Back to school AND blogging!

We're back in business here on our family blog! We had an amazing summer and now the boys are back in school, Dan has officially started his new job and we'll be looking for a house without wheels soon. Elijah and Sammy both seemed to have a great first day of school today, minus some very sad news that Sam received at the end of the day. His best friend Ryder will not be coming back to the same school this year. Sammy has been talking ALL summer about how excited he was to see Ryder again, hug Ryder, play at recess with Ryder, be silly with Ryder. He is crushed. His sweet little sad face tonight just about broke my heart. We had lots of talks about how this is a part of life and how he will make new good friends.

Elijah saw his bff for the first time all summer. It sounds like they were super happy to see each other again. We are so excited to see what first and fourth grades will bring for our precious boys. Sammy has his same wonderful teacher from last year and Elijah's teacher seems great! He also has a new special education case manager (his fourth one since starting kindergarten), but she worked quite a bit with him as a para toward the end of last year and knows him pretty well. Overall we feel really good about everything!

Dan has been out of town for work for the past week and things have been a bit extra challenging since he's been gone. Buddy came down with some sort of puppy virus, so he we have been quarantining him while temporarily parked in Dan's parents' driveway (who happen to have a tiny new puppy). It has been quite the ordeal keeping him out of the puppy's sight because if he sees the pup (who happens to be his cute little half-brother!), he will want to play. Buddy has been sooooo needy and whiny and in my opinion depressed. I feel like I have taken better care of him in the past week than I have my boys! Every time I turn around he's sitting and staring up at me with a pathetic but sweet look on his face. I brought him to daycare today since he's been on meds for a week and hasn't coughed since Friday. He was EXHAUSTED when I picked him up. Mission accomplished! And Dan gets back tomorrow, so relief is on its way!

If you didn't follow our summer adventure on my other website, you can read more here! All I'll say about it here is that it was indescribably incredible on so many levels. I feel like it's one of those experiences that I want to write in greater detail about, but the words will take time to come out. We are both happy and sad to be back home. Coming back to Minnesota was almost confusing for me. This is "home" but we now drive our home. In many ways it's nice to be back on home turf, but it's more sad than happy that we're not on the road anymore. I have been dragging my feet about purchasing a new house because I don't want the stress that comes along with it and I'm secretly hoping our storage unit full of SO MUCH STUFF burns to the ground. We haven't needed any of that stuff and I'm not sure I want any of it back. I've felt lighter and better without it!

I hope to continue posting on here once/week minimum. I hope you'll stick around!