June 2022 in review

Y’all it’s been such a busy month I’m sitting down on June 22 to even get started. And with even how busy it was, I have practically no pictures to share.

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Week 1

Look at this, I only have two pictures for the first week….. And I’m not even sure these are from June.

I honestly remember practically nothing about this week. We played some games, and I got a picture of my finally finished murder mystery quilt from 2 years ago. The quilt looks so amazing now that it’s all done, but when I was trying to make it I wasn’t so sure it would turn out okay.

Week 2

The kids had their annual end-of-the-year celebration with their cousins. So that top left picture is The Artist with her cousin Charis. Then for The Artist to practice driving later that day we went out and got coffee.

Well, she got coffee, I had very expensive and not particularly great hot chocolate.

Jeff and I went to go see Top Gun Maverick. It was a lot of fun to see and definitely worth the hype.

I think I’m actually talking about the events all out of order. Now that I think about it, some of these events happened in the first week of June.

Most of the second week of June was church camp, and that’s the bottom picture of The Artist and her friends about to go tubing on this giant tube pulled behind a speed boat. I went a day or so later wearing the same shoes The Artist is wearing because you had to have close-toed shoes, which I did not bring with me.

Week 3

Okay, I remember this week much better, you know what with it just finishing.

All right, for Father’s Day because everyone wasn’t feeling super great we had a low key day (with no pictures) and we played Harry Potter Battle for Hogwarts with the whole family. That was a lot of fun to play together.

My friend’s book, Jabberwock’s Curse came out finally, so I happily got my pre-order and read it. I got to read an early beta edition, and it was fun to see the final version. I’m kinda curious to reread the beta version to see the parts where she changed it. I know some of them, but it’s been a bit since I read the beta version.

We made a meal from Kiribati, which is kinda amusing to try. For the longest time I couldn’t find any recipes, and then I finally found this recipe, but I’m not 100% convinced this truly is from there, rather than just something someone’s mom liked to make that’s imported from elsewhere. Even if it’s not, we found a new sauce seasoning that we like, Maggi seasoning. The sauce seemed thin, so if I were to make it again I’d probably make a roux, and then add all the liquids.

Jeff and I went out to lunch together since all the kids are off at kids clubs this week, and the restaurant was ridiculously cold, so I took The Artist’s jacket to stay warm and then texted her a picture to say, “Look I took your jacket,” and she was just vaguely indifferent to my teasing her.

I had lunch with one of my best friends from high school. She lives a little on the other side of Austin from me, so it’s over an hour drive to see her, so we meet halfway at an Olive Garden once a month for lunch. She’s moving to Virginia next month, so this was our last get-together. We’ll have to figure out how to transition our friendship to long distance, which I have to admit I’m not always the best at.

Mom and I went to lunch at the Taco bell Superman works with while he wasn’t working there, and had a very amusing 10 minute conversation with his manager about how much they love Superman there and what a great worker he is, and then we talked for a long time about how the Mexican Pizza is driving everyone crazy at Taco Bell, while we were talking he just handed us drink cups to get a free drink. And then as we ordered he’s like I’ll give you the employee discount, and then as we’re ordering he’s like, “I’ll just make it free, it’s Superman’s Mom and Grandma, we’ll totally make it free.”

It was very amusing. Then I told Superman all about it and he looked mildly embarrassed.

Week 4

It was the end of club week, and all in all somewhat busy, I’m looking forward to the relative calm of July.

We started off this week with a cousin meal at Dairy Queen, you can tell that is a bunch of tired kids over halfway through club week. Very tired.

We made saltenas from Argentina, and they turned out fairly decent, but I really need to remember that this type of meal needs a bit of sauce added in otherwise it ends up too dry at the end.

After club week I made the kids start a little bit of work each day. They have to put together a geography puzzle to work on better understanding where everything is in the world. They’re rolling their eyes a lot at me, but getting it done. They also have to write a Bible verse in cursive and print to work on their handwriting, as part of my general attempt to make their handwriting not terrible.

It’s a losing battle.

The final thing they have to do each day is some amount of cleaning. To hear their initial complaints I was truly terrible.

I finally finished up a piece of artwork/Bible stuff and published my Action Gospel post. I really like how it is overall, but the artwork isn’t 100% how I’d prefer it to look.

I’m reading Phantastes for the Lorehaven book club for July, I’m the quest guide, so I’m working to come up with good questions for each chapter.

Sometimes with better results than others. There are entire chapters of poetry.

POETRY!

But the picture is an entire album inspired by the book, and listening to that has gotten me some amusing insights as I work on my questions.