August 2020 Fun

It seems as if the coronavirus is never, ever going to go away.  I keep thinking about all of the fun we have had the last four summers, traveling around Europe - and now, nothing.  It's only slightly depressing.

In early August, we had a tropical storm move in west of our area, but it was still breezy enough to bring down a lot of small branches.  It took me forever to just clean up the driveway!  The kids pitched in and helped with stick cleanup in the yard.

Meanwhile, my home back in Florida is looking MEH with it's complete renovation. I'm still absolutely convinced that this is a violation of National Flood Insurance Program rules, but what can you do? 

And look!  Someone FINALLY got a REAL haircut!

Here we go, on August 8th.

One of the best things about moving back to America is seeing my Massachusetts besties again.  Heather got a puppy!  She's so cute and her name is Roxy and she's a total fluffball.  Roxy likes eating rocks, eating mulch and long walks on the beach.  But not long walks in the neighborhood. 

Sara had a birthday in August, so we went over to Heather's house for a visit.

Welcome to 2020.  No more blowing your own birthday candles out.  Instead, you now blow them out with a paper plate.  As soon as I got home after this party, I went out and immediately bought pants like Sara's.

Well, it's no Auerbach sunset, but it was kind of pretty. I love the crepuscular rays.

In August, Natalie went to an outdoor theater summer camp, which you can see below was very socially distanced.  The kids had to wear masks, bring their own lunches, and had their temperature taken before they got out of the car everyday.  They put on a play called, "Kids Save Broadway."

You can see they're spaced pretty far apart here. 

Natalie had the role of Mother Duck from the musical Honk! although they were not allowed to sing in their production.  This production was all about how Broadway had gone dark because of the pandemic, and the kids were here to save Broadway!  There was music, but the kids only danced to it, unfortunately.  Nat was hoping to show off her pipes!

The kids were broken up into two groups- younger kids and older kids, so that the groups weren't as large and they could socially distance better.  These were all of Mother Duck's eggs that hatched into her babies!  Notice King George from Hamilton in the background!  Alexander was there, too!

My little dancer out front.  Everyone thought she had the prettiest costume.

Taking their bows at the end of the show.

It's August and there's a pandemic, so why not enjoy that last bottle of German halb trocken wine?  Any of my friends want to send me a few bottles of this?

Sadly, we had plans to travel down to Baltimore to see (our nephew) cousin Ryan get married to his long time sweetie Mackenzie in mid August but obviously, you can see we didn't go.  We had a full week planned - we were going to get a huge AirBnB and share it with KK, the Fitch's and Todd's parents.  Then, we were going to visit DC for a few days and see the sights and some of our friends from Germany who had PCS'd to the Washington area.  We were totally crushed.

But alas, in this day and age, we could AT LEAST see the wedding!  In fact, we had TWO weddings to attend on this beautiful day!  You might recall that Todd's cousin Sherri's daughter Caroline was in town in March for her bridal shower that Natalie and I went to.  TWO weddings in ONE DAY!

Hi Caroline and Dale!  Congrats on your wedding!  (I took this one from the TV!)

Thankfully the two weddings were at different times because we were able to see both.

Here comes the bride!  Eeek!  Seriously, look how tall Ryan is ha ha. 

I liked this picture because I didn't just have Ryan and Mackenzie in the shot- I also have our niece Megan on the far left (in front of Aunt Jeanne seated in the blue dress!)  Also, notice Todd and I are in the upper left corner ha ha.  Aunt Betty is up there with Todd's parents and KK and Helen, and Heidi and FAH (Favorite Auntie Helen) are up on the right. So... basically the whole Massachusetts crew!

Looking simply beautiful!  How are any of my nieces and nephews old enough to get married?  He was FIVE YEARS OLD when Todd and I met!

To the groom! (To the groom, to the groom!)  To the bride!  (To the briiiiiiiide....)  It's official!

If we had attended the wedding, we would have dressed up.  I promise I would have ironed Grant's shirt ha ha.  The kids were really disappointed they couldn't go to their first REAL wedding, so we dressed up and made a nice dinner outside.  I even made a cake - because everyone loves wedding cake!  And no, Natalie is not taller than me.  She's in heels and I don't have any shoes on!

Ok, ok... our nice dinner was a burger and dog cookout, made for us by a guy in a suit!

The Bailey's of Ashland extend their congratulations to Caroline and Dale AND Ryan and Mackenzie!

The bride's cake was a funfetti cake, made with a buttercream frosting straight out of a can, beautifully displayed on a "Congrats 2019 Grad" paper plate.  DECADENT!

Todd told Natalie to put together a wedding reception playlist on Spotify and she actually did a really good job.  It even included some typical cheesy wedding reception line dance hits - and one of the Bailey family favorites... LOVE SHACK! 

NO.  GO AWAY.

I also stumbled upon a GREAT website where I could (for an arm and a leg) order some of our favorite German treats!  Everyone was excited to have Pick Ups and curry ketchup!  

Our neighbor on one side of our house doesn't really take care of his property, so it's swarming with critters, including this guy - a woodchuck!  You may also know him as a groundhog.  He's kind of cute, but we don't really want him in our backyard, so Todd had to put some rocks over by the fence so he would stop crawling under it.  We know, buddy.  We like our yard better, too!

