September

 On one of my morning runs I saw an otter cross the road and jump into a canal. I tried to get a good picture of it, but he was swimming around looking for fish to eat and ignored me completely. It was so cool!

Rett has really started to love reading and will sit and read like this for so long! It is so exciting to me when they get pulled into a good book, that was my favorite thing to do as a kid (and as an adult!)

James has been working really hard at karate. This is him doing one of his tests for his next belt rank.

The bees were doing something weird on the porch one morning...

The boys were invited to a birthday party at the bouncy house place down the street. All the kids at the party were so excited to play together, it felt like sooooo long since they got to play as a group.

Rett turned 7! We didn't plan a party, just a low key celebration at home the day of his birthday and then a surprise trip to a surprise place the next day. Rett decided to secretly tell his entire class at school that he was having a birthday party that night at the bouncy house place.... and then didn't tell me anything about it!! So I got a call from his teacher asking when the party was because other parents were asking her and a few kids even went to the place, expecting a birthday party!!! I felt so bad. Rett told them the next school day that they could still bring him a present, even though he didn't actually have a party (!!!) Can you believe this kid???

Rett fell asleep in the car while Anthony was putting corn out for the deer. It was a long day!

The morning started with a few presents and I let the boys break this tiny pinata I found at target. It was so cute, I couldn't resist!

Later in the evening, we did more presents and Rett got to blow out the candles on the singing, spinning candle that I had for James's birthday. Rett was a little afraid of it!

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After he blew out the candles Rett said he didn't want cake because he didn't like chocolate cake...even though he specifically requested chocolate cake a few days earlier!!! This is going to be a fun age.

The next day we went to his surprise place: a go kart/arcade place in Melbourne. They loved it!

Always making goofy faces at the camera:

They got to play a VR game and they thought it was the coolest thing ever.

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Baymax sucking his thumb again:

It's always time for a Harry Potter movie:

On Anthony's birthday, he decided to stake out a corner of our yard where the game camera has caught a few deer hanging around. He ended up shooting an 8 point deer with his crossbow! It was the perfect birthday present for him.

James had a hike with the cub scouts at a local park. This year our pack joined another pack since we each were so small, so it is nice to have larger numbers and more kids for activities together.

Anthony's birthday cake. I put 42 candles on it and lit them all. It took at least 5 minutes.

James is now a Webelo! It is so hard to believe that he is old enough to be in the tan boy scout uniform, but here we are.

First pack meeting of the year:

More karate advancements:

August

My pictures uploaded a little out of order, so these are from the end of August. School finally started!! After three weeks of teacher pre-planning it was finally time for the students to come back. The boys were ready to see other kids again!

James is in 4th grade this year and is loving it. He has three teachers: one for reading, one for math, and one for social studies/science. The kids stay in their assigned seat in their homeroom classroom and the teachers switch throughout the day. So when you walk into the class, you never know which teacher will be at the front teaching! His teachers are great and James is a big fan :)

Rett was ready for 1st grade! For weeks he kept asking me when it was time to go back to school. Finally I got to tell him that today was the day! His teacher is Mrs. Betts and he thinks she is really funny. She is an older woman from New York so she has a louder and more sarcastic sense of humor. You would think the kids would be nervous around her, but they love it!

It was also my first official day of teaching! It didn't really feel that different from the weeks of preplanning since we don't go into the class to work with our students until after the first week of school. Aside from morning taking temperatures and afternoon helping at the buses, I spent most of the week in my office working on legal paperwork that has to get done at the beginning of the year for the ESE students.

Our running group is still doing our early morning runs on the bridges on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is harder to wake up so early now that school is back in, but the sunrises are beautiful!

James got another yellow stripe in karate:

We had our annual themed teacher training and this year the theme was "survivor". We had challenges to compete in but there were a little more difficult with social distancing. I appreciated the effort though!

Fear factor gummy worm challenge: who could eat the entire plate of gummy worms first?

Teamwork in a race to use up an entire roll of toilet paper. It killed us all to waste that much toilet paper!!

Our book study this year was a book called "Relentless" written by a New Zealand man about his experiences in the school system and overcoming obstacles. The principal contacted him to see if she could get a discount on the large number of books she was ordering (always wheeling and dealing!) and he offered to zoom into our meeting! It was fun to hear him talk for a few minutes and he offered to do it again later in the school year.

Endurance challenge: how long can you balance on a tin can?

My mom came to help watch the boys for the three weeks of preplanning. Initially I thought that I wouldn't be allowed to take them with me like I have in the past, but the principal relaxed the rules and said that we could bring our kids as long as they stayed in our room with us and didn't wander around the school. I took turns bringing James and Rett to give them something else to do and give my mom a little break. They mostly played on the computer for the entire day: their definition of heaven!

We tried to trade a few of our hens for ducks, thinking that we would eat the ducks. On the way home the boys fell in love with the ducks, so now we have ducks. Fun.

We finally got enough extra frames to harvest some honey from our bees! Anthony bought an extractor this time around and the process was much quicker. We had so much fun, I am ready to get rid of most of our animals and just have bees. No more poop in my yard, just honey!

Don't look at James's quarantine haircut. We are all doing the best we can with what we've been given. LOL.

All the honey ready to be poured into bottles!

So much honey!!

My team leader bought us all apple shaped cupcake pops. So yummy!

Cub scouts started up again with a picnic pack meeting. They did fun goofy games that I would hate to lead, but the kids love it.

Of course, Rett had to put his fingers in his nose instead of in the air like everyone else. There's always that kid, right?

Anthony found a tiny baby turtle on our front porch! It is so strange to see it that far from water. We've had so much rain lately, it might have thought our front yard was a lake! We kept it for a few days and then released it back into our pond.