Happy 4th of July!-History Week

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Happy belated 4th of July friends! I am falling behind but trying to keep up with all the "things" going on this summer, themes, work, and some on-line courses I'm taking. It's a lot but if I survive and the kids do too, we will have accomplished much. So a couple of weeks back we all celebrated the independence of our nation and we decided to couple that with history study. It was interesting and humbling to me, how little my kids new about our government and our history. We got quite a few books at the library but the biggest hit of the week was going to Log Cabin Village. (I was even a little skeptical after seeing the whining that ensued when I pulled out a book on our national anthem.) However, I was pleasantly surprised at the wealth of knowledge the employees had and how much there was to see and "experience" there. I would highly recommend! We got to spend the 4th with my sister and her family and really the rest of the week was somewhat lowkey as we were trying to recover from the long weekend before. I think Nick caught a little bug so we didn't do our normal firework extravaganza but decided to keep it closer. Some friends invited us at the last minute to come and let our kids shoot off some fireworks with them and eat bbq so we took them up. Thank you Harder's! Hope everyone had a relaxing 4th with some good apple pie.

Week #5 Games!

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Our last week of June was dedicated to VBS at a local church and the theme was GAMES! This has always been a favorite of my kids and a fun filled busy week. We usually take my niece to at least part of the events and this week we got to take her for a couple of days and a fun afternoon activity. Monday they all got suited up and ready to go. In the afternoon, the clouds parted so we headed to the Putt-putt for some games. Isaac hit the jackpot on one machine winning 1000 tickets. The kids think they won the lottery and on their terms they did. We split the tickets between the three and they each got quite a loot. The rest of the week was lots of games at home. This VBS sent home some games and some LIFE cookies which we enjoyed Wednesday afternoon. Friday we darted out a little early to make a road trip to San Antonio, probably the last one for awhile. We went to see my in-laws one last time before their big cross-country move to Chicago. We invited my sister's family along and made it a whirlwind weekend of road trip, Sea World and moving some furniture back home with us. A BIG thank you to my in-laws Gail and Bob for hosting us and my sister and her hubby for all their help for the weekend. We made lots of memories for the kids but kind of wiped out the parents. Enjoy the slideshow.

Week #4- Camping, Nature, Bugs Week

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What a week! This one was a doozy but definitely kept us on our toes. This week was our camping/nature/bugs week. When I'm creating these themes I have the best intentions but of course life certainly doesn't go accordingly to "my plan"- thank God! However, I'm learning the art of flexibility. Perfect example, girl scout camp this year. I must tell a bit of the story to understand what I'm referring to here. This takes us back to a crazy time last December, in the midst of deadlines, parties, and Christmas around the corner I was asked to be cookie mom again and in a weak moment said "Yes." I realized now be careful in those moments to not be too busy to make logical decisions. That being said, I decided to take on this role one more year so the girls could enjoy camp and to give the other full time working mommies a break. It was a bit of a crazy cookie season in January and February. If you are reading this blog you probably heard about it. So we get through the season, our troop exceeds my expectations for cookie sales. Wonderful! Fast forward to April. I wake up one morning with a bad stomach bug and lovely timing this is the morning I have to register my sweet girl for summer camp. By the way, registration begins at 5 am and if you log in at 5:15 am you have missed camp! So in between my getting sick, being stuck on a screen, having no help desk available at that ungodly hour, my daughter does not make it into the camp with any of her troop but two girls. I'm sad but I'm in survival mode. My mind is a little too busy with a family wedding we are attending two days later across the country and how I'm going to survive that and hopefully not infect anyone else. (Happy to report that turned out beautifully!) So...here we are summer quickly approaching and after many prayers and calls, Vivian gets switched to camp with her troop as do all girls from her troop. Only problem, I work the day she now goes to camp and it's father's day. Sweet Patti to the rescue takes my shift so I can take my little girl to camp. Again, thank you God! I'm ready to sit down and fill out paperwork and I cannot get a shot record for my child as the medical site is down, again on a weekend so no help in site. She can't go without this. I put together my best estimate, knowing she's received all her shots and we go with that. Crisis averted. The week is here we have organized a caravan and fun dinner after drop off. We go to check in the girls leaving a couple of minutes late and there is an almost hour line wait at camp. Yay! We get there and lines everywhere, mind you last year we walked into a near empty building and were gone within 10 minutes. We get all girls checked in and off to cabin assignments. So, we have 9 girls attending camp, 4 to a cabin and for some reason they have us spread out between 5 cabins. What this means is many girls by themselves and for 8 year olds staying overnight this is kind of a big deal. We calmly visit with the staff there and you think we just asked them to move a mountain to switch some girls in a cabin. Another 30-45 minutes of waiting to put our stuff in a cabin. Finally, the girls are checked in and we head to Babe's for a lovely Father's day dinner. This was our big adventure for the week! Other than that, we had some play dates, park times, horse camp with Papa, bike times, and outside fun, bugs at the zoo, smores pinterest dish, a swim party, oh yes and VBS in the evenings at our church, and a mini-try at a campout in our playhouse which ended in kids up till 11 and coming inside sleepy and hot. Still, they said that was a really fun idea mommy! If they only knew!

