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.

July

Rett looking cool at the park:

I went for a walk on the beach with a friend and I almost stepped on this adorable crab!

Such a beautiful evening! It was so nice to get out of the house and talk with someone outside of my family.

James has been holding our baby snake a lot more recently. She likes to crawl all over him and it doesn't bother him at all.

It has been hard to think of things to do outside of the house since it is so blazin' hot!! We are avoiding the beach during the day because of the tourists so that limits a lot of our outside options. We decided to try riding bikes on the trail, but we didn't last very long. The boys were hot and tired almost immediately.

We got to eat at a restaurant for the first time in awhile. The boys were verrrrry excited about it :)

Our weekly playdate involved swimming at their community pool. The boys never wanted to leave! After a solid 4 hours they whined and complained when I told them it was time to go home.

We got passes to the Canaveral National Seashore and it has become our  new favorite beach to explore. The fishing is really good there, so Anthony loves it and the beach always has a lot of interesting shells and sea glass to collect. This sign made me laugh when we were driving around, I guess the very last beach approach is the nude beach and they wanted to make sure you were aware!

Looking for sand fleas:

We came across an empty sea turtle nest. It wasn't marked like the nests usually are, so we were hoping it just hatched and not that an animal got to the eggs.

A few days later we went back to do some fishing. Anthony caught a few whiting almost right away. The boys weren't interested in fishing, they just wanted to see it after Anthony caught it.

Rett's favorite thing to do is to sit with me on a boogie board and wait for the water to touch our toes. He hates getting too close to the water because the waves scare him.

So many sand fleas!

So beautiful!

A few of Anthony's sisters were in town with their family so we got to spend some time with them. James and Anthony joined them for an authentic Florida airboat ride. James was in heaven! He has wanted to go on an airboat for sooooo long. The end of the 3rd grade field trip is always an airboat ride but James never got to go because of the shutdown. This was a perfect opportunity to make up for it.

We had a game night at Robin's house and played pie face. James didn't get whipped creamed at all, but I got it every single turn!

Robin had goodie bags for everyone and Anthony's had a fake mustache in his:

The boys learned about pixie stix. They are a fan.

We ended the night with fireworks! James was so excited to set things on fire. Rett wanted to do it, but he didn't like the smell so he pinched his nose while he did his sparklers.

During our beach day with Anthony's family we saw the cruise ships out in the water. The boys could not get over how big they were!

James got another stripe on his belt:

James got to help Anthony trim some trees. If it involves fire or a power tool, he is there!

Rett got another stripe on his belt, plus a medal for best kata form for the day. He couldn't believe that he got two things in one day!

Rett spent the entire day walking around the house with his pants like this. He said it is because he is pretending to be a "noob".

We gave the beast a bath! Baymax had all kinds of things stuck in his fur, dreadlocks around his ears and his bottom, and dirt all over so we broke down and cleaned him up. It is always such a process since we have to brush and blow dry him afterwards so we don't do it often. He looked pretty happy before we got the hose out.

His coat is pretty resistant to the water, so we had to really soak him for awhile. He didn't like it, but he was still pretty good about it.

I had to do some training for work, but thankfully they offered it virtually so I got to do it from my bed! It was the best thing ever, I didn't have to get a babysitter, I didn't have to get dressed, and I didn't have to drive 45 minutes there and back!

A friend invited me to her running group with a bunch of moms from the school and they run the New Smyrna Beach bridges twice a week in the mornings. This particular morning the sunrise was so beautiful I had to take a picture. The taller bridge is right at the 3 mile mark of our run, so we are hot and sweaty but it is so worth it!

I told them I was terrible at taking selfies...and I was right!

When I got back to the car, I saw a complete half circle double rainbow. It was amazing!! I couldn't get it all in one picture, but it was so cool.

Someone posted that they were missing their cat in our local facebook page it made me laugh. How did that cat walk away???

More beach time, this time with my mom and brother who visited for a few days:

I came out of the driveway and found this surprise in front of our gate. Anthony's work had someone drive all the way from Titusville to put this in front of our house. It was so thoughtful! Anthony took it down after a few days, but it was fun having it up there.

Rett advanced to yellow belt!! He was very excited to move up to a different color!