Life Lately

This week feels like a fresh start with both kids back in school all day, and more time for me to be productive at work and home.

We're wrapping up summer and have enjoyed lots of fun days in August, including two days on the lake! So much fun! I got to spend the past week at home with Cam without any camps planned, and it was a good balance of excitement and boredom. Hopefully the boring days helped him realize that he is ready to get back into school mode!

This month I finally bought a projector to use for cookie decorating after years of doing it free-hand! This mostly helps when the cookies need to all look very uniform and have writing on them. I'm excited to have upped my cookie game and look forward to making many sets this fall!

I'm back to the gym after a one month hiatus! I had an abdominal surgery in July and was not supposed to do much exercise for four weeks. I definitely could have done more sooner, but given our summer schedule, I wasn't home as often and able to work it into my day. Happy to say I've started this week strong!

We've been walking to school each morning with Brooke. Last fall I was going into the office daily, which made it a rush to try to leave by 8am, drop off Cam, drop off Brooke, then get to Durham before 9. Many mornings we sacrificed walking to school and just drove because it made sense logistically. Then, when I transitioned to mostly working from home, I tried taking Brooke to day care at 7:30am, then coming back home and walking with Cam at 8. Often Brooke would be sleeping late and that would throw off our morning. 

This school year, I am now 100% remote, so I am trying to walk with Cam each morning and bring Brooke along if she happens to be awake (and I think most days she will be). This has worked perfectly (for three days, lol) so I think this is what we will continue. I love that we have the option to walk to elementary school and it only takes us ten minutes. It's been one of the biggest blessings of our home and neighborhood. 

I'm far down on the waitlist at the library for several books that I am excited about, but in the meantime, I checked out a few books related to home design, interior decor, organizing, and cleaning! I've really enjoyed reading through these this month and am definitely inspired to really pair down my closet, clean up some spaces in our house, and overall organize and clean so that we can enjoy our home more.

We've dedicated Tuesdays to family board game night. This was after Brian ordered a ton of board games on Amazon that showed up on our doorstep at the same time I was trying to purge things from our house. Urghh! I insisted that we actually play the games and not let them sit unused for years, so now we are committing to playing games on Tuesdays. This tradition officially started last night. After spending 30 minutes trying to setup and read instructions for one of the more complicated games that Brian purchased, we ditched the effort and played two rounds of Candy Land. 

We've also recently moved our dinners into our dining room, which is new to us. For years, we've eaten dinner around our bar as a family and it's worked well, but now that Brooke is almost two, we felt like it was time to start including her in the family meals (previously I put her to bed first and we ate around 7pm). Since our bar stools and counter are high, it's worked well to move to our dining room table and Brooke just uses a booster seat. I'll give Brian credit for initiating this change. I was insistent that we still be able to use the dining room table to games, puzzles, cookies and crafts, and so far it has worked out fine. It's a large table and can be used one half for dinner and the other for my puzzles. The only tricky part is now trying to deal with the logistics of getting dinner prepared while Brooke is still awake and active and juggling all the evening things. I'm sure many of you can relate, but the 5:30pm-7pm stretch is a challenging one with multiple kids, multiple dogs, and multiple schedules!

I teach Kindergarten-First Grade Sunday School at church and last Sunday kicked off a new group for promotion week! We have such a wonderful class and I am so excited to spend each Sunday morning as their teacher. Me and the co-teacher rotate weeks of teaching and this has worked well for us. I love coming up with games and craft ideas that they love. Last week we made edible sheep to go along with the Bible story made with graham crackers, marshmallows and Oreos. Cam, of course, helped me make a couple sheep the night before to use as the demo.

We ended Cam's last day of summer vacation with a Sunday night treat at Goodberry's before his first day of 4th grade on Monday! I'm praying he will have a great school year ahead!