A Smattering from our First Week of Summer

Although the first few days were a bit of a shocker, I think that we are easing into our summer routine quite well.  I did prepare, but I think all of us just had to get used to all being together all of the time again.  Koen and I love our routines though, so my prep work has paid off and he is loving our calendar and daily chart.

Now, before you go thinking I have a regimented plan for each day, don't get ahead of yourself.  I love a plan, but I also love encouraging my kids (especially Koen who struggles the most with this) to learn to entertain and manage themselves.  This provides a good framework for Koen to have some ideas of how to stay busy as well as being able to look forward to things we have planned, special projects, meetups, etc. (he loves to know the plan and set his expectations!).  

So most Tuesdays (just like last year) we will meet up with my friend, Deborah, and her kids.  We rarely get to see them throughout the school year, so Deborah and I love this time to hang out and the kids all do too.  We had our first hangout on Tuesday (oops, no pics).

In our free time at home, Koen has taken to bird-watching.  We took a trip to the library earlier in the week to get him some age-appropriate bird-watching guides.  He LOVES them.  Tavin has taken to it as well.  After breakfast on Wednesday the boys sat on the porch for at least 30 minutes.  Koen observed and drew and Tavin tried to spot things with his binoculars.

Over the course of the rest of the day look at the beautiful bird drawings Koen did free-hand!

On Wednesday mornings we have a standing playdate with my friend, Adrianne, and her kids.  Just like last summer.  This family is another batch of dear friends that we get to see rarely during the school year, so the kids and Adrianne and I were all excited to kicking off seeing more of each other this summer.  Here's Penn with Charlotte.  

They've both changed so much since last summer!  Here's a pic I dug up to prove it.

Koen and Tavin rode their bikes to the park and so Owen did too.  The boys all had a blast riding around in the hockey rink.  They spent most of their time in there (well, Koen and Owen also had a mock wrestling match).

In the afternoon, Koen was so excited because we got to do our first science experiment of the summer!  He came home from school last Wednesday thinking we would jump into them that day...as if!  I decided that we'd do two shorter projects.  The first was based on his huge interest in the birds in the backyard, so we made some classic bird-feeders.  He loved it.

After we set up the finished products outside, we dove into our real science experiment.  We are using more experiments from the same book we used last year.  We are in the section that is about the human body and so our experiment was "Feet Feelers," a test for the sensitive bottoms of Koen's feet.  He guessed 4 out of 6 of the mystery objects on the floor by feeling them with his feet while being blind-folded.  Not bad!

Today, Thursday, started with breakfast with Doug's brother who was in town to help a friend apartment hunt.  I'm so bummed I totally forgot to take a picture!  The boys did great at Pamela's in Squirrel Hill.  We all enjoyed breakfast and we loved seeing Uncle Dave in our town!  Then it was on to less exciting (ok, stressful) things...doing 3 grocery errands with all 3 boys.  I knew it was going to be a disaster, but we just blew through it as fast as possible and I apologized to pretty much everyone we were close to for their antics, volume and accidental bumps.  It's quite a crew!

That's the highlights from this week so far!