Summer Fun

We've been so busy this summer that we haven't even updated our blog at all! The kids have been having a great time, but we're all ready for a break. Here are some things we've been up to.

End of Year Picnic at Jeremy's Teacher's House

Week 1

Big Truck Camp

Week 2

Celebrating Father's Day at Uncle Mike's (All of the Duncan and Case kids went to the creek!)

Week 3

Total Exhaustion

Abracadabra Camp at Imaginattic

Zachary LOVED camp this week. It was at a kids' art studio where kids get to create an environment base on a different theme each week. This week was magic. The kids made capes, hats, wands, a cool tie-dye curtain, and a stage. Plus, they each learned and performed a trick. Not to mention the cool art "magic" they learned about: perspective, making prints, using shadows, and blending colors. WHAT FUN!!! They even talked about how to avoid stage fright. Zachary's performance was top notch - I think he has a future on the stage! Zachary got to enjoy camp with his friend Aiden while Aiden's little brother Sam played with Jeremy 2 of the days. We had so much fun with Sam on Wednesday. This year, unlike 4 years ago, we're getting cicadas in our yard. SAM COULD NOT GET ENOUGH of them. Jeremy wants nothing to do with them, but he did tolerate Sam collecting them, and he even caught a few ants of his own. Sam was so afraid of Josey until he discover that she eats cicadas. Then he LOVED her, calling "come 'ere Wosey!!" every time he saw her. SO MUCH FUN.

After Abracadbra camp each day, Jeremy had Sporties for Shorties camp. The weather was PERFECT for it - not too warm and not humid at all. Still, Jeremy was a grump about camp. Apparently, he "does NOT like sports." Nice to know that AFTER we registered and paid for camp. Zachary had a chance to play on the playground at the park while we waited for Jeremy to be done at camp.Week 4
St. Columban Festival

We had promised the kids we'd take them to the St. Columban festival this year. It takes place about a mile from our house, but we've never gone. It poured down rain on Saturday night. After a LONG day of church and decorating for VBS on Sunday, we finally got to the "festible" (as Jeremy says). What a great time! The first thing they HAD to do was go down the FUN SLIDE. We had been driving by it for about 6 days, and they had been planning all that time.Zachary is tall enough for the swings!
Froggy is NOT tall enough. :(We know the REALLY important thing to do at a festival!
Vacation Bible School

A HUGE part of our summer has been Vacation Bible School. For several weeks, Mom has been planning and preparing as one of the preschool department leaders and teachers and helping with registration. It was EXHAUSTING, but so worthwhile. We had nearly 140 kids from age four through sixth grade throughout the week. This is well over over the 80-90 we've had in the past. The kids had a BLAST with our Big Backyard theme. The church looked so cool all decked out in trees, flowers, kites, doghouses, and even a treehouse. I didn't have either of my boys in my class (by design). My kids were so cute and fun, and we really made connections with some families. It was an AWESOME week.

School's Out!

Here's Zachary on the second to last day of school. That was the day of the class picnic when moms and dads got to see the awesome slide show of the entire year the teachers put together . Zachary loved his teachers and also got a great report card! He had a good year. I CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S ALREADY DONE WITH KINDERGARTEN.

The next day was not only Zachary's last day of kindergarten, but also his last day ever of tumblebees. Kids First is an awesome place that we've being going to for tumblebees since Zachary was 2. We love it, and we'll

miss all of his teachers there.

CRAZY WEEKEND

What a nutty weekend. After school Friday, we went to Tumblebees. Zachary only has one more week until he's a Tumblebees "graduate" and our gymnastics experience officially comes to an end.

When tumblebees was over, we went to my friend Amy's house to help her decorate a birthday cake for Mia. The boys played amazingly well with Mia (who turned five on Friday!) and her Dad and little brother. Amy and I were cake decorating maniacs. We created a stellar (if I do say so myself) Wow Wow Wubsy cake. It was so much fun to make. (The very best was when all of the 4 and 5 year olds finally saw the cake. Oh, and when Mia would walk by the in-progress cake and say, "Pretty good Wubsy, Mom.") Tim came over, and we all had pizza before finishing up the cake and heading home.

Saturday morning, we had 2 soccer games. Zachary's team lost a very exciting game with lots of close calls. Jeremy's team was soundly defeated (their first BIG loss of the season) by the powerful Fire Monkeys. You can see that Jeremy really loves his soccer. After the 2 games, we went to Mia's party at a local gym.

Our tadpoles, Pepperoni and Olive, are doing well. They are HUGE. (3-4 inches long.) They don't seem to making progress on the whole metamorphosis front, though. This is very discouraging, as the worst possible outcome of this experiment would be bullfrogs in December. WHAT would I do? One other stop on Saturday was to Petsmart, where a very helpful saleslady gave me lots of advice on just how to encourage tadpoles to grow legs. We're now feeding them frozen brine shrimp every day.

After church on Sunday, we had our church picnic. What a great time! Zachary was a PROUD participant in the pie-eating contest ("my first pie eating contest ever")! The video below gets a little loud. Let's just say there were some things going on off screen that you don't EVEN want to know about. Finally (YES, there is more), we had Zachary's soccer party at 5PM at LaRosa's. He was as happy as could be to get another trophy. Needless to say, we were all EXHAUSTED by the end of the weekend.

Kings Island, Take 2

I decided to take the boys to King's Island on Thursday after Zachary got home from school. Louise was going to go with us, and my neighbor Lee Ann was going to meet us with her son Daniel. (Daniel is almost exactly a month older than Jeremy.) When I picked Louise up, Rachel decided to come along and get a season pass of her own. Yay! Now I had one more person to ride with the boys. I was NOT willing to risk more illness just to let the kids ride more rides! So, Rachel wound up taking the kids on almost everything. We had a great day! Jeremy and Daniel both rode the Beastie (now actually called the "Fairly Oddcoaster") for the first time. They loved it! I managed to get away with only riding the log ride and the big swinging boat (hollering like a baby the whole time.) I'm so glad both Louise and Rachel have passes and will be able to hang out with us a King's Island this year.