
It's back to school week here. Always bittersweet. I hate to see summer end but it's also nice to have the kids back in school with a routine. And truth be told a few less hours of listening to certain kids bicker ;)
They both had a great 1st day of school (which I was so thankful for) and they both really liked their teachers.
I'll be honest here...my daughter was a little worried because she had heard her teacher is a bit strict. But I had met her a few times & honestly thought that may be the case but that she was also really nice. So we had a talk about not going into school with preconcieved notions of how a teacher (or anyone) would be based on other kid's opinions (cause we all know how kids can talk...esp about stuff that isn't always necessarily based in fact or truth).
And you know what? She really liked her teacher.
Lesson learned :)
I have a feeling this is going to be a great year!

I always take pics of their backpacks :) I usually try & either buy new backpacks or lunchboxes, but not both. Seriously, that's just too much money (hey, I'm a junker. I'm cheap! haha)
This year my daughter reluctantly used her backpack from last year since she only started using it halfway through the year & it was still in great shape.
I get that they want new stuff but I'm trying to stick to a strict budget here :)
Bigger picture...
I did get her a new lunchbox from Thirty-One gifts which she loves. She's starting to venture into having more healthy (non-sandwich) lunches (which I will do a separate post about) so she needed a bag that would be able to hold her new lunch containers. Ben got both because his backpack and lunchbox were so worn. I think he used his lunchbox for 2 yrs so he was ready for a new one.
Side note - I usually try & check the stores a week or 2 after school starts after they start putting school stuff on clearance. That's when I stock up on a few extra backpacks or lunchboxes along with school supplies. There's certain things that I know we'll end up buying every year.
Soccer & baseball have also started up again so our schedules went from nothing to jam packed...like, overnight.
That's how it always goes, isn't it?!

So now that summer's 'officially' over it's time to take down the summer list :(
We managed to check several things off our list this year. And we also changed things around a bit.
Movies at Riverfront Park - we only got to do this once. We had planned to go back to see Avengers but didn't make it. This will definitely be on our future summer lists.
Silverwood - we have season passes so we get to go through this month. Hoping to make it at least a couple more times before the season is over.
Make smores - that's pretty much an every year kind of thing on our list!
Make a rainbow cake - fun, not too hard, I want to try one for Halloween or Christmas!
Make hobo stew, camp out in the backyard, movie night outside - we combined these all into one night. We'll definitely do this again next year.
Go to a Disney store, Panera, Oregon Zoo - these were all part of our trip to Portland last week. We replaced Point Defiance Zoo with Oregon zoo since we ended up going to Portland instead of Seattle.

splash pad - this was more for Addie. And even though my big kids didn't really want to go, they ended up playing in it, too :)

Monsters University & Despicable Me 2 - both really cute movies!
water sponge fight, play a board game, read a book, ride bikes - good old fashioned play time. The water sponge fight was definitely much easier than water balloons. Next time I definitely need to make more!
Farmer's Market - this was for me & I loved it. We have several in and around town & further out. Love that!
Cheney rodeo - we've had this on our list every summer we've lived here & finally got out to see it. My kids loved it.
There's a couple things on our list that we haven't done but will probably do sometime this month. Make stepping stones - I really want to do this with the kids & I think this will be a great thing to do when the weather starts cooling off. Glow in the dark bowling - I've already purchased the glow sticks but it's taking me a bit of time to save up the bottles (because we don't typically buy drinks in 2 liters).
So that's it! Now I'm ready for fall!!