Embracing summer

I realized after posting that Leighton would be in school soon and Riley would be missing him that I would miss him terribly as well.  When we were in the Bronx, he was in school full time, but since moving here to Houston he's been at home with me, and together with Riley we've become a little team taking on the city.  We've had a lot of fun and he's been great company.  I will really, really miss him.  So, I decided this week it was time to kick things up a notch and really start to embrace the remainder of summer and my time with him.  We have been pretty good at keeping busy and having fun, but I really want to make sure we do as many outings as possible before it's time for him to head back to school.

On the agenda this week we had:
- A trip to the Galleria mall.  I drove all by myself and parked in the parking garage!  We did some shopping and watched the skaters at the skating rink. We decided we'd go back again soon to watch more skating and have snack by the big fountain we found.
- Swimming and lunch at Douniazed, Zayne & Soraya's on two different mornings
- A play date (our last before she moves to NY - sniff, sniff) at Talia's
- Swimming lessons for Leighton (he is doing amazingly well, by the way!)
- A morning at the Children's Museum
- A morning at the zoo to play in the spray park and Children's zoo, which we haven't been to since our first visit to the zoo
- A visit to a grocery store (Randall's) we hadn't been to yet.  The kids were overly excited to find out they have the fun carts that they can drive ('other one' as Riley calls them when she is asking what kind of shopping cart the store will have when we say we are going shopping) but I wasn't overly impressed with the prices and selection!
- And. of course, lots of playing around at home.

Here are some pictures:

And now to plan next week!

I think we will be at the half-price book store in Rice Village and the library to get new books.  We will likely visit the zoo again.  And who knows what else we will get up to!