Monthly Round-Up
- Some fun activities with our homeschool co-op, including: “tech apart” day, bowling and laser tag, volunteering at a local organization that serves our local homeless community, a patriotic art lesson, and an island survival game day
- A couple of baseball games in Dallas
- Some swimming, hopefully
- Build bird houses with some inexpensive bowls, cups, and plates
- Do a watercolor tutorial from Brighter Day Press
- Sun prints (I already have the supplies!)
June Monthly Round-Up: Zoosiana, Oysters, Dot-to-Dots, + Flowers
In just three months of recapping my months, I’ve realized how quickly we move from one thing to the next. Not necessarily in a bad way. But it does make me want to slow down even more. I’m pretty intentional about not saying “yes” to everything. In fact, I’ve probably lived the opposite of that in a negative way at some points. Mostly since having kids. Because they definitely make you reevaluate everything (and for the better in most cases). But I do want to be more intentional about saving space to just be versus getting caught up in the “do everything” mindset. Even at home sometimes (which is its own can of worms). It’s nice to not have plans all of time. Actually, really nice.
June was a pretty good mix of planned things and not planned things. Here’s some of what we did…
ZOOSIANA
I already posted a few pictures from a zoo outing last month, but wanted to journal a little bit more about it. It was really such a great day with my kids. Just me and them. We were supposed to have gone a couple of weeks before we actually did. But, rain. Lots of it. And there was threat of it (and existence of it) on the makeup day too, but we still went for it. Zoo memberships helped make that decision easier knowing if we needed to leave, we wouldn’t have wasted our money.
So, we planned this out, but it didn’t involve meeting anyone else and was easy and relaxing. Woke up, ate breakfast, then headed there. My kids have been many, many times with their grandpa, so they know the layout well and are always excited to lead the way. So, they did. And I just went at their pace. It was wonderful. We all had a great time taking in each animal, them spouting off allllll the facts they know (mostly from Wild Kratts), and enjoying just being outside. Thankfully, most of the zoo is shaded and a lot of renovations have taken place over the last year or two to make it nicer.
I’m pretty certain we saw every animal, which was awesome. There were tiny baby squirrel monkeys and red ruffed lemurs as well as 1-day old peacocks (SO CUTE). The tiger and porcupines were especially entertaining. We got caught in a super heavy downpour while feeding donkeys. But we were close to the train pavilion, so were able to take cover there (along with a few other visitors and about 20 peacocks). One of the keepers gave the kids peacock feathers while we waited for the rain to stop. I think that’s a fairly common thing if you catch them with enough to hand out. Super fun (and cheap) souvenir. After the rain subsided, we picked up the pace to see the last little bit of the zoo we had not seen up to that point and left just before another rainstorm began.
OYSTERS
I like oysters. At least the smoked, chargrilled/charbroiled, or fried varieties. I’ve yet to try them raw. Maybe one day. Anyway, even though I like them, I don’t eat them often. But they made it to my monthly round-up because I ate them two different times in June. Matt and I went to Uncle T’s Oyster Bar for our anniversary (ha we’re fancy). It was our first visit there. As an appetizer, we got the Holly Beach sampler, which includes four different kinds of fancied up charbroiled oysters. They were good. And when we told our son about it, it piqued his interest. He requested he and I go to Uncle T’s for our next date night together. So, we did. Ordered the same thing as when Matt and I went: the charbroiled oyster sampler and alligator tacos. He loved it all too. Yum.
DOT-TO-DOTS
Every so often, one of the kids decides to pull out a dot-to-dot book. Not just any dot-to-dot book, though. Ha.
I stumbled across a 1,000 dot-to-dot activity book at Sam’s a lot of years ago. I did a couple, then stuffed it away and rediscovered it a few years back. My son, who was (I think) 5 years old at the time took a big interest. So, I shared and ordered another. In fact, he really learned counting to 1,000 well doing these dot-dot-dots. And June happened to be the month for my daughter to start doing the same. She actually started in an up to 500-ish dot-to-dot book that I got at Dollar Tree. Went from needing help several months back to plowing through them fairly quickly. She requested her own 1,000 dot book. I have to admit, they are super cool. Frame-worthy.
500 dot-to-dot book from Dollar Tree
1,000 Dot-to-Dot Wonders of the World book
FLOWERS
I love having flowers at home. Here’s just a few from June:
Bachelor’s Buttons
Montbresia
Zinnias
May Monthly Round-Up: Butterflies, Mother's Day, Yetis, + Summer
I started a monthly round-up last month, so I’m sitting down again to do one for May.
It was a sweet, busy month. We’re not far into June, but when I looked through photos I have from last month, some of those things seem like they were multiple months ago. Time is weird sometimes.
Here are some highlights from our May, which was really just a couple of weeks ago.
