Summer Ambitions

I have big ambitions for the summer. So, I am going to attempt to document our progress as a way of staying honest. Let's see what we can actually get to and which activities are the most fun for everyone. It will be me and my three kiddos for the most part with Dad home off and on.

We've got our Summer Bucket List written out with 54 items and 70 days to do them. My 9 year old says there are too many. That may very well be, Son. My husband and I have visions of getting back into a routine of working out that is much needed. We also want to clean out, clean up, and get this house in order. Both boys will be playing baseball twice a week for the next six weeks, two children have gym once a week, and little sister has swimming once a week. We also need to limit screen time and do some academic work to avoid the summer slide.

Wow! I'm exhausted already. We have a lot going on and we will have down time too, but I know if there isn't some sort of plan the fighting will erupt in no time.

My first attempt to get things done without whining to use technology is to have a list of what must be done before the kids can even ask for tech time. I plan to adapt this pin from Your Modern Family to work for our expectations:

No Screen time Until


Tomorrow is the last day of school so, I've got to go and figure out what we will do after early release to celebrate.

Hope to update you on our progress again soon!
L

Swimsuit already?

I don't know why, but I ended up looking at Nordstrom.com yesterday, specifically the swimwear dept. Am I a glutton for punishment? Maybe. Since having my three kiddos in three and a half years I have lost 25 lbs (and still working on more), but in no way do I have a swimsuit body. It is inevitable though with said three kids that I will have to be in the water this summer.

I bought two cheep swimsuits last year that are not in great shape to be used again so, I'm splurging this year and hoping for the best (I ordered online!). I chose this one piece for many reasons: black-always a good bet, asymmetric-more stylish, cute-gathers and mesh, and the all important spandex to help with the mommy tummy. A cute one piece is hard to come by so I jumped on it even though I won't have a need for it until the end of May. It is already on back order and the cutest are the first to go and nowhere to be seen come June. In times like these I'm so glad for my 'fun' job that allows me to splurge on myself when I otherwise wouldn't have.

Here's to being ahead of the game and hoping it fits!

www.nordstrom.com Jena Swimsuit

Update: The swimsuit fit and did work out well.  Too bad my dear husband liked the affordable swimsuit from Old Navy better and I wore that one most of the summer.

Spring into Summer!

It has been hot, hot, hot here this week! With the temperature in the 90's for 3 days in a row what else do you do with a house full of kids but have a water play day of course! The kiddos loved it. I have a little pond with sprinklers that fills with about 2 inches of water and a water play table. I put the kiddy slide going straight into the water and they splashed around for hours.

They put on swimsuits I had asked their parents to bring and were slathered with sun screen. They wore sun hats as well and since we were outside from about 9:30 am to 11:30 am the sun isn't that harsh yet and we didn't have any problems with sun burn.

They had so much fun we did it again the next day! I had to move our play area around to try and have equal flooding throughout the yard. Here are some pictures of our little set up:
















And the next day too: