As of a few days ago, summer became officially over for this household as my little man went off to Second Grade.  I'll admit that him starting second grade has been a lot harder for me to handle than him going into first.  I'm sure it has a lot to do with my being pregnant and all those hormones, but I was very emotional about it all.  Not to the point of tears, but just an overwhelmed sense of lost time and him growing up before my eyes.  And maybe the fact that I officially am down to the last year with my girl before she starts school next year.  I have a very vivid memory of second grade.  I did a lot in second grade.  I got chicken pox in second grade, missed 2 weeks of school, missed learning about the continents and cheated on my first and last test as I hadn't learned anything about them.  I had my first school crush in second grade.  I  like to think about all the things my son will learn and remember this year, every day I wonder, will he remember this? or that?  The good moments or the bad?

A few days before school started, we went shopping for school supplies.  It helped us to get excited about school.  Ok, it helped ME get excited for school.  The boy needed new sneakers, this I knew, but I was not prepared with how much his foot has grown since I took him shoe shopping in the spring.  He went from a 2 to a 4 1/2!  In 3 months!!  That is entirely too much growing!  As his school supplies their own school supplies, I don't get to do all that fun paper sniffing and office supply shopping, so we stuck with the basics...a new backpack, lunchbox, thermos, and food containers.  Guess what his theme was this year?  Sonic.  I know, biiiig surprise there!  Target didn't have what we were looking for, so we were off to Toys R Us.  I'm glad we went there, because they have better deals on school supplies.  Buy a backpack and get a free lunch box, buy a food container and get the 2nd half off, buy a crayola item and get 2 free.  So we racked up.  I also picked up some school supplies...for home :)  KennaKat got a new thermos too and a new backpack that was discounted to $7, it's tinkerbell, and glittery, she loves it, and was cheered up about having to wait one more year before she gets to start school.

The "I'M GOING TO SECOND GRADE!!!" First morning car ride!

The "why do we have to do this every year?" look

The "Yep, I've hung up my stuff, my name's first, I'm a second grader" sonic pose
And look at that adorable proud sister of a second grader :)

It's official, I have a second grader.  I hope this year is great for him.  I plan on being in his class a lot, I am NOT a class parent this year for obvious reasons, and I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do when I have a new born... I guess get a really awesome wrap and carry that baby with me everywhere! 

During our summer vacation, the kids and I read through a lot of books.  I stumbled across a blog the other day by a mom that suggests children's books and I had to add a few (ok 20) to our checkout list at the library.

One book in particular that we all fell in love with was The Odious Ogre by Norton Juster, pictures by Jules Feiffer.  It is hilariously witty and clever, even teaches you a moral- to treat everyone with kindness, even an odious ogre.  The words used are large and brilliant.  And we found ourselves laughing at it's silliness the whole time.

I had to write it down on my must buy list and of course, share it with all of you.  If you go to our library and try to check it out, well I'm sorry to disappoint, but we haven't returned it yet!  You'll just have to wait.  If you read this, let me know what you think!  Happy Monday everyone!!

So I didn't last as long as I would have hoped in the blogging boycot, but I did last over 6 weeks, so I'm pretty darn impressed with that!  I have some pretty sweet news that I just couldn't wait to share.  The picture says it all.  More updates to come later, but for now, a picture says a thousand words :-)

Dear Readers,
How are you today?  Life over on my end is pretty darn lovely.  But I'm busy, super duper busy.  After much thought, I have decided to take a break from my blogging journey, at least through summer, so that I can have one less thing to think about, and more time for the kids and the ministy.  Thank you for following along on my journey over the last year and a half.  I think I've come pretty far and having a record of it is pretty cool.  I started my own business, WOW. I've overcome fears.  I've achieved goals.  My kids have grown like 10million inches. We've done lots of fun crafts.  And life moves on.  Thanks for being a part of it.  And even more thanks to all of your lovely comments and encouragement.  Love you guys!  I'll be seeing you!

When you have kids, especially a boy and a girl, you realize just how expensive kids can be.  Especially when you can’t pass clothes down to the other sibling, because guess what?  That hot pink tutu don’t look so hot on a boy and girls aren’t too keen on wearing dinosaurs.

So what to do?  Well, the ever so frugal mom that I am looks for ways to reuse and really stretch every buck that I can.  For instance:  When my son outgrows his chucks, I keep them for Kenna to slosh around in our muddy, dog poo filled back yard.  And those hiking boots?  Well, they are good for girls to hike in too.  Another easy one, gender neutral rain boots. 

