The dog days of summer were in full swing! From the middle of July through August and even into September it is so very hot and humid in Houston pretty much every day with no relief. Which makes for great outdoor time that includes any type of water, splash pads, pools, kiddie pools, beaches, lakes, rivers, water balloons, sprinklers, splash bombs, etc! We try to do as much as possible with water and be outside through the Summer, but man, we really start missing just hanging out in the backyard for more than 5 minutes without breaking a sweat. I really do enjoy Summer, but Fall is my favorite season so when September rolls around I am sooo ready for that first cool front to roll in. <3
It's my favorite prenatal appointment!! Near the end of July it was time to find out baby #4's gender! :D I was pretty convinced it was a boy. I would have been surprised if I ended up being wrong. I had already gotten myself attached to the name Flynn. Well, I was not disappointed! It's a boy alright!! Flynn Samuel Daniels. <3 Jane had prayed for a baby brother for months and it was so sweet to see her prayers answered. She was so excited and said, "I was right! I knew it was a boy!" Atlas's reaction was so unimpressed. It seemed like he thought, "Of course it's a boy, I already knew that." There had been no question in his mind that he was getting a brother. ;) Xan said, "Uh oh!" In perfect timing. Hahaha! Very appropriately as well because she was very comfortable with her roll as baby. Being dethroned would not be fun for her. Uh Oh indeed. ;) It was very special in addition to Sam, My mom and Dad and all the kids that my Mama and Papa could come to the appointment too. <3 We went out to Whataburger afterwards for milkshakes to celebrate. This is the last event that I remember Papa completely healthy and feeling normal at. I think it's special that it was Flynn's gender reveal ultrasound. Such sweet memories!!
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| I love this!! Their first play date and their most recent play date. They're even wearing similar colors! |
My dear sisterhoodie, Melody, bought her first house!! I was so thrilled for her. We made sure to go visit as soon as they had settled in and were ready for visitors. The house is so wonderful and perfect for them. I was so glad Katie was able to meet us there too and we got to have a sisterhoodie get together. Sadly still missing Lizzy in China though. It was this summer that Liz broke the news to us that her parents were selling their house in Texas and moving out of state, so she wouldn't be coming back to Texas for the foreseeable future. :( We are so grateful we got to have semi regular sisterhoodie reunions with all of us for the last 15ish years. I'm sure we'll figure out a way to do it again just not quite as often as before. Anyway, the kids had such a great time dressing up together almost the entire time we were at Mel's house. Lots of Frozen and princesses. No one wanted to leave! I promised them we would go back to visit again soon.
I decided to group all our swimming pictures together here. This set is of all our pool play dates we had with friends throughout the summer. Knowing that I would have 4 kids to keep up with in the pool in 2020, I did my very best to swim as much as possible in 2019. Jane could swim extremely well and Atlas got swimming down at the very beginning of the summer! He could swim across the pool by the end of the summer. It was pretty easy to keep an eye on all of them since Xan was content to walk around the sun shelf or hang out in a pool float next to me. It was extra fun to go to my friend Mindy's neighborhood pool that had a splash pad/waterpark structure for the kids to play on and an additional big slide enjoy as well. We really had such an awesome time swimming with all of our friends!
This... This is the reason my kids learn to swim at a young age. Access to a perfect swimming pool just 5 minutes away. 2nd biggest reason is having 2 loving helpers to encourage swimming independently and going under water. I'm so grateful my parents let us use the pool just about anytime we want and let us bring friends too. We make a point to swim at least twice a week with Marmee and Pappaw during the Summer. It's always such a great time! It is a lot of work to keep up with all three of them in the water though. So by the end of swimming weather I'm ok with a few months off. With my parents new pool heater it extended the swim season about a month on each side. So we are pretty much swimming twice a week from April until October, 7 months of the year. We are so blessed!
I started prepping for Kindergarten homeschooling in the middle of August. Jane saw the books I was getting and got super excited! She asked if we could start that day. I said I wasn't quite ready to start but we could try a few math pages if she wanted. She was so into it that we did a whole week of math work in one day. Granted it was simple stuff that she already had down. You see those little fingers touching the math manipulatives? Yep, that's the hardest part of homeschooling. Keeping the littles entertained while I do work with Jane. Xan wants to be apart of everything we're doing. (I'm still trying to figure what to do with Xan and now we're doing 1st grade!) It was a nice soft start to school though. It helped me figure out what kinks I needed to work out before we started for real!
A couple of weeks later, on 8/26/19, we made our start to Kindergarten official! I found these cute first day signs to print out online. Our first day went really well! Jane loved everything. We only did Writing, Reading and Math for Kindergarten. She said Kindergarten was way more fun than preschool work. After the first week or two the newness wore off and she decided it wasn't so fun anymore. Then it became more of a struggle. But it was Kinder so I didn't push too hard. I only made her keep going when I knew it was only her attitude and she was getting in her own way and not that she wasn't ready for the material. Math U See and The Institute for Excellence in Writing are wonderful! It's kind of nice doing this post a year late and I'm able to tell you we made it through all of our curriculum for Kindergarten even though we took a huge break for the end of pregnancy and first month of newborn life. Through the year we found what worked well for us and sometimes taking a break was all Jane needed to make progress. At the end of the school year,(that bled into 2020 Summer) Jane can do basic addition and subtraction, read beginner books (like bob books) and write simple words. Those were all of my goals for Kinder. I feel like I'm finally a full fledged homeschool mom! I will wholeheartedly recommend both Math U See and IEW to anyone doing Kindergarten. I'll have to let you know how 1st grade works out.
