Summer is officially poppin’ at the Demos house ☀️
We don’t have a pool in our backyard (or neighborhood)…
But we DO have an absurdly large alligator water slide 🐊💦
Can you guess which one of us was casually strolling through that middle section of Costco…
And thought it was a totally reasonable investment to get a 20-foot-long neon monstrosity shaped like it just spotted Captain Hook?
(It’s always that dang middle section of Costco that does us in.)
Jordan (a.k.a. The King of Fun 👑) spotted it a few years ago, and immediately called me.
“Think of the memories we could make,” he said.
“Let’s just tryyyyy it,” he said.
“We can always return it,” he said.
Narrator: They never returned it.
Three summers later?
The kids STILL go wild for it.
10/10 would recommend — as long as you don’t mind inflating a small bounce house with the decibel level of a jet engine every other afternoon 🙃
Speaking of chaotic color explosions…
We finally mustered the emotional stamina… to tackle re-organizing our kids’ playroom 😅
The place where bright colored plastic stuff go to die.
Where puzzle pieces disappear into the abyss.
Where every prize from the dentist, Happy Meal toy from the grandparents and birthday party goodie bag comes back to haunt you all at once.
It took alllll day (at least it felt that way).
Armed with some clear plastic shoe bins from Target and the trusty label maker we’ve literally had since our days teaching elementary school…
We tamed the untameable beast! 🦁
And felt oddly proud of it.
Also? We may or may not have donated a mountain of toys when the kids weren’t looking.
(They haven’t noticed. Yet. We *think* we’re in the clear 😅)
At the end of long days like these, we’re always wishing for a show that makes us excited to hit “play” once the kids are in bed that we both love (a tall task).
Enter: Hijack on Apple TV 🍿
It’s absolutely nothing like Gilmore Girls, but one of our best friends raved about it, so we gave it a shot, and we were instantly hooked.
It’s the kind of edge-of-your-seat thriller that makes you forget you were planning to fold laundry (and also… breathe) 👀
We popped some stovetop popcorn and turned it into the best kind of at-home date night (over and over) — no babysitter required.
So if you’re looking for a good new binge, you gotta try it.
Just don’t blame us if you stay up too late watching “just one more episode…”
And while we’re on the topic of no babysitter, we couldn’t find one for our regular Saturday night “date night” this past week…
So we snuck out for a midweek breakfast date instead at the CUTEST new French cafe and bakery!
Coffee. Croissants. Conversation.
(No diaper bags in sight 🙌)
While we were waiting for our table, Jordan snapped this pic of me.
“I don’t want to forget this,” he said.
“Sometimes, we feel old, but the reality is we won’t always be this young. You probably won’t always be able to sit on a chair like that. I want to cherish it while it lasts, and always be remember it when it’s gone.”
😭 🫶🏻
That sentiment? It’s been our quiet anthem lately.
Maybe it’s because we’ve had a few really hard, scary health things happen in our family the past few years…
Or maybe you’ve felt it, too…
The days your kids seem to grow a full shoe size overnight.
The days your parents say things like, “I just don’t have the energy I used to…”
The days you look in the mirror and notice that fine line is getting a little deeper.
“We’ve been reading WWII novels before bed (with our reading lights draped around our necks like the thirty-something nerds that we are) and let us tell you…
When the characters are surviving on a single loaf of bread for an entire week, it kinda shakes you.
It puts our “problems” into perspective REAL QUICK.
And reminds us, in the scope of human history?
We’re all living like kings.
Even in the mess.
Even with the noise.
Even when we’re drowning in laundry and up to our eyeballs in playroom messes and hiding in the bathroom just to have a moment of peace.
There is so much to cherish.
So that’s what we’re doing. Trying, anyway.
Because we don’t know how long we get to have it.
So we’re choosing to cherish it.
The water slide days.
The bright colored toys all over the ground.
These sticky summer nights.
These imperfect, ordinary, but beautiful moments.
