Progress
It's the first day of August and I'm already crossing items off my to-do list. Not bad. Granted, they were the two easiest. I could just sit here at my computer and do them, but still. They're done. And how interesting to install a computer filter and then spend the last hour trying to access porn. Good to know I couldn't get anything and the filter is doing its job. I feel much better about my kids' screen time now. Honestly, I should have done this years ago. Here's the list.

• Apply for Zinabu's Certificate of Citizenship. For my ramblings on this, go here. And I said no judging.
• Update our will and trust. 
• Fix the broken window in our basement. Long story, but it's a double-paned window and only the inner pane is broken so it's been easy to put off.
• Install some kind of filter on our computer to keep the porn away. We supervise computer use, but you never know what will creep in. Did I ever tell you about the time I was looking up a recipe and wound up at a "Girls, Girls, Girls" site? Yeah. A recipe, for Pete's sake. It grosses me out.
• Finish organizing our digital photos on our computer. I started but have a bit more to do.
• Create memory boxes of my kids' elementary school years. I have the piles. I just need to put them in something in a year-by-year format.
• Craigslist the kid stuff we no longer need but could get some money from. Like our B.O.B jogging stroller and North Face sleeping bags. 
• Go to the new IKEA that just opened. {OK, kidding.}
• Update my address book. You know, all the torn out return address labels from holiday cards that are held together by a rubber band and stuck haphazardly in my desk. I need to clean that up.

We've been reading some great biographies around here. 

There are a lot of wonderful books about Anne Frank, and of course her diary, but we started with a very simplistic overview of her life. Carver is fascinated with World War 2 (because he is 12 and he is a boy) so he knew a lot of the war details, but it was great to introduce the kids to such a remarkable young girl--who was not so different from them--and the details of what happened to her and her family. We also read a great little biography of Jesse Owens, whose story at the Olympics in Germany piggy-backed the Anne Frank story. Great books. Up next we have Benjamin Franklin and African American Inventors.