Lately

Good morning!  We spent the first week in Florida and had the best time.  It was probably the worst timing ever to go, but we made the decision and went with it.  The day before we left, riots were happening all over the place.  It made me nervous to travel and then our plans while we were there changed for safety reasons.  But, at least we finally were able to see my parents and the kids were so excited to see Nana and Papa.  It had been so long since the last time we'd seen them.  

With our beach plans cancelled, we still had fun at the neighborhood pool.  As much as I like the beach and the calming effect it has on oneself, I may like being at the pool a little more.

Another favorite spot when we visit Florida is Twisty Treat (ice cream).  It's the best!

It was mostly cloudy while we were there, so it made the perfect park weather

Xander found the tiniest lizard at the park

Creativity with the toys at Nana's is always the best

After we returned home from FL, we were on the hunt for roller skates.  The kids had been asking for over a year, so we went to four different Target stores and scored at two of them!

We've had the cloudiest, rainiest season so far.  But, we've managed to hit up the pool in between the cruddy weather.

I love it when the kids play well together.  They've been playing a lot of school with their stuffed animals lately.  Makes me think they want to start back with full lessons too, ha!

We also started art lessons at a studio last week.  It was a highlight of the week they look forward to going back for more classes.

We went to NC over the weekend and I took my sudoku book with me.  I've been playing sudoku since 2006 and I recently found a "large print" book and it's been the most calming activity for me.

Staying up late finally catches up with this sweet girl.

We're also trying out another schedule, much like the one I made a few weeks ago, but now I've added zones.  We have a rather small apartment and dividing it between the four of us seems to be the perfect solution.  We're each going to take our assigned zones and be responsible for them for an entire month.  This will give everyone enough time in a zone to become better at taking care of the space.  Our zones are: zone 1, bathrooms; zone 2, kitchen/dining room; zone 3, living room and hallway; and zone 4, bedrooms.  We're trying to do better to be better.

I've been working hard at planning our new school year.  I'm creating unit studies to make it a bit more fun.  More work for me, sure, but I'm hoping it'll be worth it.  The unit studies will be for science and social studies.  I've already purchased their language arts program but am having a really difficult time deciding what to do for math this year.  I was 99% sure I wanted to enroll them in an online math program because Xander is great in math until a new concept comes up.  Then it's a lot of stress.  For both of us.  So, I was thinking I'd remove myself as the teacher and let them learn online with myself serving as a helper.  But, he really wants to do workbook style learning.  So, I'm doing a lot of research to see what might work best for him.