SUMMER ROUND UP AND SUMMER SANGRIA

At the beginning of summer, I made a to-do list (who else LOVES LISTS?!?) and now that summer is on its last legs, I decided to evaluate how I did. Here goes:

1. Swim as much as possible in the pool: this was a given. The new house had a pool, we weren't quite sure how to feel about it, and this was the summer we were going to find out. I had my reservations about having a pool mostly due to all of the upkeep, so I resolved that we would try to use the pool as much as possible in order to make all of the hassle worthwhile. We had pool parties, celebrations and Friyay pool hangouts. At the beginning of the summer my work decided to allow employees to flex their schedule, which meant that if I could get 40 hours in before Friday at noon, I could take off for a half-day and start my weekend early. Once I started to do this, it seemed obvious that the next step was to make Friday afternoons a Friday pool hang out time. And that is exactly what we did. As much as we were able, anyone who wanted to, could come over and swim, and hang out by the pool. It was lovely.

2. Hike by the river: this one we didn't do at all. We usually love going to the river when it is warm, but having a pool so close makes it a little harder to justify packing up two kids and all of the gear in order to venture out to the river.  I had wanted to try anyways, but we just didn't make it this summer.

3. Go to the beach: Luckily, Ken's mom lives in Virginia Beach so this one was easy to pull off. We actually made it to the beach twice this summer, which is more than I thought we would. On our first trip out, the effort felt exceedingly overwhelming, but at the end of that day I realized I still loved making the trek out to the beach - with bags upon bags, chairs, umbrellas, snacks, water, towels, extra clothes, sunblock, etc. - which must mean, I declared as we left, that I really love the beach!

4. Make a lot of summer cocktails: I did OK in this category this summer. My plan was to try this a new kind of gin and make various gin cocktails, but I never got around to ordering it or finding it, and I resorted to a lot of rose, which was great too. I did do margaritas and different variations of a Paloma, and then last weekend I made this epic summer sangria, recipe for this is below.

5. Make a lot of popsicles: I utterly failed on this one. I even found one of those large nifty popsicle molds on craigslist for cheap and had grand schemes to make tons and tons of Popsicles, with different fruit variations, but alas, it was not in the cards. Maybe next year.

6. Write: I had a list of brainstorming that I wanted to flesh out, and at the beginning of the summer I decided that one of my goals would be to make sure that I spent time writing with intention. I did OK with this, I did get some writing done, although not as much as I thought I would. But I'm happy to report I still have the momentum of ideas that I started on and I am continuing to write and build upon those.

7. Make one or two videos: Check! Here is one that Ken made for our summer kick-off with some friends, and here is another one I made from our beach trip.

8. Get down on the floor with the girls: I have wonderful memories of summer weekends where I got to interact with the girls - play time with Logan and great conversations with Sloane. I really got to appreciate them both this past summer. 

9. Go on a trip to New York, another to L.A.: These were the two big trips that I had planned this summer - both for weddings! - and I'm so happy that I got to do them. I blogged several posts about both trips, so go find them if you're interested!

10. Throw a birthday party for Sloane: I was really excited for Sloane's 4th birthday, because this was the first year where Sloane took agency, got very excited about her birthday, and contributed lots of ideas to her birthday party. I think we pulled it off with great success.

*Extra Credit: Get a piano!

This recipe for an epic summer sangria is brought to you by Joy the Baker. This sangria uses watermelon strawberries oranges lemons limes, which is a lot of fruit, a lot of summer fruit, and it also employees three different types of alcohol- A rose, vodka, and limoncello. Last weekend was probably our last pool weekend and so I decided we should go out with a bang and made these to drink by the pool. 

It was pretty darn delicious, and it tasted like summer.