Passing down things like those at this age works well, and being more future-conscious when I make initial purchases for my son, can really work to my advantage when I can pass them on to my daughter.

The latest gender-neutral-conscientious decision that I made was for my kids' sandals this year.

On one crazy insane 5 hour shopping trip at the mall with the kids, I settled on these tan saltwater sandals for KennaKat.  I LOVE saltwater sandals!  They are the most comfortable and durable sandal on the market for kids.  Plus they are soft real leather and adjustable meaning my messy kids can wear them anywhere and they wont break in a week or 2, nor will they give them blisters.

I spent another month searching for a good leather sandal for Ethylwolfe.  All boys sandals are so ugly and thick and heavy after they get past size 12.  My search for a sturdy, light-weight leather sandal that could fit my sons skinny/bony foot was coming up empty.  Then one day I found a site selling Kenna’s same sandals on a boy and I thought ‘HEY! Those don’t look toooo girly.  I wonder if I could pull that off on E, without getting him teased?”

Well, after meddling around with the idea for another few weeks, I finally ordered a pair for him.  His first concern when pulling them out of the box was “Are these girls shoes?”  “NOoooo!”  I said.  Then I showed him the picture of the boy online and said “SEE!”  So he looked again and said, “Hey, these shoes have gold buckles, they must have cost a lot of money to have GOLD buckles!” I thought to myself for a second and said “You’re right!  How cool is that that you get to have GOLD for buckles?!?!”  Then he giggled and proceeded to love his shoes, because pirates have to go on treasure hunts for gold, but he’s got his on his buckles.  Have I said how much I LOVE this age??  Oh and his shoes were a hit at school.  No teasing and he can run, climb, and jump with the rest of them!

So my shoe crisis has been averted this year.  I’ll be buying these for as long as I can and passing them along to Miss KennaKat.

What do you think?  Gender neutral Score! or am I setting up my son for a major tease fest???

Last month we went camping at Grindstone Campground in VA.  Once we got off the major highways, the scenery was BEAUTIFUL!  Mountains, rolling hills, picture perfect rivers and streams, it was lovely!  If I wasn't the one driving, I would have taken lots of pics on the way up.  I found lots of places where I was saying to myself "I could live here".  Makes me even more determined to move to Asheville some day...Or Washington State!

The camping group was a pretty good size, but due to threats of rain, many cancelled :(  We still had fun anyways, and I even remembered to take a few pictures.  None of them are great, but hey, at least I remembered to use it a few times, even though I lost my camera 20 times every day.

We had the visit of the CO and his wife last week.  It was a very special treat!  Kenna and I made it to every meeting for service and we enjoyed working with sister CO twice!  Hubby took a "slick" day on Friday and joined us for the day.  Everyday we had 50+ meet for service and on Saturday, we had over 100!  I told them that they really brought the heat because every day it was over 90 degrees...every inch of me was sweating!  KennaKat was quite the trooper as she endured day after day with me.  The talks were so encouraging and uplifting.  Jehovah knows just how to give us our food at the proper time.  My goal is to Regular Pioneer and Brother CO gave me just the encouragement that I needed.  Hubby gave an amazingly awesome talk Tuesday night, everyone is still saying "wow!"  He gives great talks and this one was hands down the best one yet!  I finally made it to a Pioneer meeting on Saturday.  Since the new arrangement of letting the Auxilary ones sit in on half the talk, I've missed every.single.one.  I'm always sick.  This time I was determined to make it, even if I had to crawl in on my hands and knees!

A sister from the hall posted this pic on facebook of KennaKat at the meeting yesterday.  If you can't tell from my new banner, it's my favorite dress of hers right now and I'm totally in love with the pattern!

The plan was to take some pics of the two of them looking super cute in their meeting clothes, but I forgot...story of my life!

So here I am, TheSpeckedKat's stubbornness has resulted in venturing away from Blogspot and trying out new locations.   This is Weebly.  I hope that I enjoy it here.  Getting to know the lay of the land is always difficult.  I decided to explore what else is out there instead of forking up money for what should be free...I'm cheap like that.  Even though $5 really isn't anything, why should I have to pay for webspace?  Owning online real-estate isn't really my "thing".  We'll see how it goes.  So far, so good!