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Internet Project Successes and a Well-Deserved Break

Weekly Happenings: This past week was full of swimming in the backyard pool, playing pretend inside, going to the library for new books, and just chillin’ as a family.

The Weekly Weather: HOT! I don’t have much else to say. We are quickly approaching what is normally the hottest month of the year, so yeah…we’ve been staying cool by hanging out in air conditioned places and in the pool (I really love that it’s big enough and deep enough for me to get in (and the water comes up to my shoulders if I sit down…so nice).

What Paul’s Been Up To: He’s been rather consumed with end-of-the-semester projects and exams, but he finished all of that up on Friday, so now he gets a very well-deserved break from school until mid-September. He’s using his free time to spend even more time with me and Joseph and doing some updates to the home computers (having a resident IT guy is sort of handy).

What Sarah’s Been Up To: As the title of this post eludes to, I have attempted a couple different ideas that I have seen on the Internet (a craft project and a recipe) with successful results. One was a word-building kit encompassed in a metal lunchbox for Joseph to use and the other was a yummy peanut butter/Reese’s peanut butter cup cookie combo. I also hosted book club which was fun as always. I threw together a quick peach cobbler (another seriously simple recipe that one of my friends gave me a while back) that received rave reviews and pleadings for the recipe. My friends were pleasantly surprised with how simple it was.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: Playing pretend, playing in the pool, having play dates, and building LEGO creations. I now know why my friends have tons of LEGOs. Once Joseph builds something, he doesn’t want to take it apart. He’s almost out of the LEGOs that we have. He has expressed a desire to have a LEGO themed birthday party, so maybe we’ll get him some more for his birthday. One funny story: HeĀ told me that the ceiling fan (in the living room) made it so his In N’Out grilled cheese sandwich (on the table in the dining room) was cold and that we needed to turn the fan off. In reality, he was taking his sweet time to eat, so that’s really why his grilled cheese got cold. It’s interesting to see how his mind works (including a bad dream he had where cicadas were coming out of the trees and biting him…poor kid).

This Week in Pictures:

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Someone may or may not have commandeered the family movie night popcorn bowl…
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Success #1: Metal lunchbox Paul ordered from Amazon…
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…meets craft sticks (with adhesive magnet strips stuck to the back) with words written on them (in lower case letters) and upper case magnetic letters. This way he starts to recognize both the lower and upper case versions of letters. I think he’s going to love it!
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Massive pillow and blanket fort for the win!
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Deep in conversation with his bear.
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We’ve got some extra letter printing pages hanging around. Paul mentioned it might be a good idea for Joseph to get more writing practice (he starts pre-k at the end of next month), so I pulled one out. I believe this desk is going to work out just as well as we hoped it would!
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Success #2: Refrigerated peanut butter cookie dough (sliced, quartered, and baked in mini muffin tins) meets Reese’s mini peanut butter cups (I just pushed the cups into the cookies while they were still warm). They actually turned out looking just like the picture on the recipe page, which almost never happens with me, hahaha.