We did it. We sent our last kid to kindergarten and she made it through. Four Ivey's have made their way through kindergarten. That thought seems weird to me, because it will continue to happen. Our “last” thing will keep happening.

Next year Cayden will be in fifth and this time next year I will have my first child in middle school. That thought right there hurts my stomach. I'm way too young to have a kid in middle school. Way too young.

Young at heart at least.

It's crazy to think that Story only has five more years of elementary school. That seems so long, but seeing that Cayden has one left and it has flown by I know that these years are so short. You send your first kid to kindergarten and cry when you drop them off and before you know it you look up and you have done that four times.

Well sent four to kindergarten, not exactly cried four times. I cried with the first one and did kart wheels out of the school with the next two. Then when Story started school I was not even home. Out of town on her first day of kindergarten. I wonder if she'll hold that against me forever?

Today marks our first day of summer and we couldn't be happier about it! I love summer for lots of reasons, but my number one reason is that I don't have to set an alarm. There's just something about waking up whenever you want that makes me happy. I mean let's be honest I am not sleeping until noon or anything because Story is up when the sun comes up, but at least I'm not hearing that awful noise each morning from the alarm!

This morning we sat around the table and made some goals for the summer. I like to think of it as setting up some expectations so that we all know what it's going to look like. I'm a big believer in being lazy and lounging around, but I still want my  kids to do some school work so their minds don't go to mush and we've started doing some more focused bible time around here as well, so I put that on there too.

I made the list and then they all added some to it as well. Then we all signed it. We have been doing that a lot around here lately. We'll make a commitment and then have the kids sign it. I think it helps us remind them they agreed to this deal, so that when it doesn't seem that fun they can see that at one time they said they would fulfill this commitment.

We started out with our bible study time. I have been wanting to implement this from reading about it on the Inspired to Action blog. We have done different devotionals throughout the years with our kids, but I thought being summer this would be a great time to show them how to set aside some time each day to read his word and pray to him. It was cute and they did great.

Before you go labeling me as “mom of the year” I want you to know that the reason I put this in here is so that when these times get crazy and kids are cranky I can remember that we can do this. I started it, and we can do it. A sweet little reminder that this is not about perfection, but about doing it.

 Story even wrote the sweetest prayer in her journal. This girl loves to write and I love that about her!

I love that she ends it with “you are the best God I ever had, from Story to God” – sweetest.

Then we sat down and made a list of things we want to do this Summer. I always love and hate to do this each  year. I love it because it helps us see all that we can do to have fun, but I hate it because I feel like we get to where we have 2 weeks left and haven't done half the stuff and then I feel like a bad mom.

Here's what's on our list this summer:

Roller Skating, Luby's (thanks to my parents my kids actually think this is a great place to eat), Swimming (every day please!), Six Flags (got free tickets for my kids this year), bowling, Stay in a hotel, snow cones, bananarchy, canoeing, movies, Hamilton Pool, go see the bats, Barton Springs pool/park, Deep Eddy movie night, Round Rock Express game, putt putt golf, hike  Mt Bonnell, make tieDye shirts, and last but not least Deacon requested that we make some chocolate covered strawberries sometime this Summer.

Sounds like a great list to me.

Then I spent the next 3 hours working on my dang podcast. I have royally screwed something up. It's not even worth explaining on here, because it's all on the back end of stuff and honestly I don't even understand it, but I'm mad at myself. If you have subscribed I think you can only see the first 3 because I screwed something up and it's not pulling the right feed. If that doesn't make sense to you, no worries, it doesn't to me either and that's most of the problem! I'm working on it.

While I worked on it this morning and got more frustrated kids played hours of video games. Exactly what we said we were not going to do from our list above.  Oh well. They weren't complaining and I was getting something done. Well, I actually got nothing done, but at least I was trying.

Finally we trotted off to the library and checked out some new books. I finally got BossyPants and hopefully will laugh all the way to Mexico next week.

I hope that this summer is awesome! Each year we say this, but this might be our best summer yet. Lots of family fun planned and that makes this momma happy!

Happy Summer Break!