• Family,  Travel/Vacation

    Switchyard Park in Bloomington IN

    Coolest. Park. Ever 😎👍 We visited Switchyard Park in Bloomington today. It’s brand new which totally adds to the charm. It wasn’t “packed,” but it was definitely busy, and we went around 10am on a Thursday. They have a nice and cool covered picnic area, so definitely plan ahead for that. Thankfully I brought a gloriously cold and delicious iced tea from Starbucks or we all would’ve had a heat stroke 😅🥵 The playground area is pretty much all fenced in aside from a couple places where it opens up to walking/hiking paths. Definitely watch out for that if you have wildlings like I do. There was a moment when…

  • Family,  Parenting

    A Reader in Bloom

    SuperSnap has come such a long way in her reading. I have a hard time relating because I LOVED to read and tested out of HIGH SCHOOL in reading when I was a first grader. 😳 (no one knows how I even learned, it was a TOTAL mystery) 🤷‍♀️ So, when my brilliant and beautiful daughter proclaimed that she didn’t enjoy reading, I scraped and scrapped every possible avenue to help her enjoy reading. I tried everything. Reading reward charts, incentives, silly stories, reading to dogs…The only thing I couldn’t properly manufacture at home was REAL peer competition, an obvious struggle for a rural homeschooling family. This kid thrives on…