June 2026 Recap

June!! Is long over now. As you can see by the (many) pics I selected above, the main focus of June was our trip to Zion National Park + Las Vegas. (See all the recaps here.)

However, we were home for the whole beginning of the month. The focus of that half was Sectionals and State for tennis and “end of school”. Asher finished 10th grade (and Ethan finished 11th grade back in May). Both boys had stellar academic years.

I feel like June was kind of a blur (months where I’m away a lot on big travel tend to feel like that for me), but looking back, we actually did quite a bit in the first half of the month.

I had made a tentative June goals list, but I didn’t have room for too many extras. Most revolved around the upcoming trip, some household “have-to-do’s”, or my parents’ move.

Accomplish List:

• I locked in on my skincare routine in June! Back to using Tretinoin nightly, plus Vitamin C, azelaic acid, sunscreen each morning, and good moisturizer.
• Got a haircut and color.
• Couple dr. appts for the kids.
• Pulled a lot of weeds!!!
• Spent a whole day at my parents’ house helping them pack.
• Did a big budget/ Monarch catch up. (Sadly, got behind on our trip and now have to play catch up again….).
• Stayed off soda!! I still have plenty of moments where I doubt that this (ZERO soda) is really what I want long-term, but… still going….
• Rescheduled Ethan’s senior pictures.
• Took Charlie to grooming. Bought him an early 3rd birthday toy (gift). 🙂
• Final trip details and planning (things like nailing down hike options, etc.)
• Went to the dentist.
• Got rid of our old glider, finally! Even got a little cash for it.
• Obtained a few clothing items needed for the trip (water hiking shoes-> Asher, Ethan needed new Birks.)
• Post-trip (only 3 days left in June): basically a big work catch up!

Happy/Gratitude List:

• Had a fun Friday night out with Ivan’s brother and girlfriend at Garver Feed Mill.
• Went to see Devil Wears Prada 2 in theater with Ivan.
• Lots of HOT summer weather!! This has been a very “summery” summer.
• Spent a weekend with my parents for Ethan’s State weekend, plus lots of pre-trip and pre-move talk.
• The World Cup started!! It has been a fabulous World Cup and I watched more games than ever before. It has been a total blast.
• I got a pedicure.
• went to two graduation parties
• I went to the Garth Brooks concert in Milwaukee!!! It was amazing!! Had a fun pre-concert dinner with a volleyball friend.
• Went on our incredible family trip June 19- 28. We had the best time. I loved everything we did and it was sooooo beautiful and I actually loved the hot sunny weather and perfect blue skies (felt like SUMMER) and pools and all the scenery and our lodging choices and the activities and just everything. The boys totally loved Vegas and I feel like this was just the right choice for us this summer.
• Big fun trip highlights were: full day e-bikes in Zion, hiking the Narrows, Scout Lookout and Canyon Overlook Trail, watching World Cup games together, an exhilarating sand dune UTV tour, exploring the Strip, late nights and gambling a little!!, fun family meals out, crazy good tacos, relaxing pool mornings, Fremont Street, experiencing the amazing new Sphere (Wizard of Oz show) and seeing Cirque du Solei’s Ka, riding the High Roller, and touring Hoover Dam.
• My mother-in-law arrived while we were away for an extended stay. We’ve had some nice family time with her. I’m also grateful that we’re able to split her stay this time between Ivan’s sister; this gives us some breathing room half the week.
• I played (a little) sand volleyball- was away for a couple weeks but got there when I could. Grateful for subs to fill in!

Bummers:

Well, I didn’t keep up my highlight journal all month (I never do it on vacation), and most of the Bummers I have listed are kind of… un-bloggable or involve other people, but I can list a few:

• my back hurting after a marathon weed pulling session
• too many meetings and not enough time to actually WORK
• feeling pretty “off” diet-wise (I had been really dialed in before Virgin Islands, but just kind of… slidddddd through June. Not terrible, but not great either. Not a big deal, I just was hoping to cement some of those habits better than I did.)
• a heartbreaking State title loss for Ethan’s tennis team
• a day when I felt annoyed because everyone was just “around” and underfoot.😆
• some secondary stress spilling over from my parents and all their move stuff!
• we had a huge storm and lost a big branch on our magnolia tree (and it blew part of our fence over! Thankfully Ivan could fix that part).

