Summer Vacation

It's July already. I cannot believe that we have gone thru 6 months of 2024 already. We are in the second half and the third quarter of the year. The kids start back school in less than 3 weeks. Mom goes on her yearly summer vacation at the end of the month. Shortly after she comes back she is house sitting for my aunt and uncle for a month and a half. That’s long enough to do an entire shred that I bought. I actually have several 6 week shreds that I can pick from. I don’t know which one I am going to do yet but I am going to sit down and go thru them. I might combine a few of them together. The shreds are in 3 phases and each phase is 2 weeks long and there are 4 menus per phrase. I can alternate each menu however I want for those 2 weeks. The calories and macros go down with each phase. I have thought about combining several of the shreds together. I think I have 5 or 6 shreds. Some of them are from the budget shred series she had at the beginning and two of the shreds are from the macro type series that she switched to. I am macro type 2 which is protein fueled. I have the original and paleo versions of that shred. What I may do is combine those two and cycle thru the menus for the variety. If I do each menu twice then each phase will last more than 2 weeks. While I am working thru the shreds I am also going to be upping my exercise routine. I am going to start training for my very first in person 5K that is at the end of October. I also have a 5K on Thanksgiving and one in March 2025. All three of the 5Ks are with Wyatt. He wanted to run the 5Ks with me. The 5K in March is at the airport where Wyatt did his 1st fun run this year. He’ll be too old for the fun run there again. I have not signed him up for the fun run at the end of April yet because I don’t know when the fishing rodeo at the canal is or if there’s going to be another one next year. Elijah was bummed that he missed it. In my defense I signed Wyatt up for the fun run in November and I didn’t find out about the fishing rodeo until like February. The fun runs are usually free or don’t cost a lot. Wyatt does have a 1 mile fun run at the park the middle of October. We get shirts for all of the runs we are doing. Hopefully we get the medals as well. The fun run that was downtown was the only run that Wyatt did that he got a medal. I loved the pictures they posted of him. If the fishing rodeo and the fun run downtown are not the same day or time then I will sign Wyatt up for the fun run and Elijah up for the rodeo. I don’t know if we will do the 5K then or not. Wyatt really seems to enjoy the runs. He’s good at it too. We’ll see how I do with the in person 5Ks before signing myself up for the one in April. I have no doubt that Wyatt can run the whole thing. I’ll probably be doing more walking than running. I will be starting the training for the upcoming 5Ks when the kids go back to school.

We are dog sitting for a week. Tiger’s owner is out of town for the 4th of July. The kids had no idea Tiger was coming over. Poor Wyatt was jealous. Tiger is so attached/bonded to me for whatever reason. Mom says I’m his person. I’m the one who was home when he showed up on our porch. His owner said he’s the best dog. He really is. He doesn’t mess in the house. He was trained to do his business in the weeds. He does well in the vehicle. He’s great with my kids and most other kids. He’s sweet. He’s also a boxer/pit mix. When he was living with us his main job was to wake the kids up in the morning for school. The kids are out of school so he just wakes mom up. He gets excited when I ask him if he wants to wake up yaya and I open up the door and he jumps onto the bed. I am trying to let the kids sleep as long as possible because I also need time to myself. It’s almost 9am and I definitely did not expect Wyatt to be sleeping this late. I will definitely take the time to myself for sure. 

My garden is not growing like it was last year. I don’t know if it’s because I got a later start or if it’s the dirt or if it’s the heat. April and May last year were a bit cooler than normal and this year we are just having a heat wave and higher than average temps. I started watering my garden in the evenings right as the sun is going down because the plants do seem to be doing better and they have a chance to get more water from the dirt before it dries up. I did add some baking soda. I heard it helps neutralize the soil and helps the tomatoes be sweeter. I do have a few tomatoes growing and a pepper growing. We’ll see how the baking soda helps. I did use the whole box. It was a small box. I can’t wait to start using the compost from the bin. I missed one day of watering the garden because I thought it was going to rain. I don’t know if it did or not. There’s a chance of storms/rain for 8 of the 10 day forecast. I hope it does rain or storm those days. The plants do react better to the rain water. I’m sure they are just happy to have the water. I am happy to have whatever produce I get from the garden. I really do want it to grow well and to produce abundantly. I do share from the abundance. My goal is to have as big of a garden as possible so I can freeze, dry and can as much as possible for the winter months when we are not eating from the garden. My herbs are doing well. I have to get out as early as possible to trim the flowers off of the oregano before the pollinators come out. I did trim the flowers/seeds off of 2 of the 3 sweet basil plants. I had to replace the purple basil because it wasn’t growing like I was hoping it would. After 2 attempts I just decided to go with another sweet basil plant. It’s doing really well. When I trim the sweet basil I do dry the leaves that are also picked. When I put the basil, or any herb, into the jars I don’t crush them. It preserves the flavor and the flavor/scent is just as strong as it was when it was fresh. I am really grateful for everything I get out of the garden. I am disheartened that the garden isn’t growing as well as it was last year. Next year I am hoping it will be better and that we will have the compost from the bin to use as well. I did add some leaves and grass clippings at the beginning of the year. The leaves are taking forever to break down into compost. At the end of the growing season I will take the pitch fork and mix the soil and leaves around and will continue to add leaves and grass clipping to the garden to continue to make the soil better. I don’t know how many of the garden starter plants are left at the stores or the nursery. I do love to plant in my garden. Next year I am going to attempt to start my seeds earlier in the year to see if that makes any kind of a difference. The one YouTuber I follow did that and her plants are doing so much better than mine. My tomato and pepper plants came from Walmart and Kroger. My one pot of sweet basil came from Kroger.

With my YouTube vlogging channel I have decided to have more of a schedule with my uploads. It’s inspired by the one YouTuber I follow that does the daily vlogs. She has her vlogs set to upload for noon each day and the vlogs are from the day before. What I was doing it vlogging and then uploading them whenever I created the video or got done editing the clips together. I started making the videos and editing as needed and then setting them to post at 9am the next morning. I will admit it has taken a little bit of the stress away of having a more consistent upload time and I am starting to look forward to vlogging daily again instead of looking at it as a chore. I am trying to use YouTube, and my blogs, as a source of income since I am a stay at home mom. I would like to have some kind of money coming in honestly so the kids and I can do things like go on vacation. I am considering rebranding my main YouTube channel to be more of what I intended it to be. Right now I have been posting food hauls and while that has gotten me subscribers I’m not really feeling it. Yes I will continue to upload hauls but I want to include more fitness routines and meal prepping. I plan on starting that when the kids go back to school and really working on while mom is on vacation later this month and while she is house sitting for 6 weeks. My vlogging channel gives me a little more freedom to do whatever and I feel a little less restricted. One of my favorite things about YouTube and blogging is I can create what I want to and I’m passionate about.