At the very end of August we made it to The McNair's neighborhood pool! Their pool is super cool. It's almost like a little water park. Jane was tall enough this year to do the water obstacle course and she loved it! Of course she loved the green slide just like last year. She still wasn't quite tall enough for the blue slide. I think she was still a little intimidated by it anyway, it's pretty steep. Atlas wanted to try the green slide, but got cold feet when he got up there. He was happy to enjoy the small log slide and water cannons seen in the top picture. I realized while looking at these pictures that I'm pretty sure I left Xan with my mom. I brought her the year before and it was sooo hard to keep up with everyone with the pool area being so spread out. This way worked much better. It was a fun day! We love our friends! <3 With this pool day we said goodbye to the neighborhood pool season of 2019. Thankfully we continued to enjoy my parents' pool through October. :D
September ushers in regular Heart Park Days again!! I always realize how much easier the park is than the splash pad once we go back that first Tuesday in September. Amazing! It's still a little hot those first few weeks in September, but definitely bearable in the shade and the promise of cooler weather is just around the corner. We had an amazing first Park day. There were around 20+ families that day. So many new faces and old friendships. Seriously, park day continues to be one of the highlight and staples of our week. It's a hard to imagine a day when my kids will tell me they're too old to go. I'm trying not to think about it right now. ;)
Near the beginning of September Sam and I took what I considered to be a babymoon! :D I splurged for some nice Astros tickets and I never do that. We hadn't been to a game since Atlas was a baby and even then, my parents had bought the tickets for us as a gift. We figured this was our last chance to go to a game for awhile. Xan was weaned so it wasn't hard to leave them all with my mom at that time. Since I have always exclusively breast fed my babies for at least the first year I don't go many places that aren't easy to take babies in that time frame. With Flynn being due in a few months, this was the time to go! My mom and dad graciously took the kids for us and let them stay for a sleepover. That way, we got some time to ourselves when we got home and got to sleep in too. We got to see Verlander pitch a gem on Verlander Bobblehead night. Astros won 2-1! It was a perfect babymoon in my opinion. A few days before the game we had our first sickness since the kids had the chicken pox back in March! Such an amazing stretch of wellness. It was just fevers and I was grateful for that as well. This ties in because my mom texted me just as the game was about to start and said... "Umm, Atlas is breaking out in a rash. Xan has a little on her too!" I realized after texting with my mom for a few minutes that they must have had Roseola. Jane had it when she was around 2. It's only a fever that breaks and then a non-itchy rash appears a few days later. Once we figured out what it was everything was good from there on. I'm pretty sure their rash had all but disappeared by the time they came home the next day.
The middle of September rolled around and with it came a tropical storm. But this is Houston, we get tropical storms all the time. So I thought no big deal. Well this was Imelda. We like to say she was Harvey's wife. She came in and stalled over us and dealt out torrential rain for a couple of days causing flooding throughout Kingwood and other areas in Southeast Texas. On Tuesday there was no threat of heavy rain just a few showers here and there. So I said lets go have a muddy Park day! A few of our park day friends joined us and it was a blast! The kids LOVED it. They were covered in mud by the end. When we got to the van I had them strip down to their underwear and ride home that way until I could hose them off. Definitely worth the mess! The next couple of days were not quite so lighthearted. Although our street never held water many homes and businesses flooded again when they had just flooded in May and before that in Harvey. Also my dad sent me the picture above of the ditch behind their house almost reaching it's banks. It's the highest we had ever seen it. Although Harvey rained for longer and affected a larger area, Imelda rained harder and faster and still caused devastating flooding in localized areas. It reminded me once again why I want to stay in my house!! Thankfully the only effect Imelda had on us was delaying a trip we had planned for that weekend. Which brings me too...
There's only one "First time at the beach" trip and this was it for my kids! We love to go to New Braunfels as a Daugherty family trip in September, but we decided with all of the kids ages staying a beach house would be better for now. I started adding pictures to this summer post and it kind of got out of hand. Then I realized the trip deserved it's own blog post. So here's a quick snapshot of our trip. If you're itching for more pictures and all the commentary then click here! To summarize it was amazing, better than I expected, I got to meet Bryn <3, all the kids love the beach and starting asking to go back as soon as we got home. And the answer is yes, we are going back this year! :D
The end of September means it's time for Fall! And by that time we are always ready for cooler temps! My kids are so ready that as soon as the temperature drops below 75 degrees this is what they choose as their attire. I hear a lot of, "We're so cold!! I need a jacket." Very excitedly. I'm like y'all are such Texas kids. Then again by the time it's December and the high is 50 they're like, "We don't need jackets, we're fine!" Haha, I guess it's all about what they're used to. I'm trying to teach them to love all the seasons. I think it's working for the most part so far. :) I'm writing this at the beginning on September 2020 and summer has been great, but man, I am so excited fall is coming soon. Come on cool fronts! We're ready!
Daniel 2:21-22
And He changes the times and the seasons;
He removes kings and raises up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise
And knowledge to those who have understanding.
He reveals deep and secret things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
And light dwells with Him.
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