Our new School year has begun! Ara started 4th grade this year. She has really been enjoying all of her online classes. She’s bummed that her summer is over. She really enjoyed all of her free-time, birthday parties, and fun adventures but she’s excited to start a new school year. She has one of her favorite teachers for homeroom this year. I’ve been trying to make sure I keep up on all of the events so she doesn’t miss anything important. It’s crazy how organized we have to be this year to make sure she doesn’t miss out on a single thing. We are doing our best! She recently found out that she gets to take Stop Motion again. I’m working on getting all of the supplies set up so she will have everything she needs to do her best. She loves it so I don’t want to hinder her creativity.

Elijah is starting 1st grade this year. He’s in advanced math and absolutely loves it. This kid has a math brain for sure. He is so good at it and rarely needs much help… though I’m always here when he needs it. I hope he continues to foster his love for math. It’s his favorite class so far. His reading has really skyrocketed too! I’m really proud of him.

Luca has started talking like crazy. His vocabulary is out of this world. However, my favorite thing he’s started doing is singing at the top of his lungs. He mostly just sings songs from Back to The Future but he’s got a few others he likes to belt out as well!

Speaking of Back to The Future… We decided to head down to California for a weekend and go to the “Back to 1885” event. The kids are really into Back to the Future right now… they really wanted to go. The drive wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The kids decided they wanted to do the costume contest. There were only 4 kids that participated. All of the rest were adults. Elijah ended up winning in the kids division! I was so proud of him when he got up on the stage and belted out “I’m Marshall Strickland” he was so bold and everyone clapped really loud. They asked him to introduce himself again and he did. The crowd came alive with his little performance. They asked if he got em all the time and he shouted “yes, every-time” in character. It was adorable. Arabella was brave and bold too. She got up and announced that she was Clara Clayton, a school teacher in 1885. It was really cool to see. We stayed for pretty much the entire day. It was a pretty cool experience. If we have the time off next year we will probably do it again.

This week we went to the zoo. We went kind of last minute but at least we finally used our zoo membership. The kids really enjoyed seeing all of the animals and being outside. The weather was perfect. I didn’t take many photos because I was just trying to spend some time with the kiddos. Elijah said his favorite thing to see were all of the fish. Arabella and Luca liked seeing all of the bears. We even went on the zoo train because why not?

Well… not much else is going on! 9 weeks until our next kiddo will be here! I hope nesting kicks in soon. I haven’t prepared for anything yet. I’m not too worried. It will happen when it happens.

Jay says I don’t write enough these days… so here I am writing. Our summer is almost over and it’s been eventful to say the least. I’m mostly ready for school to start again. All the curriculum has been selected. Orientation is the 30th and classes start on the 5th!

The kids just finished up VBS. They attended two this year. Neither at churches we regularly attend but it was still fun for them to meet new people and just have fun.

Then this week we had one-on-one time. Tuesday I spent the evening surprising Arabella by taking her to see her favorite artist, NF. It was priceless just to see how genuinely happy she was.

Sunday Night was Elijah’s night! He was surprised with Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live.

It has been nice reconnecting with both of the “big” kids. I really enjoyed my time with them. It’s a rare treat to just be able to enjoy them individually while doing their favorite things. Earlier this month we asked each of them to come up with 3 things they wanted to do within the next 5 years.

Arabella’s 3 were: Going to see NF, Going back to Universal Studios, and Going Horseback Riding.

Elijah’s 3 were: Going to a Monster Truck Show, Going to a Dinosaur Museum and seeing Dinosaur Bones, and Going to the Beach and Staying Overnight.

Luca wants to Ride on an Airplane.

We were able to check off a couple of big ones this week. I’m hoping we can do a few more in the future.

Onto other news… its 3 months until Thanksgiving. I’m really not ready yet! #4 will be here the day before so there is a lot of planning to be done before then. I’ve been slowly updating people… the ones who answer their phones. Haha. But I guess now the cat’s out of the bag.

Arabella and Elijah officially finished another year of school. They both did really well on their end of year tests. Arabella scored at the 11th grade level for her reading and literature. She scored in 4th grade for math… so right on schedule. Elijah breezed through his reading test. They both put in a lot of work this year and it shows. I can’t believe how quickly this year went by. There are definitely some things we will tweak for next year but I feel like we have finally found our groove. I go back and fourth with sending the kids to a traditional public school because I want them to have a normal childhood… but the school in our area isn’t very academically challenging so I’m still in search of the perfect Charter. Summit is good but it’s a little far away for traveling each week. I’m hoping we will get into a closer one next year. They did have fun at field day this year!

We sold our Fusion… it was really quick and painless. I really loved that car but we needed more space. It took us less than an hour to sell it to a dealership. Our new vehicle is nice. We had it shipped from MN. We decided to go with a Pacifica. The kids were excited about having 3 moon roofs.

Now that summer is here we have been spending time just slowing down and doing as much outside as we can! We have been exploring the outdoors, having cookouts, summer camps, going to parks and parades. So far it’s been really good.

I’ll spend a good portion of the summer lesson planning and hand picking out curriculum with our Charter for next year. We will probably use Beast Academy again because it seemed to be a great tool last year. Last year we had some curriculum we really loved so we will probably continue with some of it.