Back to School!

We had an AWESOME summer. A couple weeks ago, I was really sad at the thought of summer being over. I loved having the kids around, watching them play and be free, and I loved being carefree and relaxed. However, all good things must come to an end, and as school approached, I actually found myself looking forward to a new start, more of a routine, and a chance to set some new goals. We did our back to school shopping the week or two before school started, and then the Sunday before we had a "Back to School Feast" out on the patio and then Jeremy gave the kids blessings. It was a great night!

The next day the school had an Open House where they could bring their school supplies in to their classrooms and meet their teachers. Both the boys have great teachers this year and I'm really happy. They both are very sweet and seem to have a lot of fun things planned.

Then that Wednesday, it was off to school!

Eli is in 2nd grade this year and Connor started kindergarten! Luckily they still have half-day kindergarten here, so he only goes from 8-11am and then he's done!

Woohoo! It's perfect. And there are only 15 kids in his class! (Eli has 24).

Eli is looking forward to learning cursive this year, as well as learning fractions, learning about pioneers, and lots of other fun topics.

I walked Connor to his class the first day and he was very excited!

Normally I drop the boys off in the morning and then they both take the bus home. We are the first stop on the way home, so it's a quick trip and very nice that I don't have to wake sleeping babes to go pick them up. And it's very nice that Eli's class is just down the hall from Connor's class, so they walk together in the morning and Eli makes sure Connor gets there okay. :)

So far they both seem very happy with school! It's only been three days, but I hope it will last. They are growing up!
 

And this little missy is growing up too. I think she has enjoyed the extra attention in the mornings without her big brothers around. In the three mornings they've been gone, we've gone to the park, exercised, gone grocery and shoe shopping, and done yard and garden work. She has been my buddy through it all!

And not to be forgotten, little Grace has been a great buddy too! She often takes a good long nap in the morning though, so she doesn't notice the boys not being around as much. :)


Grace also likes to help me do my chores - cleaning bathrooms, making dinner, doing dishes, etc. Sometimes we're all a lot happier when she just comes along with me.

So there you have it! Hard to believe it's almost September and we're back in school. Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here before we know it! Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!

Last Week of Summerrrr!!!!

We tried to live it up as much as possible during our last week of summer! Here are a few fun things we did....

The kids and I went to the fire station with our church playgroup and had a tour. It was so fun! They loved it. Afterward we walked to UDF for some ice cream with our friends.

Have I mentioned how awesome our ward (church congregation) is now?!? We had a boundary change and it pretty much doubled the number of active families we have in our ward, and most of those people are around our age with little kids. It's been SO fun! We have some friends now! Hooray! (Half the kids in this picture weren't in our ward before!)

We also went to a baseball game! Go Cincinnati Reds! The kids and I earned free tickets through our library's Summer Reading Program. Score! We only had to pay for Jeremy...

 

  It was a really fun night. Our tickets were way up in the nose-bleeds, but it gave us a great view. After about five innings, we moved down lower so we could get a close-up experience too. The boys were hoping to catch a foul ball, but no luck.

 It was also very hot. The weather this summer has either been extremely hot/humid or raining (in which case, it's both). So we're pretty much wet anytime we go outside. It's not my favorite...

But we got to see a beautiful sunset from the ballpark!

Good times.

Next up - this little babe cut two teeth! I have to remind her sometimes that I am not a chew toy...ouch.

 We also went to the pool a lot and often had it to ourselves! The day before school started we went twice - once mid morning and once late afternoon. We were the only ones there in the morning, but by the afternoon, I think half the neighborhood was there! Everyone was getting their fix before school starts.

 And the boys started soccer! Eli loved it last year even though his poor team never won a game, but we're hopeful they'll do better this year! Part of the problem was they got rained out of over half their practices and almost half of the games, so they never really had a chance. This week was great soccer weather, so hopefully we can keep that up!

 Connor has been sooo excited to start. His coach thought he must have played before because he was quick to pick everything up so that made him pretty happy. It's not too hard to stand out on his team though, when half the kids were either sitting around or chasing butterflies...hehe. It will be an entertaining season!

Nowland Staycation!

Last weekend, Jeremy had a 3-day weekend, so we decided we better do something fun. We weren't really feeling like a trip (between the money, not-sleeping baby, and Eli's Celiac) so I thought it would be fun if we had a little "staycation". Basically, playing like we were on vacation and shirking our normal chores to try out some fun things nearby and at home.

So Friday started us off! Jeremy gets home around lunch time on Fridays, which is the greatest thing EVER. We had gotten to the pool at 10 that morning, so he met us over there. After the pool, we had lunch, put the girls to bed, and played some board games with the boys. Our project of that day was to make peach jam, so we got started on that as well. (Not too exciting I know, but a good family project). We also had a delicious dinner trying out a new recipe for Carnitas (they were amazing) and then we finished up canning the jam.

After that we played one more game and then had a fun family movie night watching...

Can you guess? Sword in the Stone! Such a great one. The kids loved it. The boys had seen it a long time ago, but couldn't really remember it. "Hiccitus piccitus..."

Saturday gets its own post (below) because we took a day trip to a state park...and Sunday was just a normal busy Sunday (day of rest? not so much).

Then on Monday we had another great day! We had a tasty pancake breakfast and then we headed out for another day of fun. We drove down to Newport, KY (just across the river from Cincy), parked and walked along the levee and across the Purple People Bridge.

It was a gorgeous day!

We've done this before and it was really nice. It was a beautiful day on Monday too! The humidity was gloriously low and it was actually pleasant to be outside! Ah, so nice. When we got across into Cincy we went to Sawyer Point Park, which is a playground underneath another bridge. Eli and Jeremy had been here for one of Eli's field trips and they said it was fun, and it was!

Grace enjoyed getting out of the stroller for a bit too. After the kids played for awhile we walked a little more to an awesome "sprayground" along the river. It was so fun! I was really happy with it. The kids had a great time running through the water cooling off.

After that, we headed back across the bridge and ate lunch at Tom and Chee, a grilled cheese place that started in Cincinnati and appeared on Shark Tank a few years ago. It was cheesy! We picked it for two reasons - one, we had seen it on Shark Tank and thought it'd be fun to try it. And two, I found out it was a safe place to eat for celiac peeps. The owner can't have gluten either, so they are really careful about preparing the gluten free sandwiches on separate griddles and everything. Eli really like it so it was a win!

Then we came home, did naps and games again, and went to the pool again! I think we had it mostly to ourselves that night too. Those kids are getting to be amazing swimmers and it's really fun to see them develop. It was a great weekend!!

Nowland Staycation 2016: Clifty Falls

On Saturday, we took a day trip to Clifty Falls State Park in Madison, Indiana. It's just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, down south toward Louisville. We heard about this place from some friends of ours that went camping there and said it was a fun place with some good hiking. We've been really wanting to go camping since we moved here, but I'm finding that to be really difficult in the midwest! It's so hot and humid in the summer that camping would be absolutely miserable, and the weather is so unpredictable in the spring, it's hard to plan a rain-free trip. We're thinking maybe Fall will be best, but we'll see.

Anyway, so we decided since this place was only an hour and a half away, we would just go for the day! It worked out great. We left around 8:30 am on Saturday and got home about 4pm. We started off with a 1.25 mile moderate hike where we saw two waterfalls along with a creek and some really beautiful scenery. We wished we had done the hike the other direction though because right away we saw both waterfalls and then just hiked the rest of the way back around. It would have been a little more fun to hike first, but oh well.

 Above - "Big Clifty Falls"

Right - "Cake Rock"

 "Little Clifty Falls"

 The kids were cute when they got dressed that morning - they all wanted to wear their matching family reunion shirts. There were lots of stairs on that first hike!

 Probably the best part was when we took a little detour down to this creek and played around down there for a bit...

 We named this one "Miniature Clifty Falls", following the theme of the others. :) We also named a "Micro Clifty Falls" and a "Dwarf Clifty Falls" along the way.

After that hike we drove south in the state park down to another trail. We stopped and had a picnic lunch and let the kids play on the play structure for awhile and then did another hike.

 What a good brother.

 Little Miss Grace enjoyed a little time out of the carrier. Yummy fingers! You can see the sweat beaded up on her nose too. It was definitely feeling wet outside by this point.

I love that little face!

 Eli loves his baby sister!

A very non-traditional play structure, but very fun! They enjoyed climbing all over it and calling it their castle.












This next hike was only .75 miles and we thought it would be so easy since the other one was really mild. Well, I forgot it was marked as "very rugged" as opposed to "moderately rugged" like the other one, so it was a lot harder than we were expecting! It was great though, and the kids did awesome. It was very steep and uneven down to a creek where we had to cross and then come back up. And then the waterfall we were supposed to see was hardly visible! So that was a bit of a disappointment, but it was still a great hike. I really love hiking (more so in less humidity, but I still loved it), and I was proud of our kids. Luckily, Anna is a little mountain goat and is just as strong and capable as her brothers!

 We were happy to cool off by the creek before hiking back up. That water felt so good splashed on our faces!

 Above - Connor's feelings at that moment during the hike are clearly evident on his face. Hehe. And below - some of the uneven terrain. It was steeper than it looks.

 We crossed this creek right at the end also because the bridge was under repair! This is what goes down and becomes "Hoffman Falls", which we couldn't really see. And yes, everything is green, green, green!

 In typical midwest summer fashion, we were all COMPLETELY dripping and soaked from sweat, so after we finished we went and grabbed some ice cream in "downtown" Madison (tiny little town) at this ice cream shop we will never go to again. We felt like we were in the twilight zone or something, it was so weird, or that we'd stepped way back in time or something. Everyone working there had a few too many screws loose. And my "fresh peach ice cream" tasted really gross. How do you mess up ice cream? Luckily the kids didn't notice a thing and loved their ice cream, so that's all that really matters!

We had a fun drive home rocking out to Insideout Acapella primary tunes and then had a great evening at the pool cooling off after dinner. (When Anna decided she could swim! That girl is determined to grow up too fast).

(Did I mention we had the pool to ourselves on a Saturday night?!? It was awesome.)
 It was another great day of our "Staycation"!!