Back to School!

How is the summer over already?!?? I'm glad we were able to fit a lot of fun things in even with all of the house chaos, but man, did that summer go fast!

We did something really smart at the end of the last school year: because we weren't sure if/when we'd be moving, we ordered school supply kits for both boys through the school. Staples puts them together for you and ships them directly to the school with everything they need, and it comes labeled. The price wasn't much more than we expected to pay for their supplies, and we took advantage of it!

However, as Paige is entering middle school, we had to buy hers. Thankfully we had a lot of hers either leftover from last year or in our school supply cupboard. I couldn't justify buying all brand new pencils and binders when some of hers still looked brand new!

Sorting through our supplies on hand

Does anyone else ever feel like kids grow more in the summer than any other time? Cause I swear my kids do. These pants were a little long in the spring:

The boys grew so much this summer that Nate didn't have any pants for school and Ry had just a few shirts. My house looked like a clothing store exploded all over it while we sorted through their clothes!

Paige had fun going through her clothes this year; this is her new favorite hoodie! She's making her "GRRRRR" face to match it ;)

And we of course had to do some shoe shopping! 

All three kids needed sneakers, and Paige needed some new flats. She doesn't wear sneakers for most school days (unless it's a field trip), and as her feet haven't grown in about 3 years, she had worn out her flats. We found this cute black lace flats that have sparkles on them!

We totally timed our shopping right; Famous Footwear had a buy one get one half off sale plus an additional 15% off coupon. We were so under budget that this mama got shoes, too!

Last Wednesday was the first day of school. This was the first year that my kids didn't have their picture taken together before school! Paige has entered middle school, and the middle and high school kids start an hour earlier than the elementary kids. I wasn't about to wake the boys up really early just for a picture, so separate will have to do this year.

Here's my 7th grader!!!!

And my 6th grader....

And my 2nd grader!

Okay Time, we can slow down now. Thanks!

Ryan wanted me to have my picture taken as well...so we did a selfie! He is my mini-me!!!!

We are looking forward to being in our new house really really soon! It was sad knowing that this was the last first day pictures at this house...but being so close will be worth it!

Vacation Day #1: Travel and Museum

Day #1 of our vacation started out smoothly (we had hoped and prayed all the bumps were out of the way already). We left the house two minutes before we were scheduled to, and it was a beautiful morning for travelling...

...and falling asleep withing minutes of leaving the house!

We had hotel reservations in Virginia, about halfway between home and our house at the Outer Banks. We divided our trip down into two days last year, and it was such a great way of starting off our vacation! Our first year to the OBX we did it in one day and were exhausted and cranky the first couple of days. Not a great way to start a vacation!

Travel went really well. We made great time, and the boys did really well in the back of the car. They got to watch movies on a laptop and Ryan shared colored pencils so they could both color!

 Before we went to our hotel, we made a side trip to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center! This is the companion facility of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum!!! We had so much fun looking at planes, jets, helicopters, blimps....

A Ryan plane!!!!

aaaaaand.....

A look of amazement!!!!!

THE SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY!!!!!!

I don't think the kids (especially Ryan!) liked it at all ;)

An astronaut, Mom! Look!!!!

Watching a video ofthe last time Discovery went into space

Watching space videos

Nate also participated in a paper airplane contest! Although he didn't win, he had a lot of fun participating.

Waiting to get started!

Watching and cheering from the side lines

Getting ready to throw his plane through the hula hoop

After we left, we had an hour or so drive to our hotel. Apparently museums tucker out little astronauts! 

We got to our hotel, checked in, had Chinese for dinner, and were asleep by 9!!!

Up next: Saturday morning fun and arriving at the vacation house!

Summer Bucket List Bingo Update #3

We're slowly making our way through our bucket list!

Over the past week or so we've crossed off:

Dinner at Five Guys! This was Nate's biggest wish for the bucket list this summer, so it made perfect sense to have it double as his birthday dinner! The kids absolutely loved it and are begging to go back.

Pretending to be sleepy :-P

Dewitt Park and walk to Blondie's for ice cream with our friends! It was a great afternoon hanging out with our friends Jess and Aaron. We don't get to see them outside of church that often, and we really enjoyed catching up with them. We haven't really explored this park before, and I can definitely see us coming back to explore more, especially now that we know the secret path to Blondie's!!!!

Proof that Ry will talk to Jess!!! He loves pretending to be shy around her.

