Summer Fun Part 1

The beginning of this summer started pretty rocky. For some reason the girls thought that summer time meantthat I was going to be entertaining them 24 hours a day. And if I didn't do that then they were allowed to be glued to the disney channel. So we had to set some ground rules so that I could remain a little sane theis summer. We made a daily schedule so that they knew what they needed to do and what things we wold be doing each day and so on. Although we didn't always stick right to it. I also made a jar of activites that we could do together such as crafts and activities to go do. I feel like I did a pretty good job of entertaining my kids and spending time with them, but they didn't always make me feel like I did very good job, which is why I am making sure that I put down a lot of the things we did so they can look back and see what I did with them.

One of the things I always do every summer is make sure we go to the library every week and that we participate in their reading program. That way the girls are still reading the whole summer and we are getting prizes and things that we can go do. We went to the kickoff party befcause I am a sucker for anything that I can take the kids to that is free. The girls got to make a fun little journal.

Of course our summer was filled with lots of popsicles. Most of the time I tried to make the kids wait until Annie went down to eat them because if she saw them she would freak out until I gave her one and then she would not let me help her with it, no she had to do that all on her own and in the process she made the biggest messes. Sometimes I think this girl thinks she is 5 years old not 15 months!

Lizzy is such a runner girl and at the beginning of the summer I told her that I would run with her. Well that didn't last too long, it just got crazy with trying to take all the kids and so we stopped. Maybe someday we can run together, although as you can see here, I have a hard time keeping up!

One of the biggest reasons that I have a hard time keeping up was that I was pushing over 80 pounds worth of kids! That is hard when you are out of shape! I knew that when Jane refused to ride her bike and decided that she had to run too that she would only get about 100 yards. And I was right! She kept saying how tired she was and then she got into the back of the trailer. It was just great pushing this lazy bum around.

We went to the park a few times when it wasn't too hot outside. Annie doesn't like being held down in case you cant tell.

Janie got a stamper for one of her library prizes and I guess she got bored stamping just paper because she decided to stamp her brother. Nice work Jane!

Once upon a time Aunt Judy gave us a little snow cone maker, and the kids still love making them.

The first week of summer the girls were begging me to make some gak so I used a new recipe and it didn't work out and Nellie was really upset with me over it, but the next week I went and got more stuff to make it and I used the right recipe this time and the kids were thrilled. Russy however wouldn't touch it and kept saying its nasty! I was not thrilled when I discovered they left some on the couch and it runied it, because it is basically just glue. Not cool. I don't know if we will be making that again.

I just had to take this picture because Annie snuck into Russy's corn dog and decided to take off with it and go sit on the couch. She thinks she is such a big shot.

One of the things that we had on our list of activities to do was visit the pet store. The kids loved it and they especially loved watching the mice because they were the only ones that actually ran around and did something other than sleep. They also loved the turtles, and all the other reptiles. One of the workers was nice enough to get out a snake and let them touch it. He also offered to let them hold it, but no of the kids were interested.

We made homemade popsicles this year too. It was really fun to find a really yummy recipe and make them ourselves.

We spent by far the majority of our time swimming this summer. We would go to the pool Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week and we had such a blast. Nellie make giant strides this year with her swimming. The first part of the summer she wouldnt even stick her face in the water, and by the end she is swimming so good with no fear and she even would go down the slide this year. I was so proud of her, she did so good. The first day was so fun to see Russy, he kept saying, Mom I swimming!! and he would go around and make sound effects the whole time. Annie was pretty good and pretty much just stayed close to me and Russy knew his limitations and always stayed close by and didn't get too deep, so we ended up having such a good summer swimming.

We spent one day painting rocks and it ended up being such a fun activity! I think thiswasone oftheir favorite activities we did. We of course waited until the two little ones were asleep because that could have been a nightmare! The girls were so sweet and were so nice to me and kept saying what a good job I was doing. I love these little gals!