Summer Fun

James and Rett doing their 20 minutes of reading from their summer daily checklist:

Checking out the library "universe of stories" summer reading kick-off. All of the activities are outer space themed this year.

One of James's summer checklist items this year is to do a reading lesson with Rett. It was so sweet to hear him try to help Rett read this book. He would try to give him clues to what the words were, like "its the thing that is red and is on the tree...". I had to keep reminding him to help Rett sound the words out :)

Our 26 clearance chickens are getting so big! So far none of them have started crowing, so we are starting to think that they were mislabeled and are all girls!

I sent Anthony to the store to get the ingredients for lasagna. One of the ingredients was turkey sausage (to mix with ground beef). This is the kind of sausage he came home with!! So we ended up with hot-dog lasagna!

James and Rett taking a selfie at a library magic show:

James is loving playing basketball at the YMCA this summer! I was nervous for him since he has never played before and most of the kids are much bigger and more experienced than him, but he has done great! His coach is so good at actually teaching them the rules and the different skills and James is picking things up really quickly. He is the smallest and youngest on the team, but the other kids are really nice and kind of treat him like the mascot. He has two practices and a game every week, so Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday evenings are spoken for.

Since James's cub scout pack doesn't meet over the summer, James has started going to the church pack. They meet in separate dens for the first hour and then come together to play games for the last 30 minutes. It has been fun, but I'm really glad we don't have to do this during the school year. Staying out until 9pm at night is just too late!

Trip to chuckecheese for a birthday party. Man I hate this place.

Some friends from school invited us to play at their neighborhood pool. The kids had a blast!!

More basketball practice:

A thunderstorm knocked our power out before basketball practice. I checked the status on my phone before going home and since it was still out, we decided to go to a restaurant for dinner. Rett was so excited about this change in plan, he still talks about the wonderful time the power went out and we went to a restaurant.

Baymax's life is just so exhausting!

This. 100%.

James and Rett invented a pikachu game where one of them is a pet pikachu and has to snuggle to recharge. Sooooo rare to see them being sweet together and not trying to hurt each other.

James doing a basketball drill:

The boys had their 6 month dental cleaning and check-up. They both love going and think it is the most fun ever! It helps that they get to pick out from a treasure box AND the dentist does magic tricks for them afterwards.

After the dentist, we decided to go to the bouncy house place close to our house. The dentist office does a contest that you enter by posting pictures on facebook with their beach ball, so we did it right away.

Our female snake had been looking bloated lately, so we thