Young Party of Four

I set a few new goals for this school year. I have big plans. Always. Haha! Anyway, my goal has been to try to add one new recipe per week to our rotation of meals as well as use our slow cooker once a week. So far, we have been doing pretty well and so far, we have enjoyed all of our new meals. We did have a week of set back so far when we had no power after Hurricane Irma so that we didn't make any new meals or anything. The current week was another difficult week as we had to spend money restocking some essentials in our kitchen that we lost due to the power outage so we had to hold off on anything new this week, as well. The main goal of all of this has been to add new recipes but also make sure that we are spending time at the dinner table as a family. This is something we have tried to do since our kids have been old enough to understand eating dinner as a family. BC (Before Children) and even when Kenzie was small, we ate in the living room while watching TV a lot, but as ...

The kids have officially been in school for a little over a month (minus a week due to Hurricane Irma and her wrath... but that is another post for another time) and they are doing great! Will is blossoming in school. The more he goes, the happier I am with our decision to put him in a "year" earlier than Kenzie. Technically he is almost the same age she was when she started but because of how his birthday falls (especially compared to her), he is in a younger class. He is the oldest in the class, I think, but he is having a blast. I remember on his second day when I made it to his school a little early and planned to sit in the parking lot waiting for time to pick him up. His class was on the playground and he was running "with" his friends (they were mostly parallel playing but every now and then would interact some and it was adorable). He went down the big slide a bunch of times and waited in line to go down the smaller slide after some of his classmates. W...

Well, with Labor Day, we are calling it the official end of summer. I haven't done a weekly recap recently because we haven't been doing a ton of things off the bucket list and when we have been doing fun things, they have been mostly unrelated so I blogged those things instead. If anyone is interested, those blogs were: UCF Fanfest Staying with Grandma and Grandaddy I figured though that with the end of summer, we could handle one more final bucket list update so when I want to go back and read all about it again one day, it would be easy enough. So... here goes! Here is our final bucket list. As you can see, a few things didn't get done again this year. The first was the Tavares Splash Pad. Honestly, we spent so much time at the pool and beach this summer that we didn't really miss this one. Also, it wasn't like it is around the corner. It isn't far... but it isn't a hop, skip, and a jump away. So, we just didn't get around to it. We a...

I wanted to blog this as a routine check-in for me to go back to read one day if I want. It's interesting for me to detail some of our routines to see how they morph and change through the year(s). It took us a couple of weeks, but I think we have finally settled into a new routine. This school year has been a whole new ball game for us. Kenzie starts school in the morning earlier than last year. There are two schools I have to visit two days a week. Naps are way messed up on the regular. We have to deal with car lines for drop off and pick up of Kenzie. Kenzie sometimes wants to bring lunch and sometimes wants to buy it. Will is learning to function in a classroom with a steady teacher and peers (somewhat different from an hour or so at church once a week). And I'm learning how to balance my time without children under my feet versus the times when I have one or both of them with me. We started by setting a new routine about a week before school started. Now, when the k...

This weekend we fulfilled a main item on our summer bucket list... "Staying with Grandma and Grandaddy". We did this last year and had a great time. This year was a bit more difficult because we had to work around school schedules. But... we made it work. The other downfall is that I am working without my Canon Rebel at the moment so I wish I had better pictures at times but didn't have the option. Mine broke in Weeki Wachee a few weeks back and hasn't been replaced yet. Friday started with Steven deciding to stay home and work from home a portion of the day. He dropped Kenzie off at school which let me stay home with Will and get some laundry and stuff done. When he got home, we decided to go for a walk to get some steps in since we knew we would be driving a lot during the day and miss some prime stepping opportunity. It was nice to just push one child instead of two. Eventually I packed up Will and the dog and left Steven and home so we could go drop Jack off ...