July started off with a 4th of July weekend full of fun, sun, and lots of friends! We boated and pooled with our friends John and Lindsey on Saturday, went to a pool party hosted by Courtney and Zach on Sunday, then did all our traditional IOP 4th of July things on Monday including the island golf cart parade, flyover at the Windjammer, and fireworks on the beach.
The 2nd weekend in July Carl headed to Boston for Chris’s (my brother’s) bachelor party which included an injured groom. Chris had torn his achilles shortly before his party, but didn’t let that get in the way of celebrating with his friends and family. A great time was had as I understand it.
While Carl was out of town, I participated in one of the Charleston Sprint Tri series races as a “work out the kinks” race in preparation for my big race in Milwaukee that was now only 4 weeks away. I had a smiling face in the crowd thanks to my wonderful friend, Helen, showing up to cheer me on and I got 2nd in my age group!
In an effort to get more involved with the community and feel like I’m making a difference, I volunteered at I Can Swim camp for a week helping kinds with Down Syndrome learn how to swim. I was assigned to help a boy named Corey along with a volunteer named Tammy and the progress we saw throughout the week was amazing! Corey went from clinging to Tammy to sticking his face in the water within a matter of days. It was something very different from my day-to-day life and a really special experience.
As July was winding down, so was our time at 906 Palm. Our landlords had asked us to be out no later than July 31st and we took advantage of every last day and had a POD delivered on July 22nd. After packing and moving in the Charleston swelter, I’ve decided I never want to move in the summer ever again. An acquaintance from Carl’s work offered to help me move the few pieces of furniture that we owned into the POD (since Carl was still in recovery from his surgery and not allowed to lift anything) which occurred immediately after I finished a brick workout and…I thought I was going to pass out at one point. This is not recommended. Luckily that didn’t happen and we got all our big stuff loaded (thanks so much, Chris!). Since we were about to be without a house (house hunting had not been super successful thus far), our wonderful friend, Jen, was taking us in. No one expected we’d be moving in with a roommate at this point in our lives, pets and all, but it was awesome Jen provided this option to bridge our housing gap. To our delight, we toured the house that would eventually become ours on Saturday, July 30th, and had an offer accepted when we made the official move to Jen’s! This was a huge relief. (Although it turns out living with Jen was awesome and I was really sad to leave when it was time to move into our own house).