-Taking long bicycle rides! Now that the kids are in school I’ll actually get to go biking more often, I am so excited!  I went for a bike ride on Friday, another on Saturday, and if its not too rainy tomorrow, I’m going to go for another ride then – I might even try mountain biking again! Hopefully now that I’ll be able to go the gym, do my HIIT workout, and/or go for a bike ride every day I’ll loose the weight I gained this summer not being able to work out regularly and eating too much food in NYC!

-Spending time outdoors. I don’t like being cooped up inside during so much of the winter (like last year) and so I’ve been really enjoying taking runs in the morning with my dog, Lily, each day after the school bus leaves. Isn’t she sweet looking? I can’t believe she was a tiny little 16 lb puppy when we got her last year and now she’s over 50 lbs! For anyone who doesn’t know, she’s a beagle/golden retriever mix and I think they are just the sweetest dogs ever! She’s very patient with the kids – they can pull on her, sit on her, play with her and she never gets annoyed with them. She’s also very protective of them and will growl/lunge/bark at any stranger who reaches for them, as we found when hiking and a lady tried to help Ellie off of a rock. She not too big to be an indoor dog, but still big enough to intimidate people when needed.  (Though she’s so sweet that she rarely is intimidating.)

I also like being able to take long walks on our country road with the kids, heading down to the church at the end of our road to play on their playground. The kids like to walk through the cemetery on the way there.

This morning we put Ellie on the bus for her first day of preschool in public school, and Killian for his first day of First Grade.  Both kids were happy and excited!  Sadly, not as excited as I was, I think… I hate to be that mom who looks forward to her kids being in school all day, but after the last few months of David being out of town and me being home with the kids 24-7 I am happy to get back into a routine and have some time to take care of stuff on my own!  I feel like I’ve hardly gotten to enjoy the kids this summer since I’ve had to be multi-tasking all the time – I’m always working on laundry, dishes, cleaning, accounting, making doctor’s appointments, taking care of the Etsy shop, etc because I’ve had no time to do those things without my kids.  Now that they’re in school I can take care of all that stuff during the day and just enjoy time with them from when they get off the bus till bedtime.  Plus, I’m happy to get back to my part-time job – I really love it and find it fulfilling and I only got to go to my office a few times this summer.  Arranging childcare is so hard!  We live near family, but my parents and sister both work, David’s father works, and David’s mother had a lot of plans already for the summer and so I ended up staying home from work some days – which adds up when you only work one day a week during the summer!  But now, I don’t have to worry about childcare while I work three days a week – whew!  And on Mondays and Fridays every week I don’t have to work and the kids are in school – so I’ll actually get to do fun stuff like go shopping, go bike-riding, see movies no one else wants to see with me… I’m so excited – I feel like I’m suddenly free to be “Jen” again instead of only being “Mom.” I hope that doesn’t sound too selfish… Today I took Lily for a run after the kids got on the bus, went to work, went to the gym, got groceries, and now I’m about to do some cleaning before meeting the kids as they get off the bus. Then we’ll head into town for music lessons and then come home to a lovely Mexican dinner – I have spicy black beans in the crockpot and I’m going to make homemade tortillas to accompany them. YUM!

Update: The kids got off the bus and they both had a great time!  Ellie immediately said, “IT WAS GREAT!”

First, the haircuts! Ellie has been asking for short hair for a couple months, she said she wanted hair as short as mine but I told her that wouldn’t work for her hair (too curly).  I liked her hair long, but she wanted it short and I think she should get to pick how her hair looks, of course. She is thrilled with it!  Killian, Erin, and I all got haircuts, too… but Ellie’s was the biggest difference! Here she is with her new do:

Doesn’t she look adorable?

Afterward we went to Chuck E. Cheese’s – ugh. I don’t like that place, but the kids sure love it.  Luckily Auntie came because it would have been a nightmare trying to keep track of two kids – it was packed in there.

After that, we went to an amazing little cupcake shop in Roanoke – everything was declicious!

(I convinced Erin to get her hair cut, too! Doesn’t it look great?)

Finally, we went to the open house so the kids could meet their teachers for this year.  I think they’ll both have a wonderful time!  We let them play on the playground for a little while afterwards, and got some great pictures – I am LOVING our new camera!

Me and Ellie with a GIANT piece of Topaz, which is our birthstone:

Building a miniature Great Wall of China at the CMoB:

Holding really tiny hermit crabs:

The LICM was a huge pain to get to – 2.5 hours on public transportation (subway, train, bus) – but it was amazing! The kids favorite activities there were the Pirate School show, the climbing tower, and the bubble center:

It has been wonderful getting to spend so much time in NYC this summer, we got to try so many different kinds of foods, go to so many museums/aquariums/zoos, and I was really happy for the kids to spend time somewhere so radically different from our home in Floyd.  Personally, I like Floyd better overall – but NYC is great to visit!  The kids are now total pros at riding the subway, and are even more open to trying new foods.

