Life Lately

Happy Thursday!

I’m back for a quick life lately post, but I might be a little light on the posting for the month of June. I’m working on one last class to renew my teaching certificate, and it needs to be done by July 1 . . . so that’s going to be my priority for the next few weeks.

But, before I take a break to do a deep dive into the fundamentals of teaching reading to Kindergarten through third grade students, here’s a quick look at what we’ve been up to lately.

The Kissels have been battling nature this spring/summer and we are LOSING. We have chipmunks living in our drainage spouts, a bunny living under our deck stairs who keeps eating our hostas and flowers, and a bird that relentlessly tries to build a nest on top of our garage door opener mechanism if we keep our garage door open for too long.

But wait . . . there’s more!

Last week I walked outside to water my flowers, and saw this big mama turtle digging a hole in our mulch to lay her eggs! She’s a snapping turtle, so there was no moving her. Emily, Matty, and I got a front row seat for a serious turtle egg laying session. Every few seconds that mama turtle would lift up her back end and a perfectly round, white, ping pong ball would come out and roll in the hole! I personally saw her do it 14 times, but who knows how long she’d been doing it before we got out there. When she was done, she covered up the hole and high tailed it out of there. So . . .will baby turtles be crawling around our front yard in a few months?? . . . Gosh, I hope not.

And then, in the grand finale of our epic battle against nature, on our way to bed one night I noticed a dark spot on the floor and couldn’t figure out what it was. Well, I turned on the lights and got a great view of a FROG on the floor in my dining area! WTF?! Matty tried to catch it and it hopped under our sideboard. I made it CRYSTAL clear that we were not going to bed until that frog was outside.

Quick! Get it out of here!!

Ok, thus ends our battle with nature!

I had my mama friends over one evening, and when the girls saw Miss Lisa with her leopard hand band they had to run up and get their own matching ones!

This is Emily and her little friend Griffin (or, Griffey, as she likes to call him!). They will be in Kindergarten together next year and are currently the only five-year-olds on our street home during the day. They have struck up the sweetest little friendship and play so well together!

Last Friday night was the perfect evening for the Backyard Bash at Lucy’s school. There were three inflatable obstacle courses, a teacher dunk tank, hot dog truck and the Kona ice truck. It was a great time!

We got to see Lucy’s classroom . . .

. . . her amazing butterfly that she chose to display in the art show . . .

. . . and Emily lived her best life doing the obstacle courses over and over . . . and over and over.

That late night at the Backyard Bash was quickly followed up by a three hour birthday party at Airborne on Saturday afternoon. Do you know what three hours at a jump park on a Saturday afternoon will do to kids? . . . Nothing! Do you know what it did to all their parents? . . . it exhausted us! All of our neighbors pulled back into our street around the same time after the party. We got together to talk and kept asking why we were all so tired after that! The general consensus was . . . we’re getting old.

As if the three hour party wasn’t enough, the kiddos all had enough energy to play outside with neighbors until almost 10pm afterward! We were joined by Mac, our neighborhood fluffy puppy, and he is just as cool as he looks!

The girls love him!

And then we all slept in until 9am on Sunday to recover! Penelope took some extra recovery time outside in the sun.

Lucy’s school lost power for about 45 minutes earlier this week. One of my friends in the lunchroom sent me this picture of Lucy and all of her friends at lunch. They were all so happy to get to sit together! Due to Covid protocols, the kids usually have assigned seats and sit only four to a table at lunch. They needed to get more kiddos in to eat lunch during the power outage, though, so they let kids sit closer together with their friends and these girls loved it!

And that’s life lately!

Next week is the last week of school before summer vacation! Between quite a few cookie orders, field day, and three half days, it’s going to be a busy end to the school year . . . but I’m excited to tackle it all and then get my relaxation on!

XOXO