July

 July was such a fun month!

As I'm writing this, the kids are officially back at school.  The summer literally flew by and none of us were ready for it to end.

We taught Bowzer hide and seek.  It is the cutest thing to watch him wait for the kids to hide and run around like crazy looking for them.

Mid July Caleb was able to get a tour off.  Unfortunately, he ended up having court basically every day he was able to get off from regular work so we weren't able to go anywhere on vacation.  We made the absolute best of it, though and created a vacation bucket list.  We kind of just listed a bunch of things as a family hoping to be able to cross off a few, but we surprisingly got to check off every single one.  I really think we may end up making this a permanent part of our summers.

One of them was go out to a fancy restaurant.  We got all dressed up and headed to the Melting Pot.

We also had play a new board game.  We got Hues and Cues and it was a big hit. We highly highly recommend if you've never played.

Family move night we got to watch the Hunger Games with the kids because now the entire house has read the books.  We also had a brownie sundae night, went to a new park and had a picnic, and the kids requested that they make dinner one night.  We all got to hang out together making chicken parm and it was really fun.

Caleb and I got to sneak away to Williamsburg for some back to school shopping and stopped at our absolute favorite restaurant we haven't been able to get to in almost 5 years.

We were not ready for the month of July to be over!

 

June

We got to thoroughly enjoy the no school routine all of June.  

With Caleb still working midnights, when there's no school to wake up for, all of us end up night owls.  We stay up late playing games together and sleep in until Bowzer decides he'd like to wake up, which is thankfully pretty late as well.

We had the kids make a list of everything they wanted to do this summer and surprisingly number one on both of their lists was to go fishing.  We decided to book an airbnb not too far from home for my birthday this year so we could check that off the list for the kids and test out traveling with a dog.

I forgot to get pictures of the actual lake house, but it was really cute.  The kids ended up catching soo many fish.  They had a competition all day of who could catch more and it was pulling fish off lines the entire time.

Then we came home and got to eat some yummy cake

We've made the most of our daily walks

And then Casen somehow turned 14.

He requested donuts from sugar shack for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and then a family game and snack night for dinner.  We always have so much fun with the game nights and i'm sure they won't be his request for much longer, so I was especially grateful for that request.

We got him a new Xbox and monitor and he has definitely enjoyed them.

April/May

 April proved to be pretty uneventful.

Bowzer finished his training program and is now completely off leash, which is super crazy to think about from where we were even 5 months ago.

Caleb's been super busy, but looking ever so handsome in honor guard.

I was super spoiled for Mother's Day.  I don't think I cooked a single meal for 2 days.  The kids got me the prettiest flowers and they both made really cool gifts for me in classes at school.

Casen had his official last middle school dance.  It was Hawaiian themed.

And then the end of May marked the end of Arya in elementary school and Casen in middle school.  Arya had a ceremony so I was able to grab lots of pictures of her.  They didn't do anything for Casen's class, which I was pretty bummed about because he didn't get an elementary one due to covid.  He went to a pool party on his last day and they grabbed some staged pics in caps and gowns for the moms, though.

And now we are into summer vacation.  We have our first trip booked for June and we are pretty pumped!

March

 March started out with two concerts for Arya.  She's been part of select choir this school year.

She's also parted of the gifted program at her school.  Every year the class splits into teams and works on specific problem solving.  This year her team qualified to go all the way to states.  They're given a topic and problem to solve and spend the next couple of days preparing a skit on it.

And I'm super thankful for the guy who knows the rough months and stops after long nights of work with flowers and coffee :)

And if you know anything about our family, you know our journey with this dude has been a long one.

We started out with basic training hoping all the trauma he had from before we got him would be solved, but it just wasn't cutting it.  We're so so thankful for Intelligent K9 Training.  He's turned from a butthead to an outstanding citizen, with his quirks of course.

And because we started his intense training, we were super thankful Caleb's parents were willing to be sort of guinea pigs in our training tests.  Before this, guests wasn't really an option.  He loves his house and his people, everything else, not so much.

They were troopers who helped us immensely in his training and we're really mostly glad we got to have some company for Easter, too.

I got zero pictures this year of baskets, and hunts, and dinners.  But we did have a great time!

February

 And this month brought our littlest turning the not so little age of 11.

She requested a green themed party this year and a cookies and cream pie.

Her birthday landed on the superbowl this year, so her request of a snack table for dinner worked out perfectly.  We spent the evening playing an escape room game and playing switch as a family, which are her favorite.

She's grown so much this year.  She loves all things art, music, and crafting.  She's loving the extra chorus class she's taking this year and skips recess to hang out in the art room working on new projects and helping set up for the younger classes.  If she's in her room, the music is on and she most likely is singing along to every single word.  She loves all the girly things like nail polish, Olivia Rodrigo, and the latest hair accessories.  But she is also fitting right into this emo family.  Her favorite tshirts are her band merch. Her favorite nail polish color is black, and she is singing at the top of her lungs to anything from Sleep Token, Bad Omens, Ice Nine Kills, etc.   When she's home from school she asks right away what she can do to be helpful around the house and jumps at the chance to do anything in the kitchen.  She still gives the best back rubs while we catch up on cooking channels and loves to have her popcorn.

She also makes up for the lack of talking from anyone else in this house :)

Valentine's Day was a really fun one for us this year.  Caleb was off so we decided to do something special for the kids.  We went shopping and created a special menu.  We sent out paper invites a couple of days before requesting their presence at our little restaurant and asked them to dress up.

When they arrived they got to pick what they wanted from our menu and Caleb and I cooked together as their requests came in.

And then we got to replace a water heater and start a really intense training program with Bowzer, so here's to hoping March goes a little better than February.