Zoo Trip

We took a trip to our local zoo yesterday. Everyone said they had fun, so I'll call it a win!

Garden Update

They're getting bigger! I now have 3 watermelons and 3 cucumbers growing. LOL

A Day in the Life

Jason and Jack were racing in the pool and splashing all over. Shawn got hit by some fire, so to speak. He was most annoyed by it. He had to go chill so he could dry off. 🤷

The other two were swimming and got Shawn wet.
He had to lay down to dry off. lol

Racing

Splash

He is loving the new ladder for the pool. lol

Artist Jack

Drawing and watching TV.

Such a hard life he has!

Friday Five

I'm not sure how it is happening, but it feels a bit like our summer is slipping away from us. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone is sad that things are easy and slow around here, but it sure does feel like our days are whizzing by and we have nothing to show for it. 

Yet, I guess. Not sure what is going to happen next, but I do know that something will.

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This year's fireworks show was canceled in our city, so rather than trooping to the front yard to watch the show at the harbor, we went to the backyard to watch the fireworks in the neighborhood. And boy were there lots to see. It was a literal "surround" show - fireworks were set off in every direction for hours (and days). 

~~~

Everyone got types of Erector sets this week. Jason put together his set and played with Jack's. 

Shawn has played with his set every day this week, and that is on top of his daily wood working outside. He has a standing date with his dad to go out and use his drill on some wood we have out there. (It has actually been really good home physical therapy, so that is an added bonus.)

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Jack has gone full in on his slime kit that he got instead of the Erector set. He LOVES that stuff. lol

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Next week is bringing some eye appointments for the boys. Yay? lol

Cute Big Guy Saturday

Today was the start of a heat wave around these parts. Naturally, the only place to be is in the pool!

Tomatoes and Peppers

Our tomatoes are getting bigger. We've got two different kinds growing. We are also happy to see that our peppers have flowered! So exciting! lol

Summer Learning Update

Summer hasn't been a time for the boys to slack off of their learning. They actual have reading, math, and chores to do each day as part of our daily routine. They are doing so well with everything, too.

Jack:
Jack is on his third Magic Treehouse book of the summer. This one is Tigers at Twilight. He reads two chapters a day and is about 2/3 of the way through.

For math, Jack gets three practice sheets a day. When we first started, he tried his hardest to avoid the work, but now, he gets right to work and does well! He's been doing multiplication drills, multi-digit addition and subtraction problems, division, multi-digit multiplication, and time (think like what is two hours before this time? what time will it be in 7 hours? and how many hours between x time and y time?).

Jason:
Jason is back to reading the second book of the Divergent series. He's probably around 350 pages in so far, but has a little under half of the book to go.

For math, Jason has been working on order of operations, fractions, decimals, greater and less than, multi-digit multiplication, long division, and graphing. He is also getting three worksheets to do a day. He is a bit more reluctant to get started on his math, but he always does well. I think he is a bit of a perfectionist, though, so he wants everything to be perfect.

Shawn:
Shawn just finished a book today, Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket. It was a pretty lengthy book at 258 pages, so I was very impressed with how well he did with it, too!

Shawn's been doing SO WELL on his math! He's been working on multi-digit multiplication, greater and less than, fractions, order of operations, and division. (As an aside, he really has blossomed during his time at home. He seems to like the looser structure of "home school," and I think is less, for lack of a better term, threatened by it. Shawn also has a perfectionist streak in him, and he does not like it when he gets something wrong. He had developed some pretty strong avoidance strategies by the time quarantine started, so we've been working hard trying to break some pretty bad habits he had developed. I'm proud to say that he is definitely like a different kid in this regard!)


So proud of all three of our guys!

A Boy and His Cat

These two have finally developed a pretty sweet relationship. 💜

Camping

This last weekend, we managed to sneak away to go camping (totally socially distant, of course).

The boys loved the loft area. They spent much of their time up there when we
were in the cabin.

First camp fire of the trip.

Shawn and dad stayed at the cabin to tend our fire while Jason, Jack and I went to explore. The site was beautiful. This was the view from the hill above our cabin.

We were almost back from our stroll when we came across this guy.

He was just walking across the path like he owned the place. It was all I could do not to burn the whole place down and leave. LOL

Jason and dad making s'mores.

We came across this guy next to our cabin.

The boys took turns cracking some geodes we had.

They were surprisingly tough to open!

Here's Shawn in the loft area. He also thought it
was fun up there. He kept calling it "a crib." lol

We went for a short drive to the lake. This praying mantis hitched a ride on our windshield. The boys named it and everything. We almost had a new pet. haha

The park area near the lake.

We hiked a trail around the lake to check it out. We were searching for the perfect place to throw rocks into the water.

Water break. Jack is checking out an ant trail. Shawn is hunting for rocks.

We saw this cool flower while we were out.

As we were leaving the lake area, we saw this spot. Of course we had to stop and get a picture.

Then we saw a deer and her two fawns. They really do camouflage well, don't they?

It was a fun time and definitely a welcome change from the monotony of home!