Friday bullets - July 23, 2021

I've been outside much of the day and I am now officially done with summer. The whole upper 80's, lower 90's thing with extreme humidity is not my cup of tea. Even going out to bring the horses in made me sweat. Yuck. Just to be clear... I'm not done with summer vacation, just summer weather.

• Earlier in the week, girls wanted a tent set-up so they could sleep in it. G. made it three nights, Y. for one, and L. really wanted to sleep in the tent but ended up in her bed each night. The tent is still up with no one sleeping in it anymore.
• Today, the last five family members got their second covid vaccine. So far, so good with after effects. With the uptick in numbers, I am incredibly thankful that all of my children are old enough to get the shot. I'm afraid if they were not, we would be probably starting to hunker down again.
• K. has decided that he wants to try to create the city of Chicago in Minecraft. I have put a large photo book of Chicago buildings on hold for him at the library to aid him in his quest.
• Midnight misses P. a great deal. He is also at loose ends and has been nothing but trouble stealing food from the kitchen. Midnight usually spends his days hanging out with P. We didn't realize quite how important this was to the overall peace of the household.
• I think we have checked out every version of the non-fiction children's series, "You wouldn't want to be... " insert any variety of historical event or person afterwards. For example, Alexanders' army, Roman gladiator, Pompeii, Sumerian army, etc. My children read them avidly and are a wealth of various unpleasant historical facts.
• The flooding in Henan, China is horrible. It is so disturbing to see a city (Zhengzhou) we've spent time in being so inundated with water. The video of the people in the subway train up to the armpits in water was particularly disturbing. We've been on that subway system.
• I'm so relieved to tell you that a friend messaged me to say she would be more than happy to help with R. when I have my riding lesson. 
• We have heard from TM. He is doing well and heading into the last weeks of basic training. He then goes straight to his individual training program. I was very relieved to hear that he received the box we sent, though he did have to do 50 push-ups in order to get it.
• We are starting to make plans to take D. to school next month.
• I've reached that part of the summer where I'm feeling as though my days are very full, and vaguely wondering how on earth I am going to be able to add doing school in on top of everything. This is not the first summer I have felt this way, so I'm trying to remind myself that it all works out. It seems better than panicking.
• I've spent a good chunk of my week catching up on various paperwork. It needs to be done, but I never feel as though I have really accomplished anything when I am done. 

And with that I think I'll end. It has not been a terribly exciting week. That's okay, I really don't need exciting. Dull is just fine with me. Really.