My sweet sweet girl started 4k this past week and I am not sure how I feel about this. I think her birthday and the beginning of the school year being so close together is just too much for this mamma to handle. To make things worse when it was time for her to go to her classroom she started running out of the room without a kiss or goodbye and I had to force her to come back and act like she loves me more than school. I guess I should be happy she loves school and doesn't mind leaving me but she could atleast pretend like she is a little sad to go.
I can't believe how much my baby has grown since the first day of school last year! She has lost so much of her baby face and is really starting to look like a big girl.
I know she is going to have an amazing year with Mrs. Nicole and Mrs. Veronica!
Holy cow Inservice starts this week!!!!! Which means school starts next week!!! I feel like there is so much to do in my classroom and there isn't enough time before now and then to get everything ready!! I have list upon list of things to do I am so ready to start checking things off!
Before I wrap my head around the upcoming school year with coaching cross country and getting the girl to soccer practice I have to remember to feed myself and my family. That means it is time to get back to meal planning and putting together my freezer meals because for some reason having everything all planned and written out just gives me a sense of calm and peace in this mess I call my brain.
I have already purchased all of the ingredients for 8 meals (5 dinners and 3 lunches) so we are off to a good start for the first few weeks of school. Some of these meals I will also be splitting in half and swapping with my friend who is a making a bunch of meals so we can swap. That means I will have at east 12 meals that I don't have to think about! If you can find a friend to swap meals with I highly recommend it. You get a variety of meals and it is fun to get together to swap meals, grill yummy food, and drink yummy drinks.
To make things even easier on myself I have a very loose schedule of what types of meals I make each day which helps me plug everything into my nifty difty handy dandy dry erase calendar. Every Monday I use one of my crock pot freezer meals because it is Monday and I am usually exhausted on Mondays plus the fact that it is Monday makes me sad so I want to make everything as easy as possible. Tuesday is Taco Tuesday and we typically make turkey tacos or chicken fajitas or some sort of stir fry this day. Wednesday we have spaghetti or some sort of pasta (zucchini noodles with chicken meatballs, inside outside ravioli, etc). Thursday is typically another crock pot day because it is the end of the week and I don't really feel like cooking. Friday isn't really planned out because we usually have leftovers or we have date night so we usually grill out and every now and then we go out. This is a very tentative schedule and we throw in a meatless night every now and then to shake things up.
I
shopped at Costco and Kroger to collect everything I needed and since I
already had all of the spices, gluten free soy sauce, and the chicken for the fajitas I am not including them in my Grocery
List and final total
Tomorrow to save my sanity while cooking I am taking my child to the redbox and letting her pick 2 new movies which I will let her binge watch while I cook, prep, and bag everything! Typically I would be doing all of this on the weekend while Brent is home, but I know my child and if I don't entertain her somehow she will ask me every 5 seconds when I will be done cooking so we can play hungry hungry hippos. Now don't get me wrong I absolutely love playing with my girl and we spend most of our time at home playing hide-n-seek, hungry hungry hippos, hi-ho cherry-o, sneaky snacky squirrel, puzzles, my little ponies, to name just a few things. Tomorrow I need about 2 hours of non interrupted cooking time so I figured I could let her watch a couple movies for a few hours kind of like how I am watching The Office right now. Wish me luck and pray the girl picks 2 really good movies and lets me cook and drink a few cups of coffee for a little while.
Summer break is coming to an end and the new school year is approaching all to quickly. Before we jump headfirst back into our routine I wanted to share a little bit of the fun we have had during our time off.
I am so very thankful that I have a job that lets me spend all summer with my favorite girl and this summer has by far been my favorite. Now that my girl has made it around the sun one more time I can reflect back on our previous summers and why this one has been the best so far. For me this summer has been the best because this age has been the best for us.Our first summer was spent trying to survive as new parents, our second summer was spent running around half naked because we were potty training, and last summer she was 2 so that speaks for itself. We never had knock down drag out terrible two's, but 2 was definitely the longest year for us because we did suffer through about 2 months of tantrums which made me think we might never have another kid. Thankfully looking back I realize we made it out alive and it really wasn't that bad so maybe we won't make her be an only child.
This summer was so relaxing and so much fun! It may or may have been because we didn't have to drag a ton of stuff around with us and could just get up and go without a lot of thought and preparation. To start off our super fun summer we made a summer bucket list of things we wanted to do and I think we did a pretty good job of having fun as we possibly could this summer.
We started off our summer slow and easy
We built every type of fort we could possibly build.
We spent many many days at The Children's Museum with Yaya
We also spent many many many days at the zoo
We traveled to Nashville
And then we brought Nashville to us
I think my favorite part of summer was our week at the beach. We hadn't been since mom was sick and before Mckinley was one so it was really special to get to spend this time with our entire family and it was so much fun watching the girl really enjoy herself this time.
Last summer Mckinley took swimming lessons, but I wasn't too happy about their technique of basically forcing the kids to do things so this summer we decided to let her get go at her own pace and now I can happily say my four year old can swim. She still needs to grow a little bigger so she can touch the bottom, but this kid has turned into a fishy this summer.
Besides all of the fun we had this summer we also have to talk about the fact that we just celebrated my girl's
4th birthday which I am still trying to pretend like I didn't happen!!!
How oh how is this precious angel already four. I still remember everything about the day I had her so there is no way it was four years ago! We had a small party at our house with pizza and princess cupcakes and spent the day with our family at the Children's Museum and it was perfect!
This summer has seemed so long, but now that it is almost over it feels like it went by way too fast. I don't know if next year can live up to this one, but we will sure try to make it just as special.
We have definitely had as much non napping, wet hair, red cheeked fun that we could possibly have summer!! I can't wait to see what next summer brings!!
