My Girls

Our summer since visiting UT has been really nice. We've been busy going to Wed night market, the Pirate festival in Vallejo, park days in Sebastopol, Lorien's book club, and camping in my in-laws backyard.

At the market we walk by the shops. Lorien loves to get her face painted, so I make sure to have a couple extra bucks in my pocket for that. I love to sample all the fresh fruit. My favorite are the white varieties. White Cherries and white peaches. The nectarines have been good too, this year.

At the Pirate festival Lorien got to go on a treasure hunt, shoot apples on top of dummies with a crossbow, take a 15 min fencing lesson (hopefully I can get a video of that on here), and paint a butterfly. Vanessa got to paint a butterfly too. It was so cool to see all the beautiful dresses (don't look too hard!) and the fancy pirate outfits. There were even real mini canons! They were fighting the red coats.

My friend Farah invited me to a home-schooling meeting. We talked about our reasons for home-schooling and all that stuff. Then we talked about all the stuff they do as a group. One thing was park days, every Friday. So we decided we'd join them. Lorien made a couple friends there. They are two years older than her, but she does well playing with them. They are her size, so the age issue doesn't come up. I don't think the age thing comes up much with home-schoolers anyway. So we've been having fun there. There's this boy there that helps play with Vanessa too. It's very sweet. I hope we can keep it up. The home-shcooling association also had a pool day. They paid for half our fee. We took Darius with us. I left Vanessa at home with Jimmy. It was soooooooo much fun! Darius and Lorien and I just played for an hour and a half. We played tag at the end. I actually swam. I think I hurt my belly, but it was only a twinge, nothing serious.

At the beginning of summer, Lorien and Vanessa joined a book club through our library. They don't assign books, but they expect the kids to read or have someone read a book to them. We fill out the name of the book on a piece of paper and put a sticker by it each week. The library also puts on a special event each week. There has been singing, druming, museum on the go (really just a bunch of science experiments for the kids, pictured above), and I think there will be reptiles and a puppet show. At the end the kids will get a prize. I'm not sure what it is. It's taken a while for Lorien to get used to reading every week. She fights me a lot, but when she finishes reading that book she is so proud of herself.

This weekend we decided to camp. (Secretly, I think Jimmy's worried to take us camping for real, he says it's just 'cause he doesn't have weekends, but we could go from Sunday to Monday). Anyhoo, we decided to camp in my in-laws backyard. We got there around 5:00pm Friday July 3rd, and set up "camp". The fire pit was a tiny grill, and we each had our own camp chairs, so we could sit around it. I had made lots of food beforehand. We had bratwursts and polska hot-dogs. They were yummy. I cooked it all on the grill with wood from grandpa's pile. The chicken caused the most trouble. The juices made the flames huge, so the chicken was totally charred on the outside. The inside was perfect! Nice and juicy. I'll have to move the wood next time I do chicken. OH, before dinner we went for a walk to find marshmallow roasting sicks. We found some and Vanessa held them for us. She was in her stroller. She was hitting them on the ground and every time they hit the ground she said "die, die, die". It was cute, but I still wonder where she got that from! Hopefully just practicing sounds. . . We got back, ate dinner, made s'mores, cleaned up and went into the tent to sleep. I had made sleeping bags for our emergency kit, so we slept in those. We tucked the kids in, Jimmy was on one side of the tent, and I was on the other, so the kids were in the middle. It was cute! I read Vanessa a story by flashlight, then Jimmy read Lorien her story. I think we forgot to say our prayers! Anyway, they went to sleep perfectly, not a peep. Vanessa rolled around a bit. Her sleeping bag was all twisted up, but we were all nice and toasty all night long.

4th of July we went to our Stake event. The kids had decorated their bikes to ride in a parade of sorts. Then we watched a production put on by a few people. Singing and a piccolo/drum piece. It was nice. Then they had a presentation about our flag and how it came to be. Lorien was really interested. I'll have to do a special lesson on that one of these days. They posted the colors and Lorien was so excited that she could say the Pledge of Alligance with everyone. After the performances we ate muffins and fruit provided by the stake. Lorien rode her bike a little more, then we went back to our "camp site". We had planned on going on a hike, but it was really cold, well, not really, just very cloudy. So we decided to rest and eat and then go. The sun came out around 12:30, so went on the hike around 1:30 or so. It was a great hike. The wind was cool, so we didn't sweat all that much. Grandma and Grandpa, and Satin came with us. Lorien found good picture spots and asked to have her picture taken. We found some blackberries that were black. We all tasted them, I stayed behind to eat more 'till Jimmy called my name and I had to keep going. Vanessa got to ride in the backpack thingy Leda got us. Then she wanted to get out to have her picture taken! So she walked the rest of the way. Jimmy saw a snake at the end of the trail, which made him very happy. He was hoping to see one. Of course, that night we lit fireworks. We had to come home for church, but we'll finish our camp out tonight, and tomorrow we'll go on another hike.

So far our summer is turning out very nicely.