Aug 26: Super-busy tail end of summer; camping for all of us.

Happy Tuesday, everybody.

It is a late one, but it has been a very busy last week.

Last Monday, I had a talk that I was giving for work, and that I was a little bit nervous about, but it went pretty well.

So that was a nice start to the week.

And the week was just really busy after that.

We still had our friends stay over with us.

So the house was kind of chaos with eight people in it.

It was wonderful and fun.

It was really great to spend such good time with good friends.

And we would totally do it again.

But obviously, a little bit exhausting, especially going to bed like kind of past midnight on many nights and having to get up early in the morning to prepare everything for the kids for summer camps.

Would absolutely do it again, though.

And they also were very generous and took us out to dinner at Din Tai Fung one night.

If you don’t know that place, it’s like a really famous Taiwanese dumpling place that opened up in Vancouver a few months ago.

Aside from the food being awesome, I was also very impressed because Rafa ate a ton.

And she had her first Shanghai rice cakes and xiaolongbao and really enjoyed the pork chops.

So that was really cool to see.

After the week, it was just kind of like also a really nutty weekend.

Rafa had her first overnight camp.

She stayed overnight for two nights.

So we dropped her off in Squamish.

Sasha had a 17 mile run, which is 27 ish kilometers on Saturday morning.

And we had a meetup for the new school that Mika is going to to meet other kids.

We also had like an overnight camp for Mika that we organized.

We just went camping in a friend’s backyard to like try and figure this whole camping thing out, which was very successful.

We just did not get a great night’s sleep there.

But otherwise, it was it was great.

You know how to like set up a tent and stuff now and get things going.

So I feel a little bit more accomplished.

And then on Sunday, we had to pick up Rafa from Squamish.

And then Rafa also had a friend’s seventh birthday.

And then we had to get Mika ready for school.

Right.

So it was a pretty massive weekend as well.

And then Monday was Mika’s first day at her new school.

I think she did great.

And Rafa was very supportive.

And it was kind of funny because it was only a half day.

But Mika was completely wiped out and like had a very long nap afterwards.

So it was really cute.

And yeah, all the teachers and stuff in the school and the school is like amazing.

So we’re really excited for that, that she starts there.

And amongst all of the madness, still trying to like, you know, keep fit and be a reasonable human being.

I think I set my personal record for like bench press, I can bench press 95 pounds now, which is about 45 kilos.

And just trying to get back into some sense of stability in the upcoming week and back into a rhythm of things with the kids going back to school and things.

So it kind of feels like the tail end of summer.

I think parents kind of feel it a lot more because, you know, school goes back.

So I haven’t had a date night in many weeks because it’s been such a heavy extroverting last week or two.

But we’ll try and have a date night in this week, Sasha and I.

So just to try and like celebrate all of the amazing stuff that we’ve gone through in the last week or two, but just haven’t had a chance to like reflect on things and appreciate it a lot.

Otherwise, that’s it.

I’ll catch you next week.