Hello, and happy Friday!#
The week in review#
That’s another week in the books. This was the first official week of summer for our teenage daughters, whose last day of 10th grade was last week. They both finished on the A/B Honor Roll, so we are very proud of them. Their next big milestone will be taking their driver’s license tests in a few weeks. I think they’re both pretty well prepared, even when it comes to parallel parking, which we practiced some more this week. Another thing we need to work on this summer is SAT prep. They both did pretty well on their PSATs but they are confident they can do better, so my goal is to find them some tools online and make them a study plan for the summer. Any advice would be appreciated if you have experience with this!
Our youngest daughter had her elementary school graduation yesterday. We didn’t do big ceremonies when I was in school. We would do a field day where the parents could come and hang out with us while we did activities outside, and then we would receive some sort of certificate at the end of the day. So these transitions from school to school don’t naturally seem that significant to me, but it was a big deal for our daughter, so we were happy to attend and support her. She was very excited, got all dressed up, and had a great time. She also completed the year on the A/B Honor Roll and we are very proud of her as well.
Last week, I went to use the grill and found that some mice had made a home out of it. I disassembled it and intended to clean it, but ultimately felt it was better to just replace the damaged parts. Turns out they don’t sell replacement parts for that grill anymore. So last night we went over to Lowe’s and picked up a new grill. “Some Assembly Required.” Yeah, that’s an understatement. I wasn’t able to finish the assembly last night so it will have to wait until this afternoon. Just in time for the cookout we have planned for dinner tonight.
This week at work was exhausting. It was nice to have Monday off, but as always, I pay the price when I come back the next day. That’s what happens when you have international customers and are working with a team that has just barely enough people to keep up with the workload. Thankfully, things settled down as the week progressed, and today is looking like a calm day.
The weekend ahead#
Tomorrow the weather is looking nice for a late-morning hike! High of 80 and partly cloudy. We plan to get the kids up and do the trail at the Shenandoah University River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield. It’s close, it has plenty of parking, and a nice paved trail loop next to the river. However, if you continue on past the loop you can hike the dirt path through the woods and down to a small waterfall in Rocky Branch. We always end up going above the waterfall and upstream a bit to explore. It’s a really nice hike and I’m looking forward to it. I’ll include some photos from past hikes there at the bottom of this post. Sunday the weather forecast is calling for rain, so we’ll probably spend most of the day in the house getting things done, playing video games, and watching movies.
