Getting Ready

I've spent the past week getting ready for school. This is my favorite part of the year...maybe it's the teacher in me coming out, but I love sharpening the pencils, arranging and organizing the books, planning our schedule, and just getting ready. What amazes me is how terribly messy our schoolroom can get in the last month of school and what a couple of months of neglect does to the room. Piles, dust bunnies and some really scary empty cups have made for quite a marathon of cleaning and organizing! We even had the dog's crate moved into the school room over the summer, so she had to be kicked out for the school year. Every year I do some re-arranging of the room, this year's arrangement has been brewing in my head all summer, so I was excited to see it work logistically. Now hopefully it will work scholastically! Essentially, each kid has his/her own work area for independent work, and we have a project table where we will do art/science/etc. projects. I think that actually the kids are excited about starting school, something about a fresh new space and the anticipation of what new things mom has in store :)

Art supplies...

Bay's area and bookshelf

Leah's area and bookshelf
My plan is to give each area a cork-board but I haven't gotten that far yet.

Eric's area and shelves above

This is 3 bookshelves stacked on top of each other. It is pretty much all of our other supplies: math maniuplatives, flash cards, non-fiction resource books, and some other books.

Kit Goes Swimming!

Remember "Kit"? Well, Leah plays with her actually more than I expected her to. Of course, like all of the other animals that are her "babies", they get put on rotation, but Kit seems to be revisited more often than not. Which of course makes me happy :) Anyways, Leah has been asking for a bathing suit for Kit so she can go swimming (pretend) and so I took an old suit of mine that the elastic had stretched out and cut it for some fabric. Now Kit has a stylin' suit worthy of any poolside or beach!

Leah and Bay gave a little piano concert for Dennis yesterday. I had them redo it because it was so darn cute.

Camping in the summer

Usually, we like to camp in the fall and spring, not so much in the summer. But when the weekend looked to be less humid than normal, and our destination involved a swimming lake and beach, we had to take the chance for some relaxation and family fun. We also took the dog, which required that we camp in the "pet loop" which had no hookups. So we tried "dry camping" with our camper for the first time and it went very well. Of course, it would not have been so nice if it had been the typical hot and humid August, but because it wasn't, we were very comfortable, and even cool at night.

Saturday the kids and I went to the lake and they rolled around in the sand, literally; they swam, and they buried themselves waist down (Eric was buried all except his face). I only got these 3 pictures as my camera battery died right after and I did not bring an extra!
It was loads of fun. We went down to the lake each evening after all the crowds had gone and let the little ones play in the sand some more while Dennis, Eric and I threw the frisbee.
Now, after that brief respite from the heat and humidity (which has returned this week) I am ready for fall to arrive!