Young Party of Four

This is 6! Today Will is officially a 6-year-old. It’s been 6 years since he entered the world and made our little family complete. Here are some fun facts about Will at 6… Will is now officially a “big kid” and in kindergarten. He is so excited to be in the same school as his big sister and to be a big kid going to kindergarten. He soaks up everything he is taught like a freaking sponge. Will is officially a member of Yili at school and thinks this is the coolest thing. He was so excited to get a house this year like Kenzie. He started the year in virtual (as did every OCPS student) and did fairly well, but he definitely likes being face to face. He is obsessed with learning to read. He has a crazy mastery of phonemic awareness and phonics and one of his favorite games to play is to ask us to give him a word to try to spell. He also randomly tells us words he can spell without help. He has picked up all the sight words taught to him so far like it is going out of style and he can deco

Today Kenzie is EIGHT! It's so crazy. We have an 8 year old. Only two years away from double digits. A third grader. A girl that is quickly becoming a preteen. There is only a year left (technically) until that is officially the stage we are in. Though I have to say... she acts more and more like an actual preteen every day of her life. She's too much. We often joke that she is 8 going on 28, but in all honesty, she is an old soul and often acts much older than her years. At 8-years-old, Kenzie... - Is still the friendliest kid I know. She loves with her whole heart. She hates to hurt anyone's feelings. The downside is that her feelings get hit hard when someone isn't nice to her. We have had to deal with that on occasion, especially in the last year when we had a run in with a girl that Kenzie thought was her friend but she ended up being not really nice to Kenzie in the long run. We learned as parents that the "mean girl" stage starts early. Kenzie

Being home non-stop has made me want to start paying more attention to the blog again. Though, I think I am going to keep with only using this as a place to store memories mostly for myself and our family to read later. I guess I will continue to share the big things, like Will's 1/2 birthday post this week. We'll see. Anyway...  So this is not the first time I have done a "Day In The Life" style post, but this one is way different than our normal. I made a post about the whole Shelter In Place a couple of weeks ago. We have settled into a sort of schedule or routine so I wanted to document that for our own memories. One day we will back to running around like crazy people trying to get it all done, and I think it will be interesting to remember what life was life during our shelter in place time. This post is typical of our weekdays. Our weekends are less structured and more family time. During the week, we have distance learning and working going on so we k

No. Nope. Not happening. Not even close.... but it is. As of tomorrow, Will is officially five-and-a-half. Halfway to six. SIX. What on earth? Both of our kids need to slow their roll and take it down a notch. It's so crazy to think that Will is going to be six in just six short months. He will start Kindergarten soon. He is already registered and ready to go. He is growing up so fast right before our eyes and it is a happy and sad time for me as Mama, for sure. So, a short update on Will at 5-and-a-half... - Will is growing like a weed. It is not uncommon right now for people to ask me if he has grown inches upon inches overnight. We are noticing that he is catching up to Kenzie fairly quickly and some of his friends that he used to be very similar in height to, he has gotten slightly taller than them. It's just his growth spurt time, apparently.  He remains remarkably skinny. So skinny that his clothes tend to fall of of him if we don't have adjustable waists. T

Wow. That's all I have to say about life right now. 2020 has been crazy. Back at the beginning of this year I made a chalkboard art that said something about ushering in the "roaring 20's," to which my ever positive husband replied something about 1920 having a plague (I see you, Spanish Flu) and we probably didn't want that to happen again. Fast forward to April... and we are all confined to our homes with the exception of leaving for groceries, medical needs, and exercise because of... a pandemic. (Insert facepalm emoji here... but I'm on a laptop so I don't have one of those.) This has been a crazy start to a new year. I am still having trouble wrapping my head around what has gone on over the last month or so for our country, our world, and our family. Here's what we should be doing... both kids should be in school today. Steven would likely be sitting in a water plant in Melbourne counting down the hours until he got to come home because he had

Frustrated. That is literally the best word to describe how I feel about running right now. It's been about 3 months since I hurt my heel. What I thought initially was nothing more than plantar fasciatis (hereafter referred to as PF because I can never spell it right when I write it all out), I now think is more than likely a stress fracture (or something else...) in my heel. I can pinpoint when it happened and likely what caused it. On my last 6 mile training run just before running the OUC Half, I decided to (stupidly) run on concrete rather than my normal asphalt. I see people ask all the time why runners decide to run on the road instead of perfectly good sidewalks. There are multiple reasons, but two that are usually my own are that sidewalks tend to have cracks which can be dangerous, especially at night, and concrete is so much harder than asphalt. It seems weird, but until you spend time walking/running on both,  you don't necessarily notice the difference. The OUC H

Today is Kenzie's half birthday! We kind of have a thing about half birthdays around here. We don't do anything major, but we like to mark their appearance because it is fun for the kids to know that they are officially halfway to their next birthday. It's a bit bittersweet for me though. As is the usual, here is a brief update on all things Kenzie. - She is still really tall. She is somewhere around 53.5 inches or so. I honestly don't know for sure. They are so hard to measure on my own. It's about 2.5 inches taller than 6 months ago so I think that could be about right. Either way, most of her height remains in her legs. - She is so amazing at math. Seriously, this kid got all her Daddy's math brains. Thankfully. Her teacher made the comment at parent teacher conference that she was so excited to see her best math student this year is a girl. She just figures out math problems super easily. She also loves it. She asks us to play math games with her o