Let the Preschool Year Begin...

There was a Round One so here goes Round Two

M is in the 4 yr old class

Which means this is her last year of preschool - which kind of hurts my feelings a little bit

Her friend from up the street is in her class too plus a handful of kids from last year so it is going to be a fun year! I'm excited for her

I just can't 

What can I say... my boy is in the 2 yr old class!

He talks about going to Debbie's (not Mrs. Debbie... Debbie, we are working on the Mrs. part) class often eve though I think he's still really shy. He should see some of his friends from last year on the playground  which I know he'll like 

Our peeps! In between last week's and this week's pic R lost a tooth! Time you sure do fly.

7QTs - Work, Pool, School

Linking up with Kelly ... pre gaming for school week

---1---

It has been a rough week for Catholics. And if by rough, I mean awful. Many more eloquent writers have written more about everything. It is disgusting. It is sad. We pray for the victims. We pray that all the evil men (and women) who are in the Church to depart.

Part of this post really made me think about the scandals in a whole other way "My son wants to be a priest. He talks about celebrating Mass and practices with his Mass kit. I have prayed to God that He would give one of my sons a vocation to the priesthood. But now I just don't know if I want that for him, for any of them."

---2---

I got this fancy new desk... 

Actually it is really not. Just a 42x24 metal board thing with feet. A few other peeps in the office stand while working so I figured I'd give it a whirl. You know the staying... 

Sitting > Laying down

Standing > Sitting

Walking > Standing

Running > Walking

---3---

We were on the last jar of honey and it had solidified...

I was really worried I was going to boil it because the directions are clear about the water being hot but not boiling. Reconstituting took longer than I thought but did the trick. 

Now we can have peanut butter and honey sandwiches again! BLAAAAAAAAAH!

---4---

We soaked in a little more summer at the pool

C waffles about loving being in the pool and hating life at the pool

I'm mostly not worried about the kids dragging her around in the shallow part of the pool

A refused to go down the slide... I think our first bout from the beginning of the summer was traumatizing. Next summer he's going to be going down like a champ!

---5---

We had to do our school supply shopping... 

This was me and the 3 littles while the 2 bigs were at playground clean up. Thanks for the pic M!

Then we headed into Target with the behemoth cart - which is harder to drive than the van! - plus...  

And my 2 walkers. The Saturday before school started back. 

It is not procrastination for me people. It is just how I CHOOSE to handle things. Did my kids have the coolest folders - no but we did find one good Shopkins one. Did M have the best pencil box - heck no because I've convinced they don't make good pencil boxes anymore they are all crappy - or at least the ones mass market available are. 

Anyhow, we made it and I'm glad I didn't school supply shop for a month before school began. I was busy in summer mode. 

Also, it is worth noting I gave the Wally-world pick up app a shot for about half the school supplies. 

Point.

Click. 

Crayola markers, pencils, paints, scissors etc was too easy and I had a discount code. 

I purposefully left folders off and a few other things (Hi Target) because I needed to put my hands on these things. 

My Wally's experience was nice. It mainly cut the jabber from the kids of CAN I HAVE EVERYTHING COLORFUL AND GLITTERY IN THE STORE??!?!?!

My shopper was really nice and brought my stuff out and told me they didn't have any scissors left and something else got  replaced - totally fine. 

BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got home and unloaded and peeked in my bags and crazy me had ordered 3 packs of skinny dry erase markers - I swear they looked thick online at 11:15 pm when I was ordered them 

SOOOOOO....

Lee had to return them for me and pick up scissors which he obviously had to go into the store for thus defeating the purpose of online ordering but whatever. It was operator error. 

Then for the next 3.5 days the girls wanted to peruse everything but I nixed that until the night before school which almost killed them. 

---6---

And then school happened.... 

And the first day I picked them up on their halfday and had packed lunch for the pool which was met with grumbling but one day they'll thank me. 

And then homework became a reality

But we survived it

I spent one of the halfday morning sweeping out the garage with the little peeps who were not in preschool. I was glad to get that done and throw some stuff out including a little dead mouse.

---7---

To close I don't think I've fully dished on the fall sports line up but here's a teaser...

