It's only the end of June, and already the heat is stifling here southeast Texas. It's taking it out of me, and other than taking care of my family and our home, I have little energy for much else--including blogging.  This morning, The Husband came home from work and found that our caterpillar-now-moth had emerged from its cocoon sometime during the night/early morning hours. It was flying so hard that it would shake the jar when it hit :/ It sure wasn't a pretty little fella, but it was a neat process to watch take place over the last few weeks.  Anyway, we showed the kids, and the three of them released it before breakfast.  This afternoon, when I went to get Ella from her room, Jack managed to reach up on the counter and found The Husband's razor. Yikes!! I caught him just as he started "cutting his hair like Daddy." But he still managed to remove quite a chunk. Thankfully that's all that happened :/.  My cucumber plants finally kicked the bucket, and ...

1. I decided that for the summer months, we'd do a simpler learning-time routine. I found this on Pinterest and modified it to fit our days.  Here's what ours will look like.  Instead of choosing books and basing learning time activities around them, I'll choose books and won't worry about making lesson plans to go along with them.  Simple summer :) We already began the new routine this week with cooking together on Monday. I had to get the soup in the crockpot by 8am, so it would be ready by lunch. I took the kids from their beds straight to the kitchen counter before changing them or even feeding them haha. But they enjoyed helping :). Please ignore their mismatched pajamas!  Ella enjoyed playing with the beans and did so on that blanket for nearly 30 minutes with no breaks and almost no interaction with me other than to show me her big scoops every once in a while :) 2. Our first harvest of our mini cucumbers!! I'm like a proud parent, and it's so ridiculous ...