It's summertime!

This summer, with the addition of a 6 year old, things look a little different.  She is a very active girl and needs a lot to do.  I think it has a lot to do with her age, but also the fact that she has been living in a place where there were LOTS of kids to do stuff with.  She is now down to two 3 year olds, and that isn't always very fun for her.  She would much rather sit in front of the TV or computer, and as much as I LOVE TV, I realize this is not a good habit.

So, in an attempt to keep them occupied, and give the kids somewhat of a routine (since this Fall will be the first time any of my kids have to take part in a school schedule) I thought back to my days of being a fun Auntie and came up with an activity-a-day.  The summer after I graduated high school I took care of 2 of my nephews, ages 4 and almost 2 (just thinking about how cute they were makes me smile!).  All day, every day I fed them, played with them, carted them around and we had a ton of fun.  That summer I came up with a fun idea for each day, things like ice cream day, or swimming pool day, we would make jell-o jigglers, have picnics in the back yard; I think I was a better mom before I was a mom! :)

Anyway, it got me thinking that I should do that now.  Here is what I came up with:
Monday - Playground Day
*My kids love any playground, and with all the splash parks we have around here this is an easy one!
Tuesday - Library Day
*Story time is at 11:15am and we have already signed up for the summer reading club!  We've logged in 1 hr and 15 min of reading time!
Wednesday - School Day
*Because I will be home schooling Lyla in the Fall (yes, I just heard you gasp, more on the details of this later) I wanted to start to formulate a "typical" school day.  So on Wednesdays we have school, I'm trying to figure out what will work best for us in the Fall, since it will need to happen every day.  Macey wants to do EVERYTHING Lyla does (and does it well) and Xander wants to do everything, but only participates for about 3 1/2 min! :)
Thursday - Swimming Day
*Our friends, in a nearby neighborhood, have a great community pool.  They are allowed guests if they are there with them, so Thursdays is the day they have set up to meet at the pool.  We have done this for the past 2 years and it is so much fun.  However, our wet Texas summer has ruined our plans 2 weeks in a row :(
Friday - Friends day and Family night
*On this day I make sure that we spend time with some friends, even if we have seen friends earlier in the week, this day is special.  On this day we make our friends a card or special gift that lets them know how much we love being their friend.  I wanted to put the focus on appreciating others, so I hope this helps.  And it's family night, every Friday we will do something as a family, something special like going to the rodeo, or going out for ice cream or watching a movie.  During this time there are no cell phones (mom and dad) and we are all present (which means if we are at home I cannot do dishes or catch up on the house cleaning).

Here are two pictures from our first week, if we are away from home I rarely have my camera, I'll try to get better.  Like I said, we have yet to go swimming, but I know there will be plenty more hot days to swim this summer.

We had to make our sun since the storms got in the way!

YeeHaw!  The family went to the rodeo!

Flexibility is so important in all this planning, so this week we aren't doing any of it! :) We chose to do VBS all week!  More on that later!