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?

Summer Bucket List Bingo Update #2

We're about halfway through our summer already, and we've been able to cross off more activities on our bingo sheet!

We did our play date square! Okay, so there's no picture of this, but the kids got to go hang out with some friends for a couple hours while Pete and I were at the inspection appointment for the new house.

We made cookies for neighbors! We made them for two of our current neighbors that we are going to miss terribly. However, we also made them for our next door neighbors at the new house! Yay!

Chocolate chip, peanut butter chip and M&M cookies!

We tried out the newly discovered play ground at the park square! We did this during one of our house showings. It had been rainy most of the day, but it stopped and cleared up nicely so we could burn off some energy.

Mason loves the park!

It was Mozzie's first time at the park!

We did fishing at Pete's sister's house! Well, Pete and Ryan fished. Nate and Paige chose to go in the boat instead ;)

Pete caught the biggest fish!

And Ry got to throw it back

Ryan's fish!

Fly fishy, fly!!!!

Paige and Nate with Pete's mom and sister

To see other posts about our summer bucket list (including the full list of activities), you can find them here.