what i did this summer

people keep asking me, "so what did you DO all summer?" and since there's not just an easy answer like "an internship" or "working," it's tempting to for me to say, "i just hung out!" and while that's partially true, especially compared to my former grad student life and tommy's busy internship, i could NEVER just "hang out" for three months without wanting to die. i need to have projects and to-do lists or else my self-esteem crumbles and i feel like a slob.

so, lest i forget what i did all summer (other than our day trips and activities that tommy and i did together), i thought i would record it here.

project #1: make a quilt (with AMPLE support and guidance from my mom). this was truly a summer-long project, because i worked on it only about one day a week when i would drive down from santa monica to my family's house. i never spent more than a few hours at a time on it, which i think was the perfect way to be introduced to quilting--i never felt burnt out or tired of it. 

we started with this:

and ended with this masterpiece:

there were plenty of steps in the middle of those two pictures, of course. what? you want some action shots? okay, fine.

check me out! sewing machine master!

 i pretty much laughed at myself all summer long because my mom always used to try and get me to do sewing projects when i was younger and i HATED it. i'd get so frustrated so easily. but i guess i am growing up, because now i'm the one asking my mom if i can sew and voluntarily picking out messed-up stitches. it was an excellent project for this summer, and i'm oh so proud of it.

project #2: make photobooks for each year we've been married. i used the blurb book program, and it took weeks and WEEKS to go through all our photos, decide which ones deserved preserving, and organize them all into the books. i was pretty burnt out on this project by the end . . . but they just came TODAY and i'm so pleased to have done it!

project #3: exercise. i spent the first month of our time there jogging around the park we lived by, but my knees started killing me again, so i switched to swimming. and i worked up to swimming a mile (almost) every day. i would walk the mile to the pool, swim a mile, and walk back. it was so fun, because i'd never swum for exercise before, and it was the perfect pregnancy activity.

project #4: watch all of downton abbey. tommy and i got hooked, and dedicated several full evenings to marathon viewing sessions. (okay, this wasn't really a project, but we did it.)

project #5: hang out with siblings.

project #6: grow a baby. this is what i looked like when we got to california in may:

and this is what i looked like when we got back to north carolina:

and i did a lot of other things too, that weren't recorded in picture form: i read a good number of books, about babies and about other things; we took a childbirth class; we bought a fancy new camera and my mom and i took a photography class to learn how to use it more appropriately; i got into family history indexing; i went to costco and the santa monica farmer's market weekly to get as much fresh peaches and nectarines as were humanly possible; i checked out guidebooks from the library to help tommy and i be the best LA live-in tourists possible. 

okay, okay, and just so this post isn't ENTIRELY about me, this is what tommy was doing most of the summer, one block from the beach and working hard:

what a gem! and WHAT a summer.