Week #3- Pets

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Now that both kids are officially in summer, we started with our favorite theme of the summer according to my kids- Pets! As mentioned before, we also did an update in Vivian's room making it bright and a little more applicable to her. The new theme is...dogs! Check out the fun pics in her room. Better yet, come visit us and check it out in person. We also got one more pet introduced in our house, no not a dog yet. It's a hermit crab for Isaac, and his name is Bat. We now have Beaver, Beauty, and Bat. Are you catching our theme? Of course we visited our local pet store and some friends that have a pet collection that could rival our's. The week wouldn't be complete without a trip to see our favorite family dog- Kenzie. Enjoy the slideshow.

Week #2- Jungle

Week two was a little more tame after crazy week one. We did however get to visit the zoo and see many animals, Three Parrots for a yummy dinner, and a water park with some friends. Here are a couple of shots.

Summer Themes begin...or should I say Reconstructed!

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Welcome summer!! I don't know if I have ever looked so forward to summer, or at least I couldn't remember the last time school seemed to drag out so long. I am so excited to say that we are doing our themes this summer along with many other new things. If you are new to our site, every summer we create themes that we gear our week towards- so we may watch certain movies, read certain books, visit certain sites, or eat certain things or places. Just to see how flexible I can be, we changed our first week theme three times! We reconstructed it to construction week. I had set out a goal to clear out our kids overwhelming spaces that they both seemed to have outgrown. Isaac's room was first, we started with clearing out the room and then wanted to paint the room. This seems easy enough and I like to paint, but we were taking the room from chocolate to a light faint blue. What this looked like was two coats of primer, two coats of paint, and then trim, and then doors. What it really looks like is a week of Isaac getting to play video games, about 10 or so trips to Lowe's, and way too much ice cream and McD's to bribe my child. Overall, I think it turned out really boyish and much brighter and less cave-like. We also reconstructed his shelf space to give him a little writing desk. We were trying to prepare for a new trundle bed we will be getting from Nick's parents house at the end of the month, and another dresser. In addition, we were prepping for a garage sale that ended up happening on short notice but helped clear out some of the clutter. After tackling Isaac's space, we worked on Vivi's. More of that to come! Finally, we took the kids to Legoland to enjoy building more things...it was a blast! I'm glad we waited a little longer to visit until both kids were out of school and we must have hit the jackpot of days because it was rainy outside and not busy inside. What a treat!

We have a third grader!!

Oh my goodness, we have a third grader. At our house the second you graduate from one grade you move onto the next. It's pretty crazy if you ask me! Here are a couple of shots of Vivian's last day.