Here we are on the Staten Island Ferry, and NO I am not wearing a fanny pack – that’s the backpack I carry Ellie in fastened around my waist.

I love this, if only we could have fit another backpack on somewhere…

Me and Ellie with a GIANT piece of Topaz, which is our birthstone:

Building a miniature Great Wall of China at the CMoB:

Holding really tiny hermit crabs:

The LICM was a huge pain to get to – 2.5 hours on public transportation (subway, train, bus) – but it was amazing! The kids favorite activities there were the Pirate School show, the climbing tower, and the bubble center:

It has been wonderful getting to spend so much time in NYC this summer, we got to try so many different kinds of foods, go to so many museums/aquariums/zoos, and I was really happy for the kids to spend time somewhere so radically different from our home in Floyd.  Personally, I like Floyd better overall – but NYC is great to visit!  The kids are now total pros at riding the subway, and are even more open to trying new foods.

Here we are on the Staten Island Ferry, and NO I am not wearing a fanny pack – that’s the backpack I carry Ellie in fastened around my waist.

I love this, if only we could have fit another backpack on somewhere…

The kids absolute favorite part of our most recent trip? Donut Plant!

And here’s the kids in front of Westhampton Lake at the University of Richmond:

The bad news is that Ellie re-broke her arm yesterday.  She took a fall out of a toy car at a friend’s house last night, started complaining about her arm in the middle of the night, and we took her to the doctor (again) this morning.  X-rays confirmed that she re-broke one of the bones in her arm so she’ll be in this cast for at least 6 weeks.

The kids like the building full of birds the best, and Ellie was just so cute exploring everything:

In fact, the zoo was so big and required so much walking that Killian was tired enough that he got in the backpack for awhile!    The kids also really enjoyed the ride on the monorail:

You can see the rest of the pictures in the gallery!

I’m not a subway expert by any means, and the only other subway system I’ve travelled as an adult is the Chicago subway. I was very pleasantly surprised – I found the NYC subway system to be a whole lot better than the Chicago subway! The subway cars were clean and there were not nearly as many “problem passengers.” In fact, almost every single time I got on the subway, people immediately got up and offered me their seats! I usually had Killian by the the hand and Ellie in the backpack, so I know I appeared to have my hands full, but I did not expect such kindness from strangers! It was very heartwarming! After hearing warnings about not riding the subway at night, I’m also pleased to report that we had absolutely no bad experiences.

So, here’s a few tips for using the NYC subways with kids in tow:
1- get a map BEFORE you enter the subway. I know – duh! – but I just assumed there would be subway maps on the wall to help me figure out which subways to take the first day in the city before I’d bought a map, but there are hardly any maps posted in the subway terminals. There are maps in subway cars, but that is not particularly helpful in helping you figure out which train to get on!
2- With kids, it is CRITICAL that you bring a water bottle and granola bars. My kids are snackers (as many little kids are – they have high metabolisms) and subway trips would have been miserable listening to them whine about being hungry and thirsty.
3- If you have two small children, put one of them in a backpack carrier. It really reduced my stress to only have to keep track of one kid around the tracks and getting on and off subway cars. Plus, the subways are often several flights underground and Ellie couldn’t do the stairs fast enough for us to keep up with foot traffic.
4- Be open minded. I’m very aware and very cautious of my children’s interactions with strangers, and I’ve taught them that they don’t have to do what random adults tell them to (Ellie will say, “You’re not my mama, so I don’t have to do what you say!” to anyone other than me). But, we had some lovely experiences on the subway meeting other people. I loved that my kids got to see a much more diverse population than they get to see in Floyd! On the way back from the Bronx Zoo (a very long subway ride!), a large east Indian family was in our subway car. When some seats opened up, one of the elderly Indian men sat down next to Killian and started talking to him and held his hand while they were chatting. It was very sweet!

The Children’s Museum itself was AMAZING.  I loved everything about it.  There was a hall of giant games including chess, connect-4, linkin logs, and dominoes. Honestly, we could have spent all day there!

Then there were all the different living environments: undersea, nature, the Arctic… my favorite was probably the section where the kids could pretend to drive a dog sled.

There was also a fabulous play area outdoors:

There was also a bug area, a construction area, a theater, a vet area… but my absolutely favorite was the ship/blocks room.  Gorgeous wooden ship and tons of blocks to build with:

Check out the rest of the pictures in the gallery!

I will be putting all the pictures in the gallery soon, but I think I’m going to go to bed early tonight and try to get caught up on my rest.