip!
And I even got to hit up Camp Ladore….so many favorite memories there!
When we arrived back from our trip to PA, our family just kind of hibernated tighter. It was the first time in 13 months that we had just been able to have time as a family of four, and we really enjoyed it. We pretty much just stayed inside cuddling and playing, watching TV shows and then ventured outside for hikes or to the splash pad. We got basic chores done and enjoyed building our family routine again.
We watched a lot of world cup games!
I gave Theo his Father’s Day gift/gift for getting off probation….a SKYDIVING TRIP! He love, love, loved it. I would gladly pay to do it all over again just to see his face when he landed on the ground and couldn’t wait to tell me about it! It might be his first time, but it won’t be the last!
We have been loving discovering new parks and places to hike and explore all around us! Cox Arboretum is a new family favorite!
What “hiking” with kids really looks like…a slow walk in the woods while they are distracted by EVERYTHING.
And that’s a wrap on June! July…we are already enjoying you! I’m so thrilled to be back to feeling pretty decent and working through all these emotions that come with a disruption. It won’t be easy to continue to process all.the.feelings, but I’m so grateful for the support team that I have in my three family people.