We rolled back into Austin from Missouri to find a wall of intense heat and crisped greenery. Evidently the daytime high temperatures experienced a 10-degree step up while we were gone. It’s been in the neighborhood of 100 degrees pretty much every day since. At one point during the month Maya said, while applying sunscreen, “The sun has murder in its eyes.” She is not wrong.

We all felt a bit of relief at not having every evening scheduled with some kid activity (though we have continued Maya and Ian’s music lessons through the summer). We did manage to find a new piano teacher for Maya. His name is Ben, and his structure is a little more laid back, which Maya loves, but that I’m not yet certain about. He answers her numerous theory questions with enthusiasm and patience, and when explaining something new, he provides her with lots of examples. I’m hoping we’ll find our groove on structure. I’m personally not yet ready to abandon her Suzuki curriculum – the songs are interesting and challenging and there’s an emphasis on refining technique, which I’ve not yet seen otherwise. She’s very happy though and clearly deeply interested in music, so either way, I think we’ll come out ok.

Our favorite local theater, the Alamo Drafthouse, started showing movies for $7 on Tuesdays a while back. Given that, we’ve done dinner and a movie a couple times with the kids on Tuesdays. So far we’ve seen Elemental and the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. We have intentions to take them to see the new Indiana Jones movie in July, and who knows what else.

Maya and Ian, after a week with nothing to do, got to go to a half-day art camp at their elementary school. They made some neat stuff and it broke up their day a little. Maya was sad to note that none of her friends were in the class with her. This year more than any year previous, poor Maya is really missing her friends. We’ve tried a playdate here or there, but it’s nothing like seeing kids every day at school.

For Father’s Day, we took Sean out Saturday evening for drinks and endless slices of pizza at Delucca Gaucho Pizza & Wine. It works a little bit like a Brazilian steakhouse. Servers roam the tables with different varieties of pizza, offering them to you as they pass. For their fixed price menu, they start you with some lobster bisque, a small arugula salad, and some meatballs. Then the pizza starts coming. And their pizzas are really good. For one, they have a very flavorful crust. For another, they have a lot of variety. Garlic Picanha was a favorite. The grown ups were very fond of the Mexican Elote pizza. Ian especially was delighted with the Nutella dessert pizza, while I REALLY enjoyed the Guava Marmalade one.

Then on Sunday, because the kids just knew how much Sean would like it, we went to the water park at Typhoon Texas. We didn’t get too many photos, but we had a lot of fun. Especially when we first got there, it wasn’t too miserably hot and the lines were shorter. The only real downer (ha ha) is that they never opened their big drop slides. The kids kept a careful eye on them to see if they’d ever open up, but no joy.

Ian went to Pokemon camp at Dragon’s Lair, one of our local comic book stores. We weren’t sure how he’d fare without his sister along for support, but he LOVED it. He received a lot of new Pokemon gear and got to play the game and trade cards with kids his age all week long. Maya started the week being happy that she finally had some alone time, but I think by the end of the week, she was missing her brother a little bit.

One of Maya’s (and my) favorite parts of picking Ian up from camp was seeing if we could find any of the “lair beasts” roaming around the store. They currently have two cats, Brigid and Diana, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the store (read: napping and getting petted), and it was fun trying to spot them every day.

We often have interesting creatures come to our backyard, but I’ve been a little lax on keeping the various feeders and birdbaths filled in this stupid heat, so traffic has been light. We did, however, see a crazy white caterpillar merrily chomping away at one of my shiso plants. Turns out, it was a Virginian Tiger Moth caterpillar. There were lots of grackles perching here and there in our back yard that day as well, so it may have become a grackle snack.

A while back, we bought tickets for an outdoor concert. In Austin. In June. Even at the time, we had misgivings, but the show was in the evening and who knew when the Pixies might come to town again, so we bought tickets for us and the kids and hoped for the best. Plus, the McKee-Starling clan were going too – it would be a social gathering! Fast-forward to concert day. It’s over a hundred degrees outside and has been for a while. We’d be sitting in the full baking sun for quite a while before it actually got dark. And around here even after it gets dark, the heat persists. It’s usually above 90 well into the night.

At Holly’s suggestion, we purchased little personal fans for the kids. I’m not sure they really did much good, but at a minimum, they had fun playing with them. We bought snacks and t-shirts and at one point Sean wandered off to get drinks. He came back grinning, explaining to me that even without asking, he knew he should get three sodas and a beer (the latter being for me).

Bully opened, followed by Franz Ferdinand. Both did great, but I was mostly there to see the Pixies perform. I had done a good job of having the kids listen to a couple different albums whenever they were in the car with me, so they had songs they were wanting to hear. They were both looking forward to Monkey Gone to Heaven, and Maya was especially looking forward to Where is My Mind?, to the point that as the Pixies started each of their songs, she’d glance at me to confirm or deny whether her song had started. They played a good set, and despite all the sweat, I am happy we went.

The kids finished out their month by attending a Harry Potter acting camp at Zach Theatre downtown. They drive to take them there in the morning and fetch them in the evening was a bit arduous, but they seemed to have a lot of fun hanging out with like-minded Harry Potter lovers. Maya even made new friends, and so she had an extra wave of sadness when camp was over. On the final day, the parents got to come watch a handful of skits that the kids wrote themselves. The subject matter was pretty wide-ranging, but the kids were all definitely into it.

This sounds like a lot, and I guess it was, but it’s still nothing compared to our normal school year schedule. The kids have had a week here and there where they’ve just been left to their own devices while we work. I know Maya misses her school friends a lot, and I know Ian gets bored easily, but learning to deal with those things is part of life too.