This was a crazy busy month, now that we’ve got the camper on premises we’re up to our eyeballs in projects. Despite my impression that all we did was work, it seems we did actually manage to have some fun this month! Our fun was mostly inadvertent and unplanned, so maybe the takeaway here is that if I want to have fun in August, I should plan something in advance.

Let’s get into it.

We take a walk every day if the weather is good. Our walk takes us right by the most beautiful ditch, full of sweet peas and wild roses. So great!

My no-dig, no-weed garden was grassy yard at the beginning of June, so it had a late start. Then the plants were pretty stunted throughout June and early July, so I was concerned that we might not have any harvest at all this year.

Eventually it took off, and now it’s a jungle! We’ve harvested plenty of greens and radishes so far.

This is one branch of cherry tomatoes. They are being very slow about turning colors, and I’m concerned the weight of the branch is going to rip it off the plant before they ripen!

We bought this house late fall, so nearly every flower in the yard has been a surprise. In particular, the variegated petals on this Japanese spiraea (meadowsweet) were part of this month’s surprise!

Our projects seem to be cascading: we need to redo the master bath so we can get more storage space, after that we can reorganize the house, after that we can get more space in the garage, which will create adequate room for the RV projects. Have you ever tried doing house renovations with a baby? It. Is. Slow. Fortunately my mom had a day off work, so she came over to babysit while we did projects, then eventually we roped her into helping with the master bath too!

We need a new couch for the RV. We have pretty specific dimensional constraints, so it will have to be a small couch. I pored over couches on the internet, just really not excited about spending $400 on a couch that probably won’t be comfy and will immediately get stained by tiny, sticky hands. But that was looking like our only option. I spotted a free couch on craigslist that actually listed the dimensions, and they were shockingly close to what we needed, but it had been up for two weeks already. I sent a message, but didn’t hear back, and I assumed it was long gone. Almost a week later, I opened my email and the seller had just found my email in her spam folder, the couch was still available! We dropped everything and hit the road. Our “free” couch was about 45 minutes away, we filled up the truck for $112 on our way there. Since we were already out of the house, we leaned into it and headed to the Platte River delta.

We found the perfect shady spot and let the kid dip his toes in. I feel like 80% of parenting in the summer is using my body as a human shield so my kid stays out of the sun.

Since we’d arrived so early, we found great parking. This is what it looked like as we were driving out of the park – Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on a beautiful, sunny Saturday!

We were going to hit up a brewery in Frankfort to celebrate, but Atlas fell asleep on the way, so we headed out to an overlook to eat some lunch. He slept through the whole thing. Poor kid must have been worn out after playing in the water.

I actually don’t care for the brewery in Frankfort (it’s good beer, just not my preferred style) so when I realized we had another option 15 minutes away, I talked Kyle into changing course. This beer was absolutely stellar. This was a very good day. I have no photos of the couch we picked up though!

On one really exhausting day when I’d gotten nothing done, I picked up an easy project I’ve been meaning to work on, just to feel like I accomplished something. I ended up loving the first one so much, I felt invigorated enough to do the second one too. I bought these shadow boxes when I was pregnant, and I finally got around to adding our own adventures to them! I love how they turned out!

A couple days later, I packed Atlas up into his stroller for a walk, then it occurred to me: if we’re going to be outside on this cool and cloudy day, why not drive two miles down the road and be outside picking blueberries? The blueberry bushes were loaded! And my kid absolutely refuses to eat them.

We stopped at a thrift store on their busy day, so I shopped while Kyle stayed outside with the baby. Then he went in to shop as Atlas and I walked around the community garden. I thought we could beat those rain clouds, but instead we had to duck inside a greenhouse and wait for the rain to pass.

We had to make a trek north for an appointment, so we decided to make a day of it. The forecast was for calm winds, so I planned on flying my drone over some truly beautiful lakes in northern Michigan.

I think it goes without saying that the winds were around 20mph, so I was grounded (Michigan is the third windiest state!). I was extremely bummed. However, it was a really lovely spot for a picnic.

The kiddo got his feet wet again. For all our splashing around near the coast, I don’t think he’s been in Lake Michigan yet!

Kyle was picking up some groceries at Aldi and found the steam cleaner of his dreams on clearance. We tried it out on 30 years worth of grime on our linoleum and…well, let’s just say that now we have another project that we’ll never have time for. And boy, do we know how to party.

Speaking of projects! It’s time for the great reveal! We finished up the bathroom around the end of the month (cabinet doors take SO LONG to paint). I am absolutely in love with the changes we made to our master bathroom. Here’s the dramatic before and after!

We removed the garden tub, that monstrosity, and we’re going to turn that space into a walk-in closet area.

Goodbye, yellow plastic sink. Goodbye, stenciled-on roses that are not my taste at all. Goodbye, disgusting toilet. Goodbye, nasty ugly floor. Goodbye, wasted space. Helloooooooo, beautiful bright clean new bathroom!

In the midst of all that, we’ve got a bunch of RV projects started, but everything is currently a huge mess. Somehow, since having a kid, projects seem to get abandoned often, making them about 100x more messy that they ever were before there was a baby around.

Atlas seems to be the king of 5:40am wakeups. We’ve tried all kinds of different things, trying to get him to sleep in later. I think that’s his body’s natural wakeup time. Unfortunately, my body’s natural wakeup time is more like 6:30-7am. This has been pretty rough. He’s also standing on his own now, and I’m sure by the time I write another update, he’ll be walking. We haven’t heard any actual words from him, but he’s made his first sign back to us (which counts as his first word). It’s been absolutely exhausting, but a lot of fun too.

Onward and upward! August will be insane as we try to wrap up more projects than we are physically capable of completing.