Summer. Lazy days. Stressing out packing for vacations. Then enjoying vacations (but buying all the stuff you forgot on an emergency Target run). Maybe a few too many movies for the kiddos and projects to accomplish for mom. I am right there!

Some of the feedback I’ve gotten from readers is that you want to see more of our “real” life, so I thought a summer edition would be a good place to start! That way you can see some things I’m loving, the way we do certain things, and also get a sneak peek into what you’ll see more of in the future!

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What We’ve Been Up To

Family Trip

We have been doing one family vacation each year as a get away from our real life. In our day to day, we have a lot of overlap - we homeschool in our home, my husband works from home for a church we love, but a church we attend and do a lot of stuff with - so getting away from our city is a nice chance for us to slow down and be just us.

We head to a cheap-ish resort (because it’s the off season when it’s daily over 105 degrees!) and just swim and hang out. It was a great week away!

Anniversary Trip

Earlier this year, my husband and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary, so we booked a trip to Canada to celebrate and have some time away.

I love that we have always felt it important to have that alone time to invest in each other and our marriage and this trip was no different. We found some really cheap airfare and off to Vancouver we went!

It was great to be away and have enough time to miss our kids too (and talk about them and what we want to focus on in the future).

Housing Changes

Among all of that, we also decided to sell our house and buy a new one.

We’ll be staying in the same area but the timing seemed right based on a variety of things. Selling a house is more stressful than I would have imagined, but since it’s completely self-imposed, we’re trying to keep it all in check!

VBS

To kick our summer off, we participated in our church’s VBS. I had such a great time this year and was posting over on Instagram Stories often! I was able to lead a group of very energetic kindergarteners from station to station because others at my church did all the planning and filled all the leadership roles! I am so thankful for them!

I also really loved the content we used this year. Because of that, I’ve been asking others what they use so I’ll be doing another post about great VBS options and resources to help you plan for next year! If you have something to contribute, please reach out to me!

Blog Updates

I’ve been doing some planning for the blog to make it easier and better for this new school year!

I finally got an official email address! I also switched email providers as the email list has reached over 2,500 subscribers and what I was using got a little too pricey for what they offered. I hope it works well but those things always seem to take more time than you anticipate!

What We Haven’t Been Doing

There has just been too much craziness with moving, that we haven’t been using our summer checklists that I posted about earlier this summer! Eek!

One of my children was being genuinely helpful and has packed multiple boxes, including all of our children’s books, so we haven’t been doing our Bible Reading plan either. Eek again! We’ve just been doing other random things together. And my kids are still singing the songs they learned in our VBS over a month ago, so there’s that!

What We’re Planning For the Fall

My homeschool plans for the fall are to keep it simple. I’ll do another post on what curriculum I’ve chosen but really, I’m looking to keep our family connections high, do as much as we can together, and limit our outside commitments.

I’m also going to lead a study for my church’s women on Jen Wilkin’s book None Like Him and am really looking forward to that time!

What We are Loving to Keep Life Simple

Slugs and Bugs CDs

I am a fan of digital music but I am loving having CDs for the car! With all the running around we do as moms, it’s so much easier for me to just have the CD in and ready to go. For the past few weeks, we’ve been listening to Slugs and Bugs on REPEAT.

My kids are memorzing Bible verses (without really knowing it), enjoying the silliness, learning a lot, and I think they are fun too. If you haven’t heard any of these, I highly recommend all three (my kids seem to think the first one is the best and then have mixed opinions on which comes in second place).

Using Up What We Have

Since we are moving, last week the kids decided to have a cupcake baking/decorating competition using whatever they could find in the pantry.

It was a crazy mess to clean up (and the cupcakes did. not. taste. good), but they had a lot of fun! I highly recommend challenging yourself with just what you have on hand any time you can.

We did the same thing with some poster board and art supplies I didn’t want to pack!

It was a good reminder that contentment doesn’t come from getting “new” stuff but instead being thankful (and sometimes creative) with what you have.

I’d love to hear if something from this post was encouraging to you in the comments below! Or if you want to hear more about any one thing!

Grace and peace to your families as summer slows (or speeds up) to an end!