This week

A pretty bloom from our back yard:

Some Lucy art. This is Jon and her:

A shirt I love from Anthropologie. Out of my price range so I just tried it on and keep checking for a sale. ;) I also bought some fabric to try sewing my own rendition.

An unsatisfying house project: peeling and sanding all the doors and trim in the house (last year's painter used latex paint over the existing oil-based paint, which peels away at the scrape of a fingernail) so I can repaint them with oil-based primer and white paint.

Levi tonight

Some pictures

From Nate's homework last week. I love it.

Lucy painting on Sunday.

Family movie at the dollar theater. It was so fun!

Sea lavender (aka statice) in my back yard. Yay me!

The next stage

I'm sitting alone at the computer at home. Quietly. With a clean house. I have never, as a mother, uttered those three sentences together.

We are in the second full week of school, and things are going well around here. We're settling back into the school routine well, and all the kids are enjoying school. Nate was excited to get back to see his teacher (same teacher as last year) and was excited about some of the special things about 3rd grade. This is the first year they do an overnight field trip (camping--in May). Lucy is loving 1st grade, as I knew she would: all the things she wanted to do last year she now gets to do (knitting/hand work, Spanish, more painting and art, etc.). She also is excited to read. Levi is adjusting well to school, though I can tell he's tired. He came home on the first day and said, proudly, "Mom: I didn't punch ANYone."

As for me, I'm enjoying the quiet. Last week was a busy week with not much time at home, so today is the first day I've actually had more than an hour or two here. Now that I've done all that was on my list (it was a pretty long list!--but work gets done quickly when you're by yourself) and am waiting for the last load of laundry to finish drying, I'm kind of in between thinking about a) starting some sort of sewing project or b) just letting the clean house stay clean.

First day

Camping

This year's camping trip wasn't so much camping as it was luxuriating. We all rented cabins that had AC, refrigerator, stove, full bathroom, bunk beds, queen bed, DVD player/TV, etc. The campground had playgrounds and a pool, and our cabins came with free use of the pedal boats. It. was. great.

Enjoying summer

The rush to the start of school is upon us, so we're soaking up the last couple of weeks before September 4. We go camping next week!

I sewed!

Last night, I made two new pillows with a favorite fabric I'd been saving. I like them!

The high dive

A friend lives in another section of Irvine and has access to this fun pool with two diving boards. The first time we went, Lucy almost got enough courage to try the high dive, but then the pool closed for private swim lessons and we had to leave. This week, we went to that pool again. The big surprise was that Nate was the first to jump off the high dive! Here he is on his first jump (and there's also Levi doing a little flip from the low board):

Lucy got to the end of the high dive board at least ten times and had to turn around and climb back down. Then she finally jumped; she ended up jumping at least 10 times after that. Levi climbed up once and turned back around, but he climbed up again and jumped. He jumped off only twice because he said it was just too high. Here's a video of one of Lucy's jumps and Levi's second jump (it's pretty long because Levi lingered for quite a while... haha):


I need to remember to turn the phone sideways when I take videos--sorry!

This week

Another VBS

The kids are at VBS at a different church this week. It's very different and much bigger than our church's VBS, and the kids are having a great time. This is the first time I've ever just dropped the kids off at something like this (and not been involved heavily in volunteering). It's refreshing!