It’s September. After a busy summer where we traveled a bunch and played and overall enjoyed our summer break, we are settling into our fall routines. The end of summer marks birthday season for us: Caroline turned 4 on July 18, Savannah turned 7 on August 22, and Elizabeth turned 2 on September 1st.

We started school again around the beginning of August. We did take the summer off from school, but we read a ton thanks to the Give Your Child the World reading challenge. Now we’re shifting our focus to more academic things. Savannah is in 2nd grade this year, and Caroline is in Pre-K.

The weather is getting a little less hot, which is so nice. I have decided the air conditioning doesn’t really work in our car (it only blows cold air when we’re driving 55+), so I’m really ready to not be sweltering when stuck in traffic. I have a few of our annual fun things lined up… apple picking, Greek festival…

On my mind… Finally I have the desire to put effort into the home decor in our house. We’ve lived here 7 years and still haven’t hung pictures. I have been dissatisfied with the living room layout the whole time, but only in the past few days have I finally come up with a solution. I need to ponder it a bit longer, but I am excited to get it working.

On my nightstand… I finished “Prairie Girl”, the annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Fascinating book and I highly recommend any Little House fans to read it. I started “The House That Cleans Itself”, in hopes to help me come up with a solution to keeping my house neater. I need desperate help in that area! I also have 3 other books that may or may not get read before I have to return the to the library… 

On my tv… I have been enjoying the Dick Van Clark Show, surprise surprise! I needed a new sitcom, and I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I do. It’s amazing how relevant some of the story lines are, despite them being from the 60s.

On my phone… I’ve been playing around with the app Duolingo. I got as far as I could go with Spanish pretty quickly, so I switched to Italian. It’s pretty fun, though I’m not sure how much I’m retaining.

On my computer… I’ll tell you what’s not on my computer, and that’s Facebook. I took a little break from it… for at least a month, maybe longer. All the political stuff was getting to me, and it was causing more stress than it should have. I still am not used to not being on Facebook… I feel restless and miss that connection with my friends. But I also feel it’s a bit freeing. If you miss me, I’m still active on Instagram and Google Hangouts. :-)

On my radio… Okay, not really radio, but I didn’t want to repeat phone. ;-) I’ve been really into podcasts recently. My favorites are Stuff You Missed in History Class, Young House Love, and Read Aloud Revival. I probably will add more but right now those three are a good balance. I need to get some headphones so I can listen when I’m doing chores around the house. Right now, I mostly listen at night before bed or when I’m alone in the car. Which is almost never, ha!

I think that’s good for now. I do miss blogging… Though it’s hard to make time for it these days. Ah, well, such is life.