Sweet Summer and Beyond

If I just wrote about our summer plans, this is what the blog would look like.


(cricket, cricket, cricket)

That is exciting, let me tell you what! I haven't made many plans at all. Well, a couple, but after June, we are foot loose and fancy free. Most of these things are either a week or only a couple of weeks. Except the last two. They will go on and on. Anyway, here we go...

• Summer dance- I would really like the kids to take summer dance classes. They could take, and I'm asking them to, a dance they may not want to devote a year to. Or take a class they may be interested in to see if it would hold their attention. They cannot take what they've been taking as a regular class. It needs to be outside their normal. And we have to have shoes they can wear. I don't want to buy new shoes for three weeks of dance. Except the big girl. She wants to take ballet. If I have to buy her shoes, she may take ballet as her regular class next year. My hip hop girl in ballet. I have a feeling she'll love it. We just got done with recital and they'll have a couple of weeks off before dance starts. But, for the older two, there's always...
• Summer camp-They will actually miss the first week of summer dance because of summer camp. This will be the boy's first year, and the big girl's third year. They are so excited. The big girl will be sharing a cabin with some friends. The boy, however, will be the only middle school boy going with our church group. The big girl went solo her first year at camp. I'm hoping the boy does well. He is his mother's son. I have had to hear how excited they are since we started talking about camp at church in March. Some days, I have to tell them if they do NOT hush their mouths about it, I may have to beat 'em. And I would.
• Summer reading- This is something we have done every year since the big girl could read. I just kept adding kids as they learned to read. The big girl and the boy will be in the teen and tween program. Good grief, how did that happen? We usually register at a couple of different libraries. We are close enough to four, but we're only registering at three. Even though they're part of the same system, they all run their programs a little differently and have different prizes. It keeps the kids on their toes. And me, too.
• Summer math- Ugh! Who wants to do math in the summer? Me!! But I'm weird that way. I have these fun math books from the makers of Highlights. Math and fun do go together! No, really, they do. I promise. This way, the kids keep some of their skills, it's not a cruddy math book, and I don't have so much to back track on when we start school again. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
• Summer cooking- See how that tied in to the chicken dinner thing from the last one? I am clever! It is time to teach the kids to cook. The big girl has a few basics down and the boy, too. But they would starve if they only ate eggs, chicken nuggets, and hash browns or french fries. The big girl got a cookbook for Christmas several years ago. I think we may start there, replacing yucky ingredients with good ones. If they can read a recipe and know what it means, they won't starve. That makes me happy. I can throw nutrition in there as well. I smell cooking disguised as a unit study. Shhhhhh!! Don't tell.   

Those are our summer plans for now. Not much really. Just enough to keep us out of trouble. Yeah, I know. I need ALOT more than that! But that's what we're doing for now. 

Have a great day.