An un-scheduled summer

Before school let out, I was debating about how I wanted to handle this summer.  I knew about a lot of summer camps that I could sign the kids up for.  And one of my biggest debates was about making some week-long sewing classes for Kaitlyn and some neighbor girls.  I have a lot I want to teach her, and putting that all into structured classes would be a great way to do it.  I've had a lot of people ask if I would teach their daughter someday.  But it just didn't feel right.  I made the fliers and planned things out, but never actually gave them to anyone.  And I didn't sign the kids up for much, either.

In the end, I am really glad I didn't.  I was still basically bedridden the week that I was planning to teach a class, so that turned out for the better.  And it has been really nice to do things at our own pace each day, without anything we have to do.  My kids are not the "I'm bored" type, thankfully.  They would watch TV and play on their Kindles all day if they were allowed to, so it is mostly about finding things for them to do and peeling them off the screens.  We got our summer passes to the pool and skating places, and we have used those a lot so far.

We went on a hike as a family on Memorial Day.

Daddy took Tyler on the "Fathers and Sons" campout, and I think they had a lot of fun.

We went to a birthday party for Tyler's old classmate, and wow, this mom went all out!

I took Kaitlyn out by herself a couple of times, too.  We went garage sale-ing (I'm making up this term) one morning and caught the end of the Fireman's breakfast.  We got to watch the life-flight helicopter take off, which was really cool.

Another time, we went down to the booths at the Strawberry days carnival, got a funnel cake, and had fun in the park.

Christopher has a brother that is always finding crazy deals, and he managed to hook us up with vouchers to go see a movie.  Since the vouchers were good up to $13, I went ahead and booked $13 seats in recliners for the newest cartoon.  They were so awesome!  The kids were in love with the buttons that made their head and feet move.

One weekend, I left everyone else at home and drove to Las Vegas for my nephew's mission farewell.  The funny part is that I took lots of pictures, but I borrowed my brother's SD card to do it and so I don't actually have any of them.  I took this picture . . .

But my mom and I aren't even in it.  It was a wonderful trip.  I thought it was a bad idea as I started the drive by myself- it was 12 hours of driving in two days.  Seeing my family was totally worth it, though!

Let's see, what else did we do . . .

Kaitlyn decided to adopt a snake she found in our garden.  Thankfully we talked her out of that after a day or so.

She had to show it off to all the neighbor boys first, of course.

We went to a cousin's birthday party last week.  They are all obsessed with Minecraft, so for his birthday, all he wanted to do was having everyone come over to his house and play Minecraft on their tablets "together".  This was, it turns out, the best idea anyone ever had for a party, somehow.

Oddly enough, Tyler hopped right in and made friends with everyone else, chatting away with the other boys about the game. And Kaitlyn was the shy one that day.

She eventually warmed up to everyone, but she was just a bit nervous at first.

We also spent a week at the cabin trying to potty train Miss Jasmine.  The first time I tried, she nearly fell in once and thus wanted nothing to do with it for months.  I tried again last summer, but she was very against anything I thought was a good idea, and when she got off the potty and went right over to squat in a sandbox and pee, I knew it wasn't going to work.  This time, she was absolutely thrilled about becoming a "big girl".  Once I put "un-a-wear" on her, she wanted nothing to do with the diapers ever again.  However, for the first week she seemed to have no control over the situation.  It came when it came, and she couldn't make it happen on cue.  Thankfully, after a very LONG week and a half, it finally clicked into place and we have hardly had an accident since then.  In fact, she is my first child to get upset when she does have an accident.  The couple of times that it happened, I would find her screaming her head off in the bathroom, standing in a lake, and holding the stool she was trying to drag over as quickly as she could.  Almost made it!    I truly hate potty training, so I am glad to hopefully have most of it behind me.

On our good weeks, I've made sure the kids follow their "checklist".  They have tasks to check off every day, like reading and math, cleaning their rooms, etc.  I even taught them how to clean a bathroom properly, and cleaning their own bathroom is one of their tasks now.  That is my favorite part about summer- I get to have things in "Mommy school" that we just don't have the energy for during the school year.  I'll admit we haven't been perfect at maintaining the checklists, but it is good to have those goals.

And also good to ditch them when summer fun pops up. :)