July

We've really been enjoying our summer. I think this year we've found a good balance between scheduled activities and free time. Calin has been doing tumbling and soccer, and both kids took an art class from the neighbor, swimming lessons, piano, and had some scout meetings sprinkled in there. It has been enough to keep me busy but not stress me out.
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"Look, it's Pacman's brother, Genius Pacman."

Calin could be the poster child of SPF 50. He has such fair skin and burns crazy easy, so I have always been vigilant about making him wear sunscreen. Unfortunately, he's old enough now that he wants to be tan. We've compromised and he now uses SPF 15, which does a surprisingly good job of keeping him white. Sorry kiddo!

I hate it when my shoe falls off in the middle of a soccer game.

 We've been enjoying this soccer season. Calin is doing good this year. Last year he seemed to struggle and didn't want to be very aggressive out on the field, he passed the ball as quick as he got it. But this year he's trying harder and scoring goals. It's been a good season.

The kids were very into fort making for a few weeks this month. My living room looked like this for several days before I couldn't stand it any longer and made them take it down (our main couch was buried under that mess). I made them build the next fort in the playroom. :)

Art cabinet

High on my wish list of things to get for our home was an art cabinet to contain all Naiya's art supplies. We previously had all her stuff on a little bookshelf, which wasn't nearly large enough, so the stuff was always spilling over to the rest of the house. I spent a year and a half searching high and low for the right cabinet and finally found it a few months ago. It isn't too tall, has doors, matches the kitchen table, and is roughly twice the size of her previous shelf. Score! Up until a few days ago, the thing was a huge mess. We bought it when we were pretty busy so I just threw everything in intending to organize it once I had the time. I wish I would have taken a "before" picture so I could appreciate the amount of work that went into getting this thing under control. It took several days of an art strewn kitchen, along with several trips to the store to buy more plastic school boxes to finally finish it (I started with 6 boxes and ended up with 27 of them!). It isn't the ideal I had in mind, I wish it was full of drawers that can be removed so it all the supplies are easier to access, but this was the cheapest way to do it. Maybe down the road we'll upgrade to a better system or move into a home where she can have an art room, but this will definitely work for now. I still need to pick up a new paper try and a tote to replace the shoebox, but I think it turned out good. Other than having to stack totes, the biggest flaw is not knowing what's inside them. I picked up a label maker and I'll label them next week so she can find everything easier.