It's Summer!

It's Summer!  1st Half of June

We have really been enjoying summer around here.  It has been so much fun to have the girls home, and to have a much more relaxed schedule (with no homework!).  We've been doing a system to encourage responsibility, being helpful and contributing to the family, and being kind to each other.  We are calling them "privilege sticks" and the girls earn them for doing their chores, working on their workbooks and reading (to keep their brains working!), and being good to each other.  Sometimes they are better at this than others, but it has been a fun system so far.  For every ten sticks they earn they get to choose a colored stick with a number that corresponds to a surprise activity.  There are four different colors, science experiments, art, cooking, and outings.  We've done some fun activities and it's kept us busy along with everything else we've been doing.  The girls are both taking a city arts theater class and a reading class every Tuesday and Thursday too.  They seem to be loving both.

The first activity the girls earned, pool painting.  The coolest part of these activities to them is that I let them make a mess!

 Matisyn painted lots of pictures on the pool and Emilyn spent most of the time painting herself!

 Lucas crawled inside the water table!

 Our next activity, making flubber.  Lillie and Cooper were over and got to play too.  They really had fun with this stuff, and played with it for hours.

Lucas has been getting bloody noses pretty often.  The girls went in after a nap and found blood all over and started screaming.  I went in and found him covered in blood.  He was fine, just another bloody nose, poor little guy.

 We've been so busy, this little guy hasn't gotten to bed on time.  He fell asleep in his high chair covered with spaghetti!

 Matisyn and Lucas are little buddies.  She loves when he settles down enough to snuggle with her.

 We had a fun day with my friend Amy and her kids playing on the slides.  It was so good to visit with a great friend, and to watch the kids play.  This was the first day of Matt's big work trip to Wyoming.  He was gone for 2 weeks, starting the second week of summer.  It was nice to look forward to friends coming to play after we said goodbye to Matt.

 Another one of our activities, making dirt dough, and then turning it into fizzy mud, with a baking soda mixture and colored vinegar in spray bottles.  We used the dirt dough to make dinosaur eggs for our next activity. I hid dinosaurs in eggs made of the dough.  The dough hardened over night and then I hid the eggs around the backyard.  They loved getting to search for them and then break them open and melt the eggs with vinegar.  Matisyn said the dinosaur eggs were her favorite one so far!

 My little dinosaur egg hunters!

 Matisyn's friend Ashley helped her hatch her eggs!

 While Matt was out of town he sometimes called and talked to the kids on the computer.  He was gone long enough that Lucas started to think Daddy was in the computer!  He walked up to it constantly saying, "dada, dada."  He pulled chairs over to the desk and climbed up and tried to talk to him.  He got so excited when "dada" would show up on the screen.

One of Matisyn's pictures from school.

 Matisyn and Emilyn spent three days this week at a summer camp down the street at Emilyn's preschool.  They both love making crafts and couldn't wait to go each day.  They decorated hats and sand buckets, made necklaces and sunshines, and painted bags and banks.  Here they are showing off all of their creations.

 Play day with Porter and Khloe

 Our tired boy, he fell asleep on the bean bag this time

 We spent an afternoon at the park with the family playing on the slides and shooting off the rocket.  Lucas is a little crazy baby thinking he can go on all the big climbs and slides, and scaring us the whole time!  He loves the park, and thinks he is big like his sisters.

Some pictures from my phone:

 The girls have loved going to the library each week this summer to look for new books, and to do the craft of the week.  Emilyn is loving all different kids of books, but she especially loves princesses and Splat the Cat right now.  Matisyn is becoming such a reader, and is loving chapter books now.  She's been reading a lot of Cam Jansen and Tiara Club books.

Matisyn did science experiment demonstrations for Lillie and Emilyn.  She is still so in love with science!

 We are getting in as much swimming as possible this summer at Grandma Barb's house.  The kids are loving having their cousins there right now, and they can't wait for their playdates together each week.  One of Lucas's favorite words is "Abby" which he repeats over and over.  Whenever I ask if he wants to go swimming he says, "Abby?" 

 Emilyn got to have one more month of dance through June before a summer break.

Emilyn taking over her Daddy's spot in bed!

 Dinosaur Museum

 This was our first visit to the Dinosaur Museum where Lucas was super engaged and excited about everything he saw.  It was so much fun to watch him run around and check everything out.  He was running and roaring all over the place.

 Lucas's first dinosaur dig.  His sisters helped him learn the ropes.

 The girls got to make fossils too during this visit too.