Quarantine

School started on a Thursday. After the first 2 days of school the kids started their first full week of school. On Tuesday I got a call from the school that someone Benny sat next to on the bus tested positive for Covid so he needed to be quarantined. Oh geez.... here we go...

Luckily Benny and Ila were both quarantined at the same time!! So Shanda and I switched off days. He had some school work to do but it was mostly just an extra week of summer. 

So Benny was clear to go back to school the next Monday. That afternoon I received a call from the middle school that Jackson had come in direct contact with someone who tested positive for Covid and he needed to quarantine for the remainder of the week. Oh boy... 

Here was his school set up:

I had 1 full week of my kids being in school and then I got the fateful call that Ivy needed to be quarantined. My goodness!! It's crazy town over here!!

 

Are you ready for some football...?

We've been doing flag football for years now but it was finally time to make the switch to tackle. Jackson has been wanting to do it for awhile now and I figured if he wants to play in high school he needs a couple years of experience under his belt... so we started Pop Warner this fall! I was a little nervous for Jackson only because, even though I know he was ready for the "contact" of it all, I thought it might be a little shocking - the contact of it all. And, pop warner is a little intense.... we started off with 5 practices a week for 3 hours each day and running hasn't always been Jackson's favorite. But he surprised me by absolutely loving it. And excelling at it. It has been so fun to watch him practice and play!! He plays both offense and defense and he's great at it! Looking forward to the rest of the season. 

Love this kid...

Here is a video of my beast boy... and also his very first kick off! Plus he knocks the guy out of bounds. 

 

New House Progress in August

We have seen a lot of progress on the house! It's so fun watching it go from a 2-D floor plan to an actual house! Here we have the block walls finished and framing started. 

The view of the lake from our family room window! 

Love this aerial shot Daniel took when we were up in the cherry picker cleaning out trees again. 

Second story action! Can't wait for the trusses to go up... that will be in September...

The First Day of School 2021

The first day of school came really quickly!! Benny has Ms. Vaughn for 1st grade this year, Ivy has Ms. LaHayne and Ms. Lang and is in the 5th grade and Jackson is in 7th with 7 classes including high school algebra... we'll see how that goes this year... 

The Bova Save

Once we returned from the Keys we had 4 days of summer left. I promised the kids we'd go to the Bob Makinson Aquatic Center on one of the days (just a local pool with a slide, a splashpad and a diving board). Well, we were in our suits, all packed up and ready to head out when I got the fateful call from Shanda that they were closed. They had closed early for the season due to Covid. Wow, we were really disappointed about that! Since we were literally walking out the door, we just hopped in the car and went to IHOP for breakfast to give us a chance to reassess our day. After going through all of our options the kids decided that we should just go swim at the Bova's... however, how rude to invite ourselves over to someone else's house, right? I swallowed my pride and shot Kami a text (apologetically inviting ourselves over) and she happily opened her door and pool to us. One thing to understand about the Bova's pool and yard is that it's a wonderland. Really cool slide, jumping platform, diving board, a creek, zipline... I mean, it's such a fun place!! (plus she has the most darling girls that my kids play so well with and of course Jackson didn't mind that one bit either 😉)  She rolled out the red carpet for us. Made us an amazing lunch as well. I sat on the verge of tears most of the day full of gratitude for her kindness and for saving the day for us. The kids still talk about it. I didn't take any pictures, but I did snap this boomerang video so here you go!

Duck Key Trip 2021

For the 3rd summer in a row we went down to Duck Key! We love the location of Duck Key. Our accommodations are great, the fishing is great, it's conveniently located to everything we need. We had hodge podge of travelers along with us this year and Ryan's boat broke down the very first day. Combined that with Collin's boat that had problems off and on the whole week and any given time we had a pile of cousins on our boat!! (as you will see!) Makes for a little more stressful vacation but the kids were in absolute heaven and we had a wonderful time. 

The trip down we miraculously had no flat tires!! We were also able to switch up seats so the boys were able to ride down together. 

We started fishing right off the bat, right off the canal! 

Our first evening on the boat was so fun... plenty of yellowtail to catch!

This was an interesting catch... its the fish that sucks on to a shark!!

Our entire crew for the evening! And the dreamiest sunset!

The total catch!

We had a lot of success on the deep drop.

We caught several sharks over the course of the week. 

The big deep drop bounty!

Just to compare size... the grouper was as big as Crew!!

I never joined the early morning fishing trip but thoroughly enjoyed reading poolside and watching the kids swim and catch fish off the canal. 

We enjoyed yellowtail every evening. 

Jackson in the middle of a catch!

I love this picture... the excitement of having multiple fish on at the same time!

Day trip to Coffin's Patch to do some snorkeling. 

The last day we were there was the first day of lobster season! We typically don't make it in time for lobsters but we had 1 day to snag a few...