Aaron playing with the kids

Family baseball! Okay, so I wasn't feeling well and while I technically didn't play, but I was umpire, so that counts for something, right? Pete and Ryan were on a team against Paige and Nate, and while we didn't officially keep score, it was a really close game. We're really looking forward to our bigger yard so we're not playing around our vehicles anymore :)

While we probably won't be crossing everything off of our list this summer (yet again), I have to remember to cut us some slack. We've been so busy with house things, but I'm loving how intentional we've been about taking time to fit in some fun things along with the chaos as well!!!

What fun things have you been up to lately?

Nate's Percy Jackson Party

On Saturday we had Nate's family birthday get together! He had chosen Percy Jackson as his theme over a year ago, so he was super excited to finally have this day come.

Choosing food to have was actually really challenging. There really isn't a lot of blue food that you can make healthy, and there really wasn't any food that was super significant in the books that would be easy to make for a party. We did pretty good though! We had:

Cheeseburgers (not pictured). In one of the books, Percy is climbing and struggling...and his stomach is BEGGING for a cheeseburger!

Percy's Pasta Salad! When I was boiling the pasta, I put in blue food coloring (it turned out greenish, though), and made a Greek pasta salad. Nate thought it was so great that it was blue pasta and honored the Greek-ness of the books.

Ambrosia, the food of the gods. Okay, so it's just fruit salad with vanilla yogurt, but it worked and was super yummy.

Medusa's Cheese Ball. I needed another food for the party, but was really struggling. I ended up seeing a Medusa ice cream sundae on Pinterest (mint chocolate chip ice cream with chocolate snakes coming out of the top), and thought it could be easily adapted as a cheese ball! I cut up a cucumber that was in a "c" shape for the snakes.

Nectar, drink of the gods. Better known as lemonade for us mortals!

I apologize in advance for the grainy and blurry present pictures; I was on the other side of the room and the glare from the door didn't help very much. Our boy received:

Hand weights! He's very into being active and getting stronger.

Settlers of Catan Seafarer's expansion board game. He played this expansion at his aunt and uncle's, and has been begging for it ever since! Settlers of Catan is definitely one of our favorite games.

A new target for archery! He can't wait to try it out.

Ear buds for his school computer. And they're BLUE! Percy Jackson would approve.

A Tim Horton's gift card. Donuts? Yes please! 

He also got a couple Lego sets, his favorite body wash (how is my boy old enough to be using Old Spice?!??), and swim goggles.

For his cake, I dyed the cake mix blue and then did an almost ombre blue cake to look like water. I did a yellow frosted trident on top in honor of Poseidon, and then had his 10 candles around the cake. We could not find a '1' and '0' candle that matched anywhere! Stores either had the '1' or the '0', but not both, and none of the candles in any store we visited matched the style at another store. Thankfully Wegmans had one set of all blue candles!

It was a really nice time with all of the family! The cousins had a great time playing together, some of the adults and kids played a board game, and there was a lot of visiting between all the families as well. We were really bummed, though: we actually had the back all weeded and gorgeous and the pool all ready for swimming, and it was cold and rainy all day! I think there's only been one or maaayyybe two years since we've been in the house that the weather has been nice for his party. It was also a bittersweet day as it's the last birthday party (and maybe formal get together) at this house.

Nate is already counting down to next year's birthday party as he'll get his very own Harry Potter party (Paige had one when she turned 11 as well), but I think the next year can go by nice and slow, wouldn't you agree? ;)

Nate's Tenth Birthday Adventures

Yesterday was our biggest little man's tenth birthday!

He woke up really slow, which was nice because I got snuggles! 10 year old boys still snuggle their mamas!!!!!

We had to have our propane shut of for a possible leak, but when someone wants blueberry pancakes for his birthday breakfast, you do whatever it takes to make them. Even if it means grilling them!!!! Our propane guy thought it was the best thing ever.

We had a fairly lazy day. The guys played a board game, and we watched Captain America: Civil War. Dinner was Five Guys! The kids had never been, and they loved it. They're anxious to go back and think they have the best burgers.

Pete's parents were able to join us for dinner, and they presented Nate with a new bookcase for his room at the new house. Well, it was just a picture; the bookcase is really heavy, so once we move he can get the real thing :)

Dessert was homemade brownies and then it was gift time! Ryan did some jobs around the house so he could get Nate a gift. He got him the Hubba Bubba bubble gum tape. Nate had never seen it before, but thinks it's amazing! Ryan was so proud and excited to give it to him!

We also got him a desk lamp for his new room...

...and an electronics kit!

I don't think he likes it, though.

And now it's prep time for more birthday fun at his family birthday party this weekend! Weather, please cooperate so we can swim at the party!