Holy cow, an entire month since I last wrote anything on here?!? I really have become a slacker blogger!! Oh well, after many months of making many excuses, I am hereby officially accepting my own blogger lameness and laziness, and hope that you all will just hang in there with me during the dry spells in the Palm blog world. :)

However, there definitely hasn't been a lack of things to blog about. Here are a few of the major highlights....

• After several rounds of swimming lessons, Zander finally graduated from Level 1 to Level 2!! This was a huge milestone for him as he suffered through a lot of fears and tears over the course of the last year. But at this point, he can jump off the side of the pool and swim unassisted (crawl stroke) to the other side of the pool, is fairly proficient at the backstroke, and best of all, he LOVES being in the water. Woo hoo! We officially have TWO water babies that can swim!
• Charley completed a three week transitional "kinderstart" class last week that will help her transition to kindergarten. Needless to say, she is very excited to start "real" kindergarten in August.....and as hard as it may be for me to let her go, I'm excited for her. I have fond memories of kindergarten, and I hope she does too.
• Along those same lines, after much deliberation, research, and soul-searching, we have decided to send Charley to a private school next year, called Island Pacific Academy. It's been a long and painful process coming to this decision, not one that I wish to rehash in immense detail on here (it's not very exciting anyway), but we are all excited about this opportunity, even if it means selling our body parts for tuition money (just kidding of course).
• Tomorrow is officially our last day with Matt, Heather, Lane, Quinn, and Sawyer, so it will definitely be a day filled with a lot of tears. As you all know, this family has become part of our own family....our kids don't have any memories of important events, holidays, or moments during our time in Hawaii that don't involve this family.....sure are going to miss them. :(
• In order to celebrate Heather's pending departure, I did take her out for one last night on the town a few weeks ago, during which we enjoyed pool time, drinks, dinner, and a hotel room with no kids for an entire 24 hour period. While I'm not at liberty to divulge many other details (because Heather would kill me), suffice it to say that we had an awesome time and made some good memories. ;)
• As some of you may recall, we have co-owned a home in Whitefish since 2003, one that we have used as a vacation rental for over seven years. A few months ago we decided to try and sell this property and haven't had much luck so far. However, yesterday we got our first offer, so we are prayin' and crossing fingers that we can sell this thing, as it would be a huge weight lifted off our shoulders.
• Charley lost her second tooth, and thankfully the Tooth Fairy did NOT forget to come this time.... I think she learned her lesson the first time.
• A couple weekends ago we went on our third annual beach camping trip, with three other families, and we had a blast! I love being able to give the kids a chance to just run around, get dirty, and just BE KIDS! Plus, it gives them a chance to get in touch with their redneck roots.
• It's almost visitor time again! A great friend of mine from grad school, Lisa, will be coming all the way out from New York with her husband and daughter to visit us in just a couple weeks, so we are excited about that. And then in August we will be getting a visit from Grammy Bev for a couple weeks, and the kids already have their list of activities lined up that they want to do with her. Gotta love those grandparents.....:)

I guess that covers the big things....and of course there is always the every day summer things....beaches, friends, slumber parties, BBQ's, fireworks.....good stuff. So far summer has been good to us....let's keep it going that way!