It's here.....finally! Although I can't honestly say that I love summer like most people. I hate temperatures of 100+ degrees, especially around here where the humidity makes it impossible to grab the mail without needing to change clothes. Yuck. But the kids have been enjoying the days, now that we don't have to worry about getting a nap in before picking M up from school. So far we've gone to Jester Park to play at the playground and playscape, visited the Science Center, been to a few libraries (and signed up for the summer reading programs), and lots of other fun trips.We started summer out with the kids making lists of "goals" they want to accomplish this summer. It's mostly fun stuff, M's includes stuff like visiting Grandma for a week, learning to ride a bike without training wheels, visit the zoo, etc. K's includes things like working on potty training, learning his colors, and of course a trip to the airport to watch the airplanes!
Speaking of K, his vocabulary has really picked up lately.....he's still way behind by most standards but that fact that he is learning is encouraging. He knows most of his animal sounds (the elephant is his favorite) and, like any little boy, he knows all of the different vehicles. He's obsessed with them to say the least.
Let's see, what else is exciting here.....oh yeah, I'm going to make a feeble attempt at once-a-month-cooking this month. I'm not following any particular plan and I have done zero research on the best ways to do it, but I'm still going to try, mostly to save from the typical 5-10 trips to the grocery store each month. I wrote out my menu for the entire month and have my list all ready to go! It does have a lot of repeat recipes, but I figure if I change it up each month we won't get bored quickly....or at least that's what I'm hoping for. For anyone who doesn't know what this is, it's pretty self-explanatory. I plan on cooking all of the meals for the month (or at least prepping the ones that can't be cooked ahead) and freezing them. If this works out, I will share my menu, shopping list, and cooking steps here next month.
We order most of our foods from Azure Standard, and since we only get them delivered once a month, I planned my start day to coincide with that order. Then I just have to get meats and fresh produce and dairy from the grocery store, although I'd really like to do some research and find a local farm to order fresh meat and dairy each month. I'd love some suggestions if anyone has any! Hopefully next month our garden with help with the fresh produce portion!
And a blog post from me wouldn't be complete with talk about the garden. I don't have pictures this time, but the garden is doing well. We only got about 12 strawberries this year, but they are new plants so we didn't expect much. We've had lots of lettuce and snap peas already, and the herb garden has really been handy lately. Also, we have tomatoes starting!
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