June Happenings

Summer has been flying by, I tell you!  I have three concepts that have kept our lives somewhat structured this summer, and it's consequently helped me to remain sane!  1. a clipboard with daily duties and chores for each of the kids (laminated for dry erase markers to cross out accomplished chores).  Man, they love it! Each morning I hand them their clipboard and they cross out duties as they are performed.  At the beginning of the summer, the kids wrote down their goals and I added those goals to the daily chores that needed to be accomplished every morning.  Shooting hoops, practicing German, math facts, piano, reading time, etc.  LOVE this idea and so grateful it has worked so well!

2.  As simple as this sounds-- I have a little white board in the middle of my kitchen table where I write out the daily schedule each morning.  Seriously, how many times can I answer- what are we doing today?? I tell them to take a look at the whiteboard and it gives them a sense of control and peace.  It's been awesome!

3.  A weekly planner to add special projects, crafts/cooking.  This helps to give the kids fun things to look forward to.  They love to remind me what is up for the day.  And sometimes we are too busy that day, but I typically try to get it done at some point during the week.  

We've had so many fun outings and events this month!  Not the least of which was our trip to Seattle to visit Grammy and Papa and all the cousins!  We've had an awesome time with old friends in town-the Dahlquists, and Lizzie who's about to go on her mission to Armenia!!  We celebrated Aidan's 8th birthday and baptism day.  Spent some seriously fun nights out with old friends like the Reeses.... Anna's become super close with cute little Drew!

Loved watching the premiere of Disney's Teen Beach Movie 2.  Haha-- we made a night out of it and everyone was a huge fan, mostly because of the cute music.  I have the only three year old in town that runs down every morning saying "mommy!  I watch Teen Beach Movie please?"  Shouldn't she prefer cartoons at this age??

We've absolutely LOVED our LegoLand passes.... we've been so many times and have enjoyed the Water Park with  Grandma and Grandpa- now that it's summertime.  So fun to float along the lazy river and  swim in the Wave pool.  Couldn't do it without Grandma and Grandpa- so we truly appreciate them taking the time out of their schedule to spend these days with us!  Grandma is always in charge of Anna and Grandpa helps with the big kids on the water slides.  It's always such a blast!!  

Lastly, we had a wonderful day celebrating Blake for Father's Day.  The kids woke up early to make strawberry waffles... you know- everyone wants to help!~  Evelyn created a banner made of ties with adjectives she used to describe Dad.  We played a fun FHE game trying to see who knew Daddy the best and expressing our love for him.  We sure do think the world of our daddy and feel so grateful for all he does for our family.