A Running Start

Our first week of summer has been very busy and very fun! Coleman is potty training, which is another post in itself. He's doing very well with it, so we'll leave it at that. We stayed home Monday and Tuesday so he could work on his new skills, but yesterday we headed out for a few adventures.

We have worked all year and kept up with our reading logs from the library. Each month we had to document five books that we read and then take our log in for the librarians to give the boys a sticker. The program ran from Labor Day until Memorial Day. So yesterday we took our completed logs and got their gold seals! Andrew was very excited and proud. Coleman was excited too, but he was ready to find a book on jellyfish. We can't wait to start the summer reading program in a few weeks!



To prevent those "summertime blues" where the boys get bored and think there's nothing to do, I am borrowing an idea from Gigi. When I was little, she made me a "What can I do now?" box. Inside were lots of ideas for boredom busters. So we have a summertime "Bag of Tricks". Neither yahoo is really old enough to be truly bored, but I thought this would be a fun idea to go ahead and implement. The bag is filled with fun activities written on note cards. Some are things to do at home, and some are things away from home. Several days a week, we'll draw something out and see what we get to do that day. I showed it to the boys yesterday for the first time, and they were super excited!

Andrew got to do the first drawing and drew out fingerpainting. I was ready to get set up on the driveway, but he almost cried. He said he only likes to paint with a brush, not his fingers. Well, we couldn't have the Bag of Tricks be a flop on the first day, so we drew again. This time, he drew a picnic supper. They were so excited! I called Brent and had him meet us at the lake on his way home from work. Andrew talked about it all day long. We were afraid we might get rained out, but the showers held out for us. We took our picnic basket, blanket, and had a super time. Next time, I will be taking a much bigger quilt. I misremembered how big/small this beach blanket was. Several of us were sitting in the grass!

A couple of boats drove by and we got to watch one drive up on its trailer. Coleman was very intrigued by this process.

Jonathan really enjoyed his first picnic.

We ate sandwiches, chips, grapes, carrot sticks, and watermelon. Andrew loves watermelon. I think he liked it even better than our chocolate peanut butter cupcakes! He ate two pieces and asked for a third.

After they ate, the boys threw rocks in the lake.

Then we walked over to the dock and fed the fish. And yes, Coleman is barefooted. When I told them to load up at the house, he couldn't find his shoes. He had taken them off in the car on the way home from the library. I thought I remembered leaving them in the car. So I told him to get in his seat and we'd put his shoes on at the lake. We arrived to find no shoes in the car. They were on the stairs when we got home.

It was a great way to start out our summer!