Monterey trip and other stuff we've been up to

This past weekend we drove down to Monterey for a couple days a little family trip, and to take advantage of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Homeschool Days program. The aquarium was awesome, of course, and D enjoyed it though Q may still have been a bit too young or just hit on the wrong day or whatever. But it went ok. We also spent some time at some beaches along the coast. The boys loved climbing up and down rocks along the beaches, and had a grand ole time feeling small crabs to sea anemones and watching what happened. I felt that familiar frustration at having my camera along and wanting to capture so much more, but being divided between that and helping watch the kids and keep them safe. The usual photographer parent dilemma. But, I still got some good stuff, that I will upload at some point...

It was nice to get some good family time together on our trip. It's been rough with Zach's job, he likes it and all but he's been working 80-hour weeks. So I'm solo parenting all week, and at least he's home and usually doesn't have to work on weekends, but then those weekends are crammed with trying to spend time together as a family, me and Zach to get to hang out a bit as a couple, me to get some time on my own, to see any friends we wanna hang out with, etc. Sometimes it feels like we've totally got the hang of this and are doing fine, other times it's like we're all getting so worn out with this current schedule and it feels totally unsustainable. In a few months Zach is supposed to shift to a different group and things should slow down a bit (perhaps working a more manageable 60hrs/week?). And I guess we'll just see how that goes.

The boys are doing ok, they're in a phase where they're fighting/annoying each other more than they used to, which is a bit, um, trying on all of us. We are all (me included) working on controlling our tempers and finding appropriate ways to express and vent our frustrations. It is so maddening to hear them screaming at each other yet again, but then five minutes later they are calmly and politely figuring out a compromise to whatever they were fighting over and I need to hold on to those moments more, remember those, hope for what is developing. We also have some good leads on homeschool groups and park days/activities that have shown promise. For a long time after our move D was being pretty anti-social, not wanting to play with other kids much at all as he dealt with his homesickness. But the past few weeks he's seemed more open, more sociable, actually running off to play with other kids at the park rather than scowling at my side demanding to go home. So, big improvement. We'll see what comes of it.