Summer

On June 8th, I thought summer would last forever.  But here we are at the end of July and we have about 1 month left of summer vacation.  And the best part is that we will be gone for a while on our family vacation.  Very much looking forward to that.

There has been a lot of bickering in the house this summer.  It seems as though it is always two of the boys that hang together and then there is one man out.  The arguments are ridiculous.  I get a lot of Mom he touched me with his pinky or Mom he is looking at me cross eyed.  It has been a bit frustrating to me.  Typically, if the boys are having a hard time, I get them out in the pool. But at times even that does not settle the arguing. 

We only had a few camps lined up for the summer.  Yes, I made a mental note to have more camps for next summer.  It helps for the boys to have an activity in the morning.  The boys recently did vacation bible school at our church.  They really had a good time.  Tee went to a Wee chefs camp and had a good time making and eating the food.  The older boys did a baseball camp last week.  They were taught by professional baseball players and learned a lot.

The boys have been working on their summer homework.  I ended up finding a package for Kindergarten for Tee.  So he has been working on that as the older two work on theirs.  Summer is just so long and it is good to keep their math skills sharp.  In fact, the boys have a tutor who is reviewing some of the math concepts they learned last year.  She will only come once a week for 4 weeks but I think this will help for when school starts.  I really noticed that the tutor helped last summer.

We decided we were going to ban all technology (itouches, computers, xbox, wii) for three days during a week.  The boys will go from one thing to another and I just get so frustrated.  We sat down with the boys and made a list of all the things that they could instead.  It was so nice.  They found other things to do.  I am getting ready to pull another round, maybe even do 4 days this time.

Garden was a bust this year.  I ended up planting it late and have had very small yield.  I usually have more cucumbers than I know what to do with.  This year, I have not had a one.  Zucchini, same thing.  I have had a nice helping of green beans and the boys just picked another round today.  I am fairly certain a family of bunnies have nested in my garden and are having an easy time getting their meals.  So mad at these creatures.  At this point, I will probably pull it all up.

I have made progress on some of my home projects.  It has felt good to clean up and clear out.  I still have a ways to go but progress is progress.  It makes me want to keep on going.  Of course, I always get sad when I have to clear out the stuff Tee has outgrown.

But now my focus is changing to get ready for vacation.  And that makes me happy.