I suck at blogging, guys. I haven’t written anything since May. It’s not that I’m not busy. I AM VERY BUSY. Client work, my podcast, working on creating online writing courses, writing that novel, housework, events and activities, virtual learning with the big kid, regular preschool with the little kid. Life, in general.

But, no excuses, right? I can recap our entire summer with a lot of B words. If I counted right the first time it was 38 ‘B’ words. That bothered my BRAIN so I added this sentence to the BLOG and now it’s 40.

BEANS (coffee), BOREDOM, BICKERING, BACARDI and BEER are a staple through this whole thing. So let’s just start there.

My BIRTHDAY was in early June. It felt semi-normal at that time. The virus was ‘slowing down,’ things were reopening. We had a small, outdoor party at our house and it was the first time we had seen our friends since March. You don’t realize how much you miss people until you can’t see them. It was a great night of catching up, sans kids, and feeling the human connection we were all craving.

Then, everything went right back to shit about a day before we left for a planned BEACH trip to North Carolina. Oh, we’re headed to a hot state. Awesome. Our trip was planned way back in January, long before Covid was a household name.

It was to be my family and two of my best friends from college and their families and honestly, we had been planning it for close to a decade.

While in college, we always talked about how when we got older, we would go to a beach house every Summer with our families. With two of us living in PA, one in Florida, jobs, family events, other vacations and having 8 kids between us, it’s been busy over the past 9 years.

We finally found a summer that it worked out for all of us. It’s almost ironic that it was 2020. The year NOTHING else worked.

We went and it was a glorious and much-needed vacation. We stayed in a giant house together. We had the beach to ourselves every day and we cooked all our own meals. The kids are BESTIES for life, made memories and formed a BOND they’ll never forget and we laughed so hard each night as we sat outside on our rooftop “BAR” we were crying.

We were safe, but we also had a BLAST. We made sure to get our classic BON JOVI pic and it only took 20 minutes to capture the below “perfect” selfie.

When we came home, we did the right thing and quarantined for the longest 14 days in history. That 14 days was over the 4th of July, too, which was a major BUMMER.

So, we missed all the family parties. We missed a big, graduation party. I canceled appointments. BOREDOM was the name of the game there. We did fireworks with the kids, but the grass was so damn dry from the lack of rain, talk about BARREN, we had to settle for sparklers.

Through the other summer days, there was lots of BACKYARD and BYGONE time.

Swimming in the little pool, doing crafts, playing Play-Doh, jumping in the BOUNCE house, reading BOOKS, enjoying the sunshine. And doing all things 80s like playing Mall Madness and listening to new wave hits.

One BONUS to not having much to do is you get to be more creative. So we bought things like scotch and BOURBON and held tastings with our friend, Randie. BUFFALO Trace and BLOOD Oath are my favorites. We are still holding the tastings. This will be ongoing. A real quarantine win.

We said BRAVO as Vincenzo got to do his hip-hop dance recital, sans an audience, at The Palace!

We got to see my BROTHER! I hadn’t seen him since December so it was a real treat to have all the siblings together and for the boys to get to hang out with their Unc for a few days.

We filled the rest of our days the best way we could. We played mini-golf, one day we played in a BOAT, we got Legos and BUILT masterpieces. We made the most of our time together and tried to do something new and fun every day.

We celebrated more BIRTHDAYS, all four of our nephews in the past few months, we held our fantasy football draft (outdoors, of course) and my husband BOLDY went with this yellow BANDANA.

The months flew by, to be honest. We found BALANCE through it all. We learned how to take deep BREATHS when the chaos was overwhelming. We found out the meaning of BELONGING. What it means to be part of a family, a friend group, and how much we really need each other. Love always.

We also did BRILLIANT things with no B – we grew pumpkins, cooked a lot of great food, did many house projects, watched loads of Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/Apple TV shows and movies.

Schitt’s Creek was our ultimate favorite and it is the BEE’s KNEES, guys. Watch it.

This Summer, we laughed, we cried, we worried, we wondered, we hoped and now as the BLUSTERY Fall air flows into our windows, it’s time to BELIEVE good things are headed our way and remember to BE present in every single moment.