What the Kids Have Been Doing

Andrew and Alora have been so busy lately. The time between Memorial Day and Cookie's surgery has been quite eventful for them. The day after Memorial Day we picked back up with school. What a horrible mom I am, I know! Take the kids on vacation and then give them four more days of school? It was absolutely necessary, though, because Egypt had to fall to Rome! Math was incomplete (still is). My goals had not been met in Language and we had not finished the science book and the end was about space travel. Plus, Alora got sick the week we were supposed to be finishing up and so she missed three days of school and really needed to finish up her work. It was a tough four days but we did work on a very cool science project to finish up the year and Egypt fell! Whew! Next year in my planning I will not make them come back from a vacation so close to the end of school and have more schoolwork. I did give them shorter days and we accomplished alot.Joey finished up one chapter in math on triple digit multiplication. We finished one more chapter in Language about regular and irregular verbs. We finished reading Vinegar Boy, our chapter book. And Andrew and Alora worked about three hours on building the International Space Station. I have been keeping items like paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, foil, bottles, boxes, etc. with intent on giving the items to him along with models of the space station. It was totally put in his hands. I just said, "Build it." I knew he would love this. He studied the pictures I downloaded from the Internet and we talked about them and then he was ready to go with his personal assistant, Alora. It is not finished yet but they will work on it periodically throughout the next coming weeks and then I will post pics of the finished project.

On Friday of that week we decided to go see the much anticipated movie, UP, to celebrate school being finished for the summer. Good friends, Leigh, Luke, Caroline, Tammie, Skyler and Spencer went with us. We love having friends that will be spontaneous with us! Loved it! I cried three times. Joey laughed at me for crying in a cartoon but I explained that its really not a cartoon because its Pixar! The kids didn't really get all of the deeper themes and thought it was very funny. Perspective is everything.

We also had a visit from some friends, John and Karen Piwetz, on Friday. We went to Auburn with John and Karen and have recently reconnected with them. On their way back from a trip, they stopped by and had dinner with us. They have two beautiful daughters, that the kids met and played with back in April. The kids had a blast running around, playing inside and out.

On Saturday we had a neighborhood block party. Joey smoked meat, yummy! We had two inflatables and some very delicious food. We were able to meet some new neighbors who just moved to the hood and get reacquainted with some old ones who have lived here for years. We had a smashing good time and hopefully have made some new friends.

On Monday, the kids began swimming lessons for the first time ever! We are such late bloomers in this area. The kids will be swimming in the lake all summer (never without a life jacket) and in pools, so we just really want them to be more confident. They LOVE it!On Wednesday night, after church, we caught wind that Sonic was giving away free root beer floats, so guess where we went? I wanted to take a picture of Sonic. I even had my camera. But, I could not move with traffic and take a pic of the craziness that was Sonic! We did get our floats pretty quickly despite the HUGE crowd. The kids had never had root beer floats and decided that they would be better as Dr. Pepper floats but they were "okay".

Thursday was "Take Cookie to Birmingham Day" and after dropping her off, we headed to the lake for some serious sea doo action.

Bibi pulled Andrew around in the floating island.

Andrew and Bibi had a blast making waves!

Andrew loves jumping into the water now.

Alora also got a big kick out of jumping into the water!

And that is where I left them. I have heard that since Joey and I left, Mimi and Bibi bought an inter tube that seats three. They have had much fun being pulled around in the lake. The kids will return tomorrow in time for swimming lessons tomorrow night. What an awesome beginning to the summer!