PB bites for a prepractice snack

He was loving his shinguard and soccer shoes and rolled around in the grass more than he stayed on his feet but the Rabbits are going to rock it out this season... I just know it!

E stitched this photo together or something. But obviously the next most important thing at soccer outside of postgame snacks in the postpractice playground run

Let the School Year Begin

Ding Round One (of school year pics) 

First grade here she comes!

Those shoes took FOREVER to pick out

The tooth... the hair... the hairband is back!

Third  grader!

She would not take any shoes that had pink or purple on them

She wanted her hair braided... I need to watch some french braid tutorials

Got them!

Summer flew by and it was busy so I can't sit here and say... I can't believe they are going back to school. Summer you were good to us. I am so looking forward to what 1st and 3rd grade hold for us. 

In Defense of Cleaning Out the Van... Transitasaurs

Another school year another clean out? 

I'm not 100% sure when the van was totally cleaned out but it was some time last year. Lee got the van cleaned for me last year but this year it wasn't in the works plus a little blood, sweat and tears (okay not the first one) never hurt anyone. 

Schools starts Tuesday so Sunday afternoon was do or die. I didn't really consider it work, it was more like sacrifice and penance. I cannot imagine how many loadings and unloading have happened in the van over the course of the last year. 

MANY.

Back during the funk of 2018, the van was Lysoled out but taking carseat in and out is a massive pain in the neck. 

In defense of taking carseats out... 

and cleaning them. All the sand and food and git and grim and stickers and stuff. It really makes me want to clean these things more often because it never ceases to amaze me the amount of junk these things collect. 

It is kind of gross but taking them in and out is a super hassle - almost as bad as changing the sheets on the bunk bed (but I promise those are cleaned more than once a year). 

E was my harder worker out in the humidity. We stripped the carseats, washed the padding, vacuuming the van, wiped some surfaces and put everything back together. 

Can you tell we are in between seasons.... fall soccer on the left and hanging on to summer and the pool on your right?

Everyone had new assigned seats in the fresh clean van, which I'm sure the clean won't last too long but it was good while it lasted. I really feel A. blessed to need a van this size, B. blessed we have a van this size, C. want to bless other families with this van so first and foremost I need to be a good steward of it and part of that is keeping it clean. 

Here's to another round of seatings... I'll keep you posted on the commentary even though it doesn't matter because all decisions are final and commentary will be taken (as it always is) but not taken into consideration. 

The 14 hour beach trip

Day Trip to the Beach 2018

2017

2015

14 hours - from blast off to crash landing - we planned on leaving at 6 am but really left around 6:20 since we heard from our friends parking might be an issue. We knew we needed to be home around 8ish but that really ended up being 8:20ish but we did an A+ job on timing

13 snacks left in the bag. I packed a ton of food. So many snacks. I knew we would have to call it quits if the blood sugar levels were plummeting so I overdid it in that department which was fine. The run of the mill Kids Bars, Fig Bars, Apple sauce squeeze packs, fruit strips, fruit rolls etc etc etc 

12 beach goers. So so so thankful and grateful our friends could meet us and catch up and hang out and they even came back to meet us for dinner! It was really great having 4 adults on the beach because at any given moment there were some kids in the ocean, other building a sandcastle, some sumo-looking sandcastle smashing, babies eating sand, chasing birds 

11 books sprinkled in the van that didn't make it out. The kids did well in the car for the just over 4 hours total they were it in. Everyone except C slept for some time on the way home. 

10 donuts for the beach. You can correct me if I'm wrong here but I think that is the right count. One for each person except for the babies. C and my goddaughter were left off the donut train but they played nicely and C happily ate sandy Cheerios from her. (They are about a month apart so they were really cute and C definitely needs to step up her hat wearing game!)

I think they loved our friends donuts for the beach tradition!

