Sweet summer! We’re in our last week of school but it feels like it’s already in full swing in some ways. All school-year extracurriculars are over, we have our summer planning TTT on Thursday (excited to fill these out!), we’ve printed out summer reading challenges, and our first swim meet is tonight – whee! Here’s what else we have planned this month… Wrapping paper courtesy of Annie + a watercolor penguin card by yours truly = a sweet Father’s Day package On my calendar:— Swim meets! Our neighborhood swim season has begun and it’s a fun vibe to spend many of our evenings at the pool surrounded by friends and neighbors. Since practice runs from 6-7:45pm across all three kids, we’ve packed sandwiches for dinner most nights alongside this 8-compartment bento box filled with fruit, veggies, pickles, chips, and cookies.— Father’s Day! I’m once again organizing a pastry bar from a local favorite cafe for the men at our church, and celebrating my own wonderful husband, Dad, and father-in-law.— Our 20th high school reunion! We fly to Connecticut later this month and can’t wait to squeeze our friends and revisit some of our favorite haunts on the shoreline. What I’m loving right now:— I picked up The Detective Dog from the library on a whim and it is a new family favorite picture book! The rhyme scheme is excellent (thank you, Julia Donaldson!) and the illustrations are equally charming. — I am late to the party but I recently made my first (and then second) purchase from Bookshop.org! If you, too, are late, their goal is to give readers the convenience of online shopping while supporting independent bookstores at the same time. You get to choose the local bookstore you’d like to support and they’ll earn 30% of the purchase

Our children have been gifted with incredible teachers at every level of education. From infant daycare, to Montessori preschool, to public elementary school, we have found wise, talented teachers happy to partner with us in educating our kids. Each has shaped their lives in ways that are already visible, but whose full impact we might not know for years. Grateful, grateful, grateful. Naturally, I wanted to find a way to keep these teachers close over the years, and that’s how we found our way to the graduation book tradition. You’re probably already familiar with it – parents choose a picture book and ask their children’s teachers to write a note in it each year, kind of like a yearbook. As a words gal, I love the idea of capturing memories and hopes for the future from these dear ones. June’s book now has several years of notes penned inside, and Shep’s has been broken in by his beloved preschool director. They’re both already on the short list of items I’d save in a fire. While this tradition isn’t a new idea, it’s become a beloved one in our family, and so I thought I’d share a bit about it today! How to organize a teacher picture book signing tradition Though this tradition requires a bit of sustained effort over many years (your child’s entire K-12 education!), it’s really an easy lift: once you’ve chosen a book (see below!), you simply have to produce it at the right time each year for the teacher to sign – and, perhaps more challenging, keep it safe all the months in between. (We keep ours in our children’s memory boxes.) Here’s the email I send to our kids’ teachers in late May: Hi [teacher name]! I hope you’re enjoying these last few days with

In March, I mentioned a trio of unwelcome disruptions to our family’s typically-stable life. Interestingly, all three arenas have experienced movement of some sort just one week into May. Not resolution, necessarily, not total healing, but movement — and as my physical therapist sisters like to say, motion is lotion. Sometimes, you just need to move forward, even if you’re not sure if it’s the right step, even if you’re sure it’s not a forever step. One tiny example? I now find myself an interim movement and music instructor :) After abruptly saying goodbye to our preschool (the preschool we’ve had children enrolled at for 8.5 years, sob), Annie just completed her first week at a short-term teacher-led and parent-organized co-op. We’re all chipping in as we can, and for our family, that mostly means bringing the snacks and leading parachute chaos every other Wednesday. Here’s what else we have on deck for May! The garden on April 20th and the garden yesterday! On my calendar:— Teacher Appreciation Week! We’re going with gift cards for a favorite shop in our cute downtown for our kids’ primary teachers, local ice cream shop gift cards for secondary teachers, and small Target gift cards for specials teachers. And hand-painted cards for all, inspired by Jodi’s ideas!— Mother’s Day! I’m organizing something special for the ladies at our church and celebrating my own wonderful mom and mother-in-law. — A weekend trip to Wilmington! The last time John and I visited I was a few weeks pregnant with June, so things will be a bit different this time around. The battleship, the beach, and some fun restaurants (here, here) are on our itinerary — recap to come in due time :) What I’m loving right now:— Let’s make this the John edition! I recently rounded

Though John was joking when he talked about ordering up the “perfect weather package,” you could have fooled me – the weather for our time on Hilton Head Island was practically perfect in every way: mid- to high-70s during the day, sunshine and blue skies, a cool sea breeze blowing in off the ocean, and low humidity. Bliss! The part of our spring break we actually could control – the itinerary – was pretty good, too :) I’d love to tell you about it, and share a few photos, too, if you’d like to see. We chose to make the drive on Monday morning, meaning that we had the whole weekend before we left to pack, prepare, relax, and look forward with anticipation, a beginning that seemed positively luxurious. Listening to The Wild Robot audiobook (which we did for free through Spotify Premium) made the five-hour drive go by in a snap – it was equally engaging for the 3-, 6-, and 9-year-old riders as well as the grown-up ones. Plenty of audiobooks have not held all three of our kids’ attention, but this one was a winner all around. With a lunch stop (at Lowcountry Produce, an old favorite!), we arrived on the island around 4pm and drove straight to pick up our rental bikes. (We had planned to bring our own, but a craaaazy situation the week before we left – getting gas from a station that had its diesel and regular unleaded tanks swapped, meaning we filled up with diesel (!!!) – left our car in the shop and us driving a rental van to South Carolina). We had enough time to unpack, explore the house, and make a quick trip to the beach before a storm blew in and rain began to pour. As usual, John