I'M BAAAAACK!!!! And we've been busy!

I'M BAAAAACK!!!! And we've been busy!

I hope you guys are all doing well! We've spent the last 6 months or so deep in some much needed family time and a few other endeavors I'll talk more about in a minute, but I have definitely missed all of my Simple Stylings friends while I was away. I'm so happy to be back in this space and although I will probably not be keeping a 3-4 blog post a week schedule, I plan on being here consistently.

So where do I start? Basically...my baby is going into middle school. Not sure how that happened but I've been feeling a huge pull to spend lots of mom and son time so something had to give. First off, we went to Disney for the first time and contrary to my expectations we had an AMAZING trip! If you have never been to Animal Kingdom's Avatar experience, it's worth it just for that!

We finished up our rec basketball season which has become my son's passion and I'm not mad about it at all. GO HEELS!!!! We also played soccer and spent tons of time at our favorite, Whitewater Center.

In the spring we thought we were going to sell our house, then we didn't. Then we thought we were going to sell it again, then we didn't. :) So we spent a lot of time doing some much needed, but far from blog-worthy home repairs. More on this later, I promise...

As a very proud mom to a loving and well-rounded little big boy, we wrapped up elementary school. #bestteachersever!!!!!!

We traveled to visit a few big kids as freshmen in college!

I am finishing a big project that I've been working on as part of a committee at our church that has been quite time consuming but to my surprise, very rewarding. We have been assisting with planning the vision for our church and it has excited me for the future.

Speaking of church, my sweet boy chose to go through confirmation this year and made the decision to be baptized and dedicate his life to Christ. #proudmama He has such a loving heart and teaches me about kindness every day!

This leads into perhaps our most important project thus far...we completed training to become a foster family and are just waiting on our state license. Not sure the whole Hogan gang is on board with us (yet) but this has been on both mine and my son's heart for a long time. We may have our first placement sometime soon! We've gotten the house prepped and ready for this possibility too so you'll definitely be seeing some room updates.

I wanted to make this summer special for us because there are some fun changes coming that are inevitable with middle school and changing family dynamics. We've made wonderful memories with our neighbors and friends. There have been birthday celebrations and holidays. We've spent time at the beach with YaYa and Papa and also brought a friend on vacation for the first time!

We've spent a lot of time outdoors and have picked up some fun new hobbies together, i.e. kayaking and indoor rock climbing. And we've taken some time to just be. To be still, to be less structured and busy, and to be together.

I've also become even more interested in fitness and nutrition and decided to take an online nutrition course. I'm trudging my way through it now (going to school is hard y'all!) and I hope to wrap that up this fall. Crossfit is still going strong, although I've been doing more yoga, walking and running than I have in recent years and it's been nice too!

This leads me to running with my big boy! He has decided to tryout for the cross country team this year and we've been running together (if you count me running a comfortable distance behind him and his buddies as not to be 'that mom') three days a week with a running group from our school. He was not a huge fan at first but I've already seen his confidence building in just a few short weeks. What he REALLY loves though is me forcing him to take selfies on our running break :)

We rounded out the summer with some dear friends who came to visit from across the pond, a night's stay at Great Wolf Lodge which most certainly will be a once in a lifetime experience (if you've been you know what I'm talking about..yikes!). We're going to see the live Dude Perfect show this weekend and hope to squeeze a quick river tubing trip in before school starts.

Needless to say it's been a very busy semester but wonderful in so many ways. I'm thankful for all of you who have stuck around and even emailed us to check in and make sure we were still alive! I've already got some fun stuffed planned for the fall and hopefully you'll get to see a little more travel, healthy living and even some #momlife posts depending on where the journey takes us.

Thanks for sticking it out and we'll be back soon on social media too...just in a more quality vs. quantity kind of way!

Cheers!