In an ENTIRE summer, Todd only got to play golf with some of the Wilmington crew one time.  So sad.  Like, the whole reason we moved BACK to America was to see our friends and family and the pandemic brought that to an Autobahn Stau level halt. 

Also in August, I got a haircut (probably shorter than I normally would get but I'm trying NOT to go to the hairdresser these days.)  Tracy is the BEST - she works in a place that has these little work room pods.  Everyone has their own, and you're in there alone with her.  She gives you a disposable mask (because if you're getting your hair colored, it's gonna get messy and you don't want to ruin your nice mask!)  So great to see her after five years!  Also... I've given up on makeup almost entirely during this pandemic!  Eh, who even cares anymore!

The big summer project for Todd was installing a basketball hoop.  Like a real, regulation 10-foot high hoop.  This was no easy task as he installed it himself (with my help, of course!)  The hardest part for him was definitely digging the hole.  That's a concrete block in there, so it is somewhat deep.  But where we live, there are nothing but rocks beneath the top soil. 

Some of those rocks are here in front of the six bags of fast setting concrete (this wasn't even all that we used!)

It's been a really dry summer and we are in a pretty bad drought right now.  But of course, on the day Todd is trying to install the basketball hoop pole and set it in concrete, THIS happens.

Sadly (sadly?) we didn't get any real rain out of that one.  So here we go!

It was HARD work, but we got it done!  We also had a realization that our level was magnetic!  Todd covered up the concrete with a tarp, just in case the rain returned (it did, eventually.)

Naturally we also had to go back to the Belkin Lookout Farm.  The kids played Tic Tac Toe on Daddy's phone.

I was a little disappointed since they did not have any chicken sandwiches this time!  The burger was still really good though.

Bailey's stuffing their faces in the sun in Natick.

We really like this farm - I think because it kind of reminds us of Germany.  It feels like we are really out in the country, even though we are in South Natick!  You can see the pumpkins are starting to grow in the foreground of this big red barn.

Grant, pile those up and then go throw them away for us!

We wanted to walk off our meal, so we decided to wander through the orchards for a bit.

Grant and Natalie on a beautiful evening in Natick.  Summer could last forever here, and I would be okay with that.

To walk around the orchards, you have to keep your distance, of course.

Daddy and his babies among the grapes, peaches and not-yet-ready apples.

That sunset is just peachy!

Every once in a while, they get like this.  They randomly just held hands and started skipping down the orchard streets, laughing like lunatics.

Of course, Todd and I think this hilarious because they mostly hate each other.

Natick sunsets are pretty good, we'll give them that.

Piece by piece, we are putting together the living room.  We finally got a "coffee table" and a new rug.    Gotta paint those walls, though!

It's been a weird year.  The Indy 500 is ALWAYS Memorial Day weekend.  But because of Covid, they pushed it back to late August.  So we watched it, while having my Dad's favorite Indy 500 meal - burgers, baked beans and potato salad!  (Didn't make the deviled eggs. Sorry Dad, next time!)  It was so bizarre.  The Indy 500 is held at a track that holds 250,000 spectators and this year... it was empty. Takuma Sato won on a caution that happened at lap 195 this year, and that was JUST perfect. Sigh.

Natalie wore a heart monitor for a couple of weeks (when she was at camp, of course) in August to try to capture her Supraventricular Tachycardia.  It didn't take long - in about a week, she had an episode.  She recorded it and we sent it off to her doctor who confirmed that yes, she definitely has SVT.  At one point during the episode, her heart got up to 265 beats per minute!  So we had a follow up appointment at Newton Wellesley for an echocardiogram to make sure that the SVT was the only problem she had.  It was!  Her heart is perfectly healthy.  At some point, she will need surgery to burn or freeze off that extra flap of tissue on her heart - but once she does that, she will never have another SVT episode.

OH, we also voted in August!  Our primary was September 1, but we had our ballots mailed to us.  Instead of mailing it back, to be sure our town received our ballots, we dropped them off at the Town Hall. Yes, it's legal.  Yes, it's safe.  Yes, it's valid.  You can do this, too!

Oh MAN, I also finally GOT THIS!  Isn't she a beauty? I finally got my GOLDEN TICKET to visit Loretto, Kentucky and hand dip my very own bottle of Makers Mark from my VERY OWN barrel.  Yes, it's my barrel!  It has my name on it!  (Along with the names of other people, but I digress!)  My adventure will have to wait until next year, sadly.

I think we finally got Grant's room all set up.  You know, three months later.  We were waiting to install some shelving so that all of his knickknacks could have a home.  Now he's all ready for school to start!

Finally!  FINALLY!  He finally has a basketball hoop!  And it's adjustable, so the kids can lower it and play, too.  He also put up an adjustable netting (not seen here) so that the kids don't accidentally hit the neighbors car behind it.  Naturally, everyone in the neighborhood is excited about this basketball hoop as ALL of the kids have been playing right outside of my office window for weeks.  Even some of the adults have inquired about a driveway league!

Couldn't forget about this, could we?  We had 6.1 million cases of Covid in America at the end of August and over 187,000 deaths.  This needs to end.  Wear your mask, folks!