Well the kids have a summer cold, so I have a summer cold 😩 Trying not to feel depressed about it but it really does feel wrong when the sun is shining, the pools are open, the grill is fired up and… you can’t breathe through your nose or swallow without your throat hurting. But the show must go on, so we still had a good Friday night dinner at home, Lydia’s last soccer practice, a birthday dinner at Uchi, Elliott’s balloon release, Sunday chores and a baking project with the kids. We had planned to take a trip to the farmers’ market and maybe my parents’ pool but I just wasn’t up for either. At least we should all be healthy by the time we head to Glenwood for my mom’s birthday in a couple of weeks!

I slept in Dempsey’s bed with him Thursday night as he tossed and turned, so I can’t say I had a lot of Friday energy but I worked from home, took a nap and then made sweet tea oven-fried chicken with cornbread and Caesar salad for dinner. The chicken turned out so good! Also, because Dempsey’s school is year-round we decided Friday was his fake “last day of school” for photo purposes 😂 Toggling between his first and last day photos had me feeling so emotional 🥺

Joey was out for a training run Saturday morning — he got lost and had to ask to use someone’s phone so he could let me know! — so Lydia and I got up and started pancakes. Help, why does she look so grown up with her hair pulled back low like that?? 🥺 Once poor Joey had made it back, I got Dempsey up and we all ate breakfast before making our way over to soccer practice. Was holding onto hope that she might surprise us all by participating but instead she ate snacks, did yoga on the field and ran away from Joey to get back to the sideline 😂 She seemed excited about her ribbon, at least! Afterward, they both needed to take a picture on this huge tree trunk and then we played at the park for a bit before heading home. That’s a wrap on Lydi’s first (and possibly only) soccer season!

Back at home, lunch and then Lydia’s nap. While she was down, Dempsey and I baked some vanilla cupcakes and how do I get my children to stop shoveling flour and baking powder (???) and batter into their mouths any time I bake with them?? Anyway, a bit later, Grandma Lori came over so Joey and I could go celebrate my birthday, just the two of us, with dinner at Uchi. We’ve been wanting to go for so long, so go figure I have a sore throat when we finally do 😭 It was still really good though!!! We did the 8-course omakase dinner that was on the happy hour menu and were really impressed. Everything tasted so fresh and light but also flavorful and slightly spicy. Loved it all but the salad (yes, salad), yellowtail with oranges, pork katsu and cilantro-forward dessert really stood out to me! We would definitely go back. Got home shortly before 7 too, so we got to hang with the kids and Lori outside for a bit and then put them to bed ourselves.

Joey let me sleep in on Sunday and took the kids downstairs for breakfast. I needed it! When I finally came down, I found them all working in the garage. Dempsey wanted to build a stair with handrails for the workbench, so they were hard at work on that. So cool that he’s genuinely good and interested in building stuff and Lydia was helping with the drill too! Afterward, we got cleaned up and made our way to the park for Elliott’s balloon release. I took a video of the balloons flying up into the air and hearing all the sweet voices of the little ones who have joined us since we lost her cut me to my core when I listened to it afterward. I was eating lunch with Lydia last Wednesday, the anniversary of Elliott’s passing, and she told me one of the balloons we had from my birthday celebration was “her friend Elliott.” 🥺🥺 I don’t know where she got that from, but it stopped me in my tracks. Lydia wasn’t born until after we’d lost Elliott but I feel so happy that she knows her name. May she always be with us in these ways.

Back at home, the kids and I ate lunch and watched J-Hope perform at Lollapalooza in Berlin and we were all loving it! I’ve seen this set (or some form of it) four times now and… it doesn’t get old! LOL at Dempsey trying to play “Killin’ It Girl” on his guitar after watching the performance. I love him the most 🥰 Also, he was eating chicken noodle soup for lunch and told me Hobi should play a song called “Chicken Noodle Soup” so how funny that he literally has a song called that and he did indeed play it 😂

During Lydia’s nap, I made our salads and then once she was back up, the kids and I finished up our “beach party cupcakes.” I don’t want to think about how much frosting and candy they ate while they helped 😅😬 But they did so good!!! Dempsey constantly impresses me with how well he’s able to do this kind of stuff — icing cupcakes, fitting Teddy Grahams into Life Saver Gummies, cutting Airheads Xtremes to look like beach towels — and Lydia likes to eat candy 😂 But she also picked out each umbrella with care and told me who that cupcake was for. She’s so thoughtful like that 🥺 Their new luggage arrived while Joey was making us dinner and it was so cute seeing them pull it around! Sweet and sour pork hit the spot, even though our kids wouldn’t sit at the table for more than a few seconds. Got them to bed but Lydia was struggling and ended up in our bed, where we both struggled to breathe all night. I hope tonight is better!

Happy Monday to you all!