BUTTERFLIES
My girl got a National Geographic butterfly kit from her Paw for her birthday. It comes with a voucher to order Painted Lady caterpillars when you’re ready. So, we decided to do it a few weeks after she got it. The caterpillars arrived, and we got them set up in their jar. The info packet says you’ll get five, but she got six. I think it took about seven-ish days for them to start making their chrysalises. Only three appeared to have made it through the process as only three were hanging from the jar lid. The others ended up in chrysalises but were on the bottom of the jar. But when I transferred the three that were hanging, Ro said we needed to keep the others just in case. As you can expect, she was right, and one of the ones that was on the bottom of the jar emerged from its’ chrysalis as well. We got it into the larger container with the others and observed them for a day, then released them. It was a neat learning experience for her.
MOTHER’S DAY
Mother’s Day is really special to me. I always, of course, think about my mom (who passed away when I was 10) and my Memom (who pretty much raised me after my mom died and passed away herself 5 years ago). I desperately wish they were still here with me and my family. But, I’m a mom too now. And it is really, really, really one of my very favorite titles and responsibilities in my life. So, I’m just really grateful that I get to celebrate that and be loved by my children.
The actual day was a good one! My kids (and husband) celebrated me well. We went to church (Matt spoke, and it’s worth a listen), then I chose to go to a restaurant we had not been to in a long time—La Cuisine de Maman. They gave me thoughtful gifts that I really like! And we spent the rest of the day at home together.
Waiting to be seated for lunch. The restaurant–La Cuisine de Maman–is on the grounds of Vermilionville, which is a really cool and beautiful historic and folklife park that is situated alongside the Vermilion River in Lafayette, LA.
My gifts! A LEGO set to add to my Botanicals collection, a 10 oz. YETI that my bud picked out for me, a super cute set of anklets that my girl picked out for me, and a beautiful great blue heron art print from a local artist.
YETI DRINK DATES
As I just noted in the photo above, my bud got me this little YETI for Mother’s Day because I had mentioned that I liked them! My girl already had one from a couple of years back. So, I guess B felt left out. Ha. He decided to get him one with his own money for his weekly coffee.
Since we all had our own, we decided to have a YETI tea time one evening when Daddy had a meeting out. We had a few other YETI drink dates in May as well. And they’re just the best.
Ro made place cards for the occasion. Sweet girlie!
PLANNING SUMMER
Our entire Summer isn’t planned out, but I did manage to get a few things set in stone. I also have several things that don’t require much pre-planning saved in my brain (or maybe on a piece of paper somewhere) that I’d like to do when it works out.
A few things we have planned:
A few things I’d like to do at some point:
April Monthly Round-Up: Plants: Baseball, Homeschool, + 90!
My husband has recently started doing weekly round-ups, so I’m taking his format and making my own monthly round-up. With more photos. Because that’s what I like.
GARDENING
My garden was a huge focus in April (it is a lot of other months too, but especially in April). Planting transplants, putting in more seeds, purchasing other plants. I love it all so much.
Pictured here: Swamp Milkweed, Spoon Tomatoes, Craspedia, Sage, Jalapeños, more Sage, Bachelor’s Buttons, Beefsteak Tomatoes, Borage, and Four O’Clocks
I’ve also been reconfiguring a few of my garden beds. I’m making two from three. And they’ll match two in front of them, so it looks a little more symmetrical. I’ll also be able to add another arched trellis (like in the photo below) for some climbing plants (and beauty).
I let the kids take over one of these new beds, and they have been excited. They’re currently growing (everything from seed) beefsteak tomatoes, jalapeños, bush beans, sunflowers, borage, sage, and swamp milkweed. All with minimal help from me.
So far, I’ve harvested about 30-something Sungold cherry tomatoes, several handfuls of strawberries (the birds have enjoyed way more than we have this year), and 2 banana peppers. And there’s a lot that’s looking good and should be ready to pick pretty soon.
OTHER PLANTS
Outside of the garden but still in the outdoor plant realm :), I’m probably most proud and excited about my Louisiana irises and Peggy Martin roses. They were beautiful this year. My next project is going to be attempting to propogate some new Peggy Martins.
I have 3 of these roses climbing on their own 16 ft. cattle panel trellises secured to 3 t-posts with UV resistant zip ties.
BASEBALL
My son is enjoying playing coach pitch baseball for the third season. And I thoroughly enjoy (with some nerves mixed in) watching him learn, grow, and have fun doing it. We all do. He was invited to try out for an all-star team again, but we decided to pass on that as he’s only 8, and we’re not ready to have baseball completely take over our lives. I really don’t know when we might become more involved, but now just isn’t the right time.
HOMESCHOOL
We’ve found a pretty good rhythm in our homeschooling lately. Getting done earlier in the day has always helped, and we’ve actually been able to consistently accomplish that.
We’ve also had a really great semester with our co-op. Our topic this semester was animals by location (so there was geography mixed in). There was a lot of great learning opportunities. And most weeks included some sort of a craft or hands on project. Simply because I love how all of their creations look in a group, here are a few of the things they made this month.
We also had some pretty cool field trips. Just a couple of weeks ago, we met a fellow homeschool momma and her daughter at a park and learned all about showing goats. Milked goats and fed the kids too. But the highlight was definitely baby goat snuggles!
MY GRANDPA TURNED 90!
My Pop, my last remaining grandparent, turned 90 at the beginning of April! We took a trip to North Louisiana to see him and celebrate with a lot of other family.
