A much needed breather + blogger meet up!

This weekend, in comparison to last weekend’s intense weekend, had some very welcome breathing room in it.

Asher ended up getting a last minute invite to go up north on Thursday afternoon with his friend and his friend’s dad to their lake house. So he was gone. He got home Sunday night, at 9:30 p.m. Sounds like he had a blast! TONS of fishing (they have boats), tubing, bonfires, etc. His dream life. 🙂 I think this is the 3rd year in a row he has gone up north with them for a long weekend.

Ethan was around on Friday (and we had a nice lunchtime walk to gym/ lower body workout together) but then he worked both Saturday and Sunday all day.

Ivan was also gone on Saturday for much of the day, which meant I had a big chunk of time to myself! I had lots of things I wanted/needed to get done on Saturday but lately it’s just so rare to have the house be EMPTY. Ahhh, yes.

Cleaning

I spent much of the morning cleaning the house (well, all the main living areas- kitchen, living room, sunroom). We’ve sort of settled into a routine where we do a full/deep clean every other weekend, alternating turns between me and Ivan.

I feel like if I personally only have to do this once a month, even if it does end up taking a few hours, that’s not too bad? It does not seem like it should take that long, but by the time you straighten/ declutter, dust, clean appliances, wipe down all the cabinets, baseboards, clean surfaces, mop floors, dust the other rooms, vacuum…. it takes a while!

The boys alternate cleaning the bathrooms, they clean their own rooms, and then I usually do a deeper clean of our bedroom once every few weeks. That’s an area that seems to be ok to ignore a little longer.

That leaves our finished basement, rec room, guest room and my office/laundry room, but I am personally happy if those spaces get cleaned once a month or so.

Before I started on the real cleaning, I put the Olympics on and cleaned out one of our big kitchen junk drawers. It had been driving me NUTS.

I pulled a bunch out to toss and then reorganized the rest. Ahhhh much better.

Olympics!

After the morning cleaning extravaganza (plus a nice break at my now-clean-sunroom desk to catch up on a few blogs), I settled in on the couch for a little while to watch the Saturday swimming finals live. Laying on the couch on a Saturday afternoon is an extreme rarity for me, so this felt luxurious. Especially in an empty house!

I guess I wasn’t fully alone:

The main highlights were the women’s 400 free final, where Katie Ledecky got bronze. Obviously she won’t be completely happy with that, but the 400 isn’t her best event, and her Australian rival Titmus was clearly the deserving winner this time. And the young Canadian who won silver is a force to be reckoned with! She’ll be fun to watch in upcoming years.

The U.S. women got silver in the 400 free relay, and then the men won gold! Very fun to just sit and watch and really enjoy, with a bowl of ice cream. 🙂

Friday night we had watched the Opening Ceremony from the bar at our Mexican place. I felt so bummed that it was raining on their outdoor ceremony!!! I kept saying, Ugh, I can’t believe it’s raining!!! I am sure the organizers were envisioning a perfect, sunny, beautiful Parisian July day to show off all their hard work and preparation. Ivan of course retorted, Well, all the athletes are smiling and look perfectly happy. No one looks bothered by the rain except you! 😆😆

I think I liked the idea of the boat entrance thing in theory, but in reality I believe I like the standard arena entrance better, per previous years. I feel like it was a lot harder to SEE the athletes on the boat. When they walk, they’re more spread out and easier to identify, versus being all smushed together on the boat like this.

Saturday afternoon after Ivan and Ethan got home, break time was over and we all headed outside to do some yard work. Ivan power washed our siding, I did a bunch of overdue weeding, and Ethan cut the grass.

Sunday fun-day!

Sunday I made a grocery list for Ivan and his mom to run and get while I had lunch plans with….. Kyria!!

She was “passing through” on her bike and swung by my house! What a treat to get to spend an afternoon with her! We’ve had several great email exchanges over the past year or so plus following each other’s blogs, so I was really happy to meet her.

We went to a local brewery for a nice, long lunch and enjoyed some great conversation! Then we walked around our (little) downtown area and I took her on a driving loop to see the “sights” (lol- there are not really “sights” in our little Madison suburb, but I at least pointed out the library, the kids’ schools, where they work, Costco, etc. 😆) before heading back to my house.

She then changed back into her bike shorts and set out for her next destination! (For anyone who doesn’t follow Kyria, she is probably the most interesting and adventurous person I know! She has literally traveled the world inside and out and is currently 4 months into a cross-North America bike trip (completely alone!). She recently finished biking from Canada to Mexico and now is looping back north at the moment, hence being in Wisconsin!)

Unfortunately, she hasn’t really been able to keep up with real time blogging about her adventures, but check out her blog for lots of past adventures!

Olympics + chill

Sunday night was awesome. The house was clean (yay!), and Ivan and Ethan were gone at a movie with his cousin/son. I ended up spreading out on my bed with my laptop and did a HUGE email clean out (HUGE- somehow my email had spiraled out of control lately….) while watching the Olympics and sipping on a Wild Cherry Bubblr.

It. Felt. So. Nice.

Something about that combo of neat/clean house + EMPTY house was so great. No one to mess it up!

Charlie got the memo and was super chill the whole evening too. He supervised my email work for a little bit:

And then mostly just snoozed:

I took care of a bunch of tasks that were buried in my email including Venmoing someone some money that I owed for a kid thing, renewing my license plates, completing a bunch forms in a new platform for Ethan’s school, responding to some ignored emails, and scheduling an oil change online.

All in all, it was just some much needed respite, while still feeling productive. Win- win!

And now it’s Monday. Womp womp. Wish I could just keep this weekend going….. but oh well. On the plus side, my mother-in-law is cooking dinner tonight (enchiladas!), so I don’t have to think about that, and I’m looking forward to more and more Olympics all week!!! 🎉🎉

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful I got to meet Kyria!