Media:

Besides The Devil Wears Prada 2, I don’t know that I watched anything besides World Cup games in June!!!

Some meals I made:

• a shrimp linguine bake
• steak milanesas
• salmon and red potatoes
• a chicken and rice soup
• pork tenderloin

*I was spotty on recording this month, then I cooked not one time during our trip.

Upcoming in July!

Which is already half over! 😅

• re-entry after trip ✅
• the 4th of July ✅ -> minimal celebration this year due to my parent’s move right in the middle, but still, we observed it a teeny bit so we’ll give it a checkmark.
• everyone had ortho appts (Ivan and Ethan are long done (just had follow ups), Asher still has more time to go with braces on…)
• Ethan turned 18!! on 7/12. ✅
• Ethan had a physical ✅ (Funny- I got the notice about pre-registration and clicked the MyChart link, only to find he’s been removed from my account! Oh yeah, he’s a full blown ADULT now! Has to set up his own MyChart. Weird!)
• World Cup semi-finals and the final – this Sunday! Argentina vs Spain
• Asher is currently lifeguarding a ton at the public pool (and teaching swim lessons). In his spare time, he’s golfing (pretty much every day) or going to the gym.
• Ethan is working (some, not crazy amounts), spending time with friends (quite a lot), going to soccer captain’s practices, playing in soccer summer league, lifting at school, and (sooooort of) starting to take a few steps toward college/ career exploration and college app stuff. Ha. (So far I think he may have registered on the Common App site. That’s about it. I would like to see a little more happening here, but…. what do I know. 🤪)
• My sister and family arrive next week! They’ll be around (though not directly staying with us) for almost 5 weeks.
• My parents are finalizing their MOVE! They will be officially and completely out of their old house this afternoon. (They closed last week but had final things to move and clean up to do, etc this week.)

Side note on Asher’s summer:

Notably missing for him this summer is swimming. Sadly, he decided to not swim this summer. This is the first time he hasn’t swam club swim over the summer since he was 7.

There were a few factors in this decision. First, most of his best swim friends either graduated or aren’t doing summer swim (for various reasons). He said it would be “mostly girls and just a couple guys he’s not friends with.”

Also, it seems his enthusiasm for intense swimming has dropped off significantly (and rather abruptly), in part due to friends not doing it, but also because his interest in golf has ramped WAY up and I think it’s crowding swim out…

He’s already decided that he doesn’t want to pursue swimming in college. He’s a great swimmer, but not like, elite level where he could swim at a top school or anything. There are many options for swimming in college at all different levels, but he says he doesn’t want to go to a “random” (his words) school just to swim. If he wants to go to a big 10 type school (e.g. UW Madison), it would be very unlikely he could swim competitively. (He could still swim on a lower key college club team wherever he goes though!)

He didn’t want to spend his whole summer training hard for something (swim practice is pretty grueling and usually really early in the morning) that ultimately, he’s not planning to pursue competitively in college. He said, “What’s the point? I want to sleep in, work a lot, hang out with my friends, golf a lot, work out, and go fishing.” 🤷‍♀️ So that’s mostly what he’s doing! (Oh, and the whole month of August he’s taking an intensive Certified Nursing Assistant course, so he’ll be very busy with that soon, too.)

He is still planning to do high school swim team in the winter, thankfully. Undecided on fall- he may do either volleyball or soccer, TBD. In spring he now does high school golf, so that takes out spring swim.

This is just so strange (and honestly sad) for me, because he has swam very intensely year-round (like 5+ times a week) for soooo many years. 😭😭 It has been a huge part of our lives. But, I can’t make him do it, either. It just never crossed my mind that he wouldn’t stay “all in” on swim at least until he graduated.

Summer feels very odd without swim meets and practices in the mix, too. But also… when on earth did those all used to fit in?!?!?! 🤣🤣 Given the events of this particular summer, I think maybe I’m glad he’s opted out. Haha. And truthfully, I don’t really blame him. You’re only a teenager for a few short years. Once you’re grown and working full time, summer is never the same again.

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Hope your July (and summer) is going well! Would love to hear some of your highlights. 🙂 Has anyone else been surprised by teen interests suddenly changing course?

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful that the big regulatory survey at work is OVER! We had it this week, finally, after weeks of anticipation. It all went perfectly (like, we literally had zero negative findings!) which is almost unheard of.