Summer In Full Swing

It's official! It is finally summer. I was so looking forward to summer this year. I had had it with school. I had had it with homework and waking up at 6:30 to make 5 lunches. And homework. And bedtimes. And rain. And cold weather. And now it's here! School is finally over. My internal clock still wakes up at 6:30 on the dot, but I just hit the internal snooze button and go back to sleep. The weather is improving. We did not observe one bedtime at all last week. BTW: I no longer miss bedtimes. We are back on track with those. Kind of. I love my kids. They are home all day now and I am glad. But when it is 11:00 at night and I am still hearing a chorus of "MOM! MOM! MOM!" Cannot. Handle. That. So I sat them down Sunday night and told them they had a bedtime free week last week and I hope they enjoyed it because bedtimes were comin' back in style real quick like around here.

If you've been around here for a while, you might remember my weekly "Summer Fun Charts". The above chart is from last week.

This is what I have decided about this summer and its fun:

1. Gas is too dang expensive.

2. I don't want to be putting dang expensive gas in my van every 2 days.

3. We have everything we need for Summer Fun right here in our little town.

So it's like this. We are staying put. Right here. All summer long. Mostly. We have a community pool that we joined. We have a library with story time and other events. We have a new park down the street. We have friends galore. And we have 20 walking/hiking trails. All of it within 5 miles of our house. My goal is to drive as little as possible this summer. We live in a beautiful place and we need to take more advantage of it. That is why I was so excited to pick up a little brochure at the library that lists all the hiking trails in our town. I decided that the kids and I are gonna go on a different hike every week this summer. Last week went well. Here is a little recap.

The kids have had fun playing with friends. Here is Addy with her friend Blake. As you can see, she is still picking out her own outfits. And doing a fine job of it.

This is the hike we went on last week

It was fun but it started raining on us

Last Friday we went to the park with friends

And here we are. Summer Week 2.

Today was flag day. We had a little lesson about the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, and why this Nation is so special. Then we had our own little flag ceremony in our front yard.

Tonight we went to the library for a bird show.

So far this summer, I have been working my children's booty's off. And they have been doing so great at getting their chores done and working hard. I am posting a picture of their chore charts because people have asked me about them. Well, here they are. A lot of the stuff on them is really basic. I made these charts a few years ago because I was just so tired of asking, "Have you brushed your teeth?" a hundred times a morning. I have different charts for the school year, and different ones for summer. The chicken chores and the "Focus" are rotating chores. For chickens the kids rotate between feed, water, straw, and eggs. The focus is their thing they do that week to help me. It is also a chance for me to teach them life skills. They rotate between dishes, laundry, cooking and free week. The "All Together Now" chore is just for the first 2 weeks of summer. Every room in our house needs a major clean out. And we are having a big family dinner here this coming Sunday. So we are working on a room a day for 2 weeks to get ready for that. My favorite chore on the chart is "Chore of Mom's Choice". When the kids get to that, they have to come ask what chore of my choice is for them. And it is whatever needs to be done at that moment. Sometimes it is take out the trash, clean the sliding glass doors, clean your toilet, clean my toilet, give Addy a bath, clean out the fridge. Whatever I need done at that moment. Like I said, I posted this because people have asked to see my chore charts for my kids. This one is messed up at the bottom because it has something from the morning chores, just ignore that (the first section is morning chores, the last section is evening chores). If you want to see it larger, click on it. Hope it gives you some ideas. I will say this. Giving the kids chores and making sure they do them is not easy. It takes a lot of work but it eventually pays off.