9 baskets of hushpuppies for the table. I knew I wanted some seafood since we were AT THE BEACH so we went for it and there is nothing like fresh hot hush puppies to keep our kiddos hushed and munching on them 

8 kids on the beach - that was great! The only time we got some serious stares is when a lone wolf decided it'd be good to run up the beach looking for us except he was super far past our spot

7 hours spent on the beach. Sunscreen was applied on multiple occasions and there were still lots of red spots that needed aloe after our showers. Well we rinsed off in the cold water at the beach and them we showered for real at home when we got in the door. No one likes sandy sheets!

6 eggs and sandwiches - Lee made 6 eggs that morning. One for C to eat before we left and 5 eggs and cheese tortilla rollups. I made 3 PBJs and 3 PBHs (PB + honey - blah! for the kids they love them) 

5 kids who gotten woken up to a surprise beach trip. This trip had been in the works for no more than a week. Lee said he'd go on the condition I pack up everything - food, snacks, beach stuff for everyone - adults included. I love our kids enthusiasm over stuff but I couldn't handle them asking about the beach every 2.5 seconds so I hosed off the sand toys the afternoon before and the ONLY one who noticed them out of place was.... R. Which surprised me. All the other stuff was pretty easy to grab

4 hours spent in the water. Well maybe but it is highly likely that E spent that much time in the ocean. She and R and M love going out and there was a far out sandbar that they (and 50 other people were on) that I had to go out and herd them in on. There was boogie boarding and body surfing and just floating down shore. 

Salty red eyes

3 highchairs needed for dinner. We did dinner early. Because the beach is tiring and we were hungry and we needed to get back home. We had a great meal at Dockside and the kids did great too. We loaded them up with hush puppies : ) 

2 stinky beach diapers. ALWAYS USE disposable beach diapers unless you want to wash and scrub to save them - which I did but have no desire to do again!

1 hour that C screamed in the car. Gracious the last hour she howled pretty nonstop. It is tough to sit in a seat that long!

He really did have a good time I promise. C conked out after a short walk down the beach 

0 pictures of the whole group. Probably the only disappointment from the day. Next year we have to get a good group shot!

7 Quick Takes - Maybe I'll Catch Up

Linking up with Kelly ... from the July-August transition week!

---1---

Saturday was the conference swim meet that required some oatmeal-honey-PB-chocolate chip energy bites. E insisted on helping make them Friday evening. We made a batch with chia seeds and a batch without. They were pretty good even though they are full of honey - which I don't like - but all the kids do? I'm wondering if these would make a quick and easy alternative breakfast item so I'm still contemplating that.

Here's the meet recap... no need to rehash that. 

---2---

Sunday morning involved a pre-church 5 mile run which was great. Then church and then swim team EOY party. 

---3---

This week has been really slow in a lot of ways because there has not been a rat race to get to the pool for swim practice. Which was nice but I think I prefer staying busy rather than not. One morning we did go to the pool (hello morning off!) and we were there for about 20 minutes before we had to get out because of thunder : ( We tried waiting it out but no dice. 

Speaking of the pool, I've hit the pool twice this week - getting out of bed is such a drag - which was great. Speaking of waking up, any recommendations on long-lasting, fun kid alarm clocks? 

---4---

Tuesday was a birthday celebration! That involved

A. Making a cake with everyone's help

B. Me not cooking and us going to get Mexican food and E freaking out about tomato sauce on her burrito - we have got to branch out!

C. Eating cake

E insisted on decorating the sides and I finally had to cut her off!

---5---

I plowed through The Gospel Comes with a House Key and I haven't picked up either of the other two books I have - Not of this World: A Catholic Guide to Minimalism (because i need less stuff in my life) and Love Does. 

I'm leaning toward the minimalism book but it looks boring - because I judge books by their covers : ) 

---6---

A got his book bag for school this week 

He was very excited to have it in person and not trapped on the computer screen

I already put his C3PO Lego flashlight on it

He adores it and enjoys filling it up and carrying it around and he has even taken a rest with it. Now if  we can just get him in some big boy undies in the next few weeks that be amazing - I think he is super close as we have had lots of successes this week - we will see how the weekend goes.  

---7---

The weekend looks to be a soggy one. This weather we are having is a bummer (if you like sun) and I'm ready for a few more sticky summer evenings - the kind that make me want to screen in our front porch and back area.