School starts Tuesday for teachers. But I have to go in Monday at 10:00 for an entrance test for a new 6th grader. Drat. So much for sleeping till 10. ;) At least Camden will have a new kid in his class.



This bulletin board has been all over Pinterest. Have you Pinterested? Are you interested? You should be. Wow. Pinterest is a site where you can save all the cool images you find on the internet. Other people can see them if you want. And you can see theirs. It's cool. Soooo cool.

So, anyhow, I found this bulletin board on Pinterest, and I printed it out and totally copied it at school. Only my jump rope is green/blue. And I don't have any small stars, just big size stars. But I'm happy. It looks almost as awesome.


I have no idea where I saw this originally, but I've been singing RELAX since the day.





Here is a song I can't quit singing.
And yes, I own the book.
We'll be using it on Aug. 29. We'll probably write about our school shoes, too.

My mind is spinning so. So spinning. My entire brain is filled with visuals of school, learning, room arrangements. Sounds of CLASS/YES and TEACH/OK and laughter. Yes, laughter. Second grade is nearly here. One more week of freedom, which will be spent sleeping in followed by dragging my dear sweet darling sons to school with me so that I can finish bulletin boards and room arrangements and the stuff I never think of till I'm in the thick of it. Then I'll come home and take a nap just because I CAN.

In other news, we camped in Vermont with our Petki friends. The boys were up till after midnight so, naturally, they slept in till 10:00 a.m. today. Did I take a single pic? NO! Did Curt get up on time to help set up at church? YES! Did we join him? NO! Bad family. BAD!

With one week left of summer vaca, I finally finished my back to school newsletter. At least I THINK I finished it. How does it look? This is my first time using Google docs. I hope it works. :)

Tomorrow my mom has surgery on her foot. She's had foot issues for a while now, so I'd love any prayers you can offer up to God. I KNOW He'll take care of her. God is good that way.

We came home.
We didn't want to, but we did.
I mean, come on - leave this?

Come on, HE gets to stay!

Against our better judgment, we loaded up the truck and we drove to Beverly, er, Connecticut. It took two days. The lowest price for gas we saw was $3.57. We hit the high in the big CT $4.29. Now we just drive to Mass. for gas because it's 30 cents cheaper. Cheap is what we are. Wendi, saving cents since 2011. We came home to learn that the big CT raised taxes RETROACTIVE to January. There goes my raise this year. And then some. This state sucks.


But in Hatteras? On the island? When we checked into our beach house, we were informed that we'd be getting a $14 credit back because they LOWERED the lodging tax. Who knew states still did that?!



So now we've been home a week and that means we only have 50 more to go till our next trip south.

At least I have my pictures. I've uploaded them to Shutterfly, where I keep ALL of our family pix and school ones, too. Did you know they store them FOREVER? And, for FREE? Yeah! No taxes on storage! Wooooot!

I've also loaded a photobook into my cart. It's a bazillion pages because I have that many pictures, but it's gonna be so worth it. All I did was click this Custom Path button, just ONE button, and the magic computer dudes stuck all my photos on pages and made them all beautiful and even themed! I swear, I don't know if it was pure serendipity or intentional, but the pages seemed to flow - the kite flying pix together, the go karts together, the shells together. Wow. Magic, I tell ya.

I'm also gonna have a canvas made of my favorite picture from the trip. One stop shopping. Loooooove it!



If you have a blog, you can head over to register for your own FREE photo book. The Shutterfly folks are giving 1,000 away, so check it out! Sign up here. I did. Be sure to check out the Christmas cards, and thank you cards, too. Winter's right around the corner, you know!