Week in Review: Adulting, Retreating and Praying

Happy Friday party people!  There's nothing like that Friday feeling knowing the summer weekend is about to start :)  Of course to my kids on summer break, everyday is like the weekend, those lucky lads and lassie.  Let's see what's happened at the Martin casa this past week.

JP started a real-ish job!  He's working full-time, Monday through Friday from 8 - 4:30 at a medical center as a Documentation Specialist (or what used to be called a Medical Scribe).  It's not the type of job he would typically get with a Biology degree, and the pay is barely above minimum wage, but he is able to get patient care hours to apply for PA School.  He just found out the doctor that he works for will be retiring next month, so he will (God willing) be transferred to another office, and he's hoping for orthopedics.  He comes home at the end of the work day, changes and goes to exercise/hang out and tells me how tired he is.  Um yeah dude, adulting is hard.  School is much better!  Soon you'll be buying life insurance and a house and your own groceries and then you'll really have something to complain about :)

First Day

This was Maggie on her last day of finals.  I will never understand fashion as I would have rather died than wear socks and sandals when I was a teenager but yet here we are:

Phil completed his 21st year of teaching and Maggie is officially a Junior and Eamon is officially a Senior!  Eamon exclaimed after completing his last final "I can go on sleepovers now!"  Yes we are a family that says no to sleepovers until senior year.  We have our reasons for not allowing sleepovers but we do let them sleep at cousins' houses, have friends sleepover at our house, go on overnight retreats, college visits, etc.  We're not unreasonable about it but we find it's one of the best parenting decisions we've made for our crew while they are growing up.  Our goal is to keep them safe and informed when they are little and then to let them go and grow when they are big.  We want them to get a taste of sleepover freedom before they go to college, so senior year is their sleepover gap year so to speak.

Speaking of overnight retreats...Eamon and Maggie are currently out in Ohio at a Steubenville Youth Conference with a bunch of kids from our Diocese.  They made the long bus ride out yesterday (it took them 13.5 hours) and with all our kids likely to end up there for college, I think we just need to move closer to campus ;)

Eamon's photo from the bus

But how could we ever leave this beautiful East Coast and The Ice Cream Cottage?  Just look at our new special flavor, created by Maggie:

Banana Peanut Butter Cup

Later today we are donating ice cream cones to kids who sign up for Summer Reading at our town library, so if you're in the area come on by!

I had Juneteenth off from work, so I took the bottom five kids to the beach and they swam out to the floating docks and had lots of fun.  I got to relax in my beach chair and listen in on the conversations going on around me.  These days going to the beach with kids who can swim is so different than chasing toddlers around and taking sand/pebbles/shells out of their mouths.  Boy those days were hard, and I remember thinking "One day I will be able to sit at the beach and relax!"

But they were oh so cute!  Summer 2013 - Xander B

The kids got coupons for $4.99 smoothies after running the race last weekend, so I took them yesterday after work.  They were so big that only Xander finished his and it took a few hours.

Today my dad is having a procedure to check in on his heart surgery from ten years ago, so any prayers would be appreciated that it goes smoothly and all looks good - thank you in advance.

Have a wonderful weekend everybody - stay cool if you are in a heat wave like we are!