Well, summer is in full gear at the Vittetoe household. Actually, we’ve been on break for two and a half weeks! It’s flying by too quickly, as always. The girls have already finished their first round of swim lessons for the summer. Since they changed the way they run their sessions–they are now two weeks long instead of three–they will be able to take two sessions before we head to Rhode Island for my cousin Hallie’s high school graduation and my grandmother’s 80th birthday at the end of June. This year, we have been taking lessons at Village Green, a pool about five miles away from our house, because when I flipped through the recreation brochure, I noticed that pool’s lessons were half the price of the pool closest to us! Also, it’s right next to the bike path. So they have been enjoying their lessons while I have enjoyed killing two birds with one stone: saving on gas (and the earth, for that matter), and getting my daily exercise as I pull the three of them, a beach bag full of clothes and towels, two noodles, a beach ball, and a couple of bottles of water behind me. Fortunately for me, and too bad for them, the weather has been quite unusually cool this June, so other than the tornado warning/thunderstorm that we rode home in yesterday, it hasn’t been unbearably hot, making the beautiful trail, which runs along a creek/greenway the whole way, quite enjoyable.
Bruce and I started out the summer with a Rockies game sponsored by the school district where I work. We were able to get great seats behind third base. First, we went out to eat at LoDo Bar and Grill, then headed over to the game, had some cotton candy and Blue Moon beers, and watched the Rockies come back in the bottom of the ninth inning from a 7-6 score to winning the game 8-7! I must say, that was the most exciting baseball game I’ve ever been too! Bruce and I went to a bar and listened to some live music afterward, and then topped off our evening with some highly overpriced coffee and dessert at the Cheesecake Factory. It was the perfect way to begin our summer. We picked up the girls from Grandma and Grandpa’s house the next day and celebrated Grandma’s birthday.
In addition to swim lessons, we have made one visit (on the ONE nice day) to Cherry Creek Reservoir. Riona enjoyed this more than anyone. She is thrilled to just rn out of the water, pile up the sand, roll around and for two hours repeat, “Look at me, Mama!” Isabella and Mythili love to run back and forth between the “beach” and the playground with its ginormous mound of sand that they climb up and down like monkeys.
Last weekend, we rode the bike over to the library while Bruce visited his friend Kasey. The library does a summer reading program every year, and this year we decided to go to the opening celebration. The girls bounced in the bounce house, toured the Arapahoe Sheriff’s mobile unit, and watched a puppet show about safety. They had a blast, and at the end we enjoyed a nice hot dog lunch at their adjacent cafe. On Sunday, just after a tornado touched down not too far from our house, we enjoyed our first kid birthday party of the summer. My friend Kristen’s little boy, Kylen, turned one, and amidst the trapped-indoor house, parents and kids alike had a great time hanging out.
We have also made one trip to the zoo, watching the streams of lilting cotton from the cotonwood trees fall around us and gather on the ground like snow, watching Riona squeal with delight each time she sees another animal, and never hearing a single complaint about legs hurting as we meander through the huge, beautiful, one-hundred-year-old trees. On this trip, we visited the lorikeet enclosure, where the girls happily fed the brightly colored lorikeets nectar out of a tiny cup.
Yesterday, we had a Girl Scout meeting to practice our flag ceremony and plan who’s bringing what food to our unit camp at the end of August. I think it will be a fun but overwhelming two days in camp with more than a hundred Girl Scouts, but hopefully Isabella will enjoy the experience! And last night we had the Mentzers over for dinner–they have three boys who are the same age as our three girls! The adults had a great time talking while the kids ran in and out of the house chasing each other with pop guns and spreading Legos everywhere.
We have another two weeks of swim lessons before our trip to Rhode Island, and when we return we are tentatively going camping with the Mentzers and then the two older girls will be in a Construction Camp with the two older Mentzer boys at the end of July. We’ll see what we can squeeze in during the meantime… 
