first starts and treats

the munchkins started school yesterday and it began with a rocky start. swimmer's ear and some general first day jitters had us ushering crying kids into the car headed to our elementary school. good news is that i picked up happy and very chatty kids (on the golf cart of course) from school at 2:30. i can hardly believe i am the mom to a kindergartner and a second grader.

my first day of school treat for them was a giant cupcake. it's such a funny mold, i needed to give it a try. there were a few issues since i was using a gluten free cake mix, but in the end, it all turned out. the icing on the cupcake was seeing the grins on my little boys faces when they saw what their treat was!

surroundings and opened eyes

i am definitely guilty of getting caught up in the day to day. not really seeing my surroundings and taking them for granted. we had friends visiting this past week and i got to see my little neck of the woods through the eyes of a tourist and love, love, love that i did. after a day at the pool and amazing mexican for dinner, we took a trip down to the lake roughly 2 blocks from my house - and of course we took the golf cart there. for anyone new to this blog, i live in a community where golf carts are the main form of transportation 9 months out of the year.

the sun was setting on the lake and as you can tell, the sunset produced amazing colors! the kids played in a little spillway under a bridge where itty bitty fish swim at their feet and they marveled at groups of ducks swimming by. sometimes it really does feel like my life is one big vacation. i call these moments "norman rockwell moments". they exist in a period of time that is so perfectly idyllic that you can hardly believe you aren't dreaming.

i'm going to soak up the beauty of the last week of summer before the munchkins head back to school and i will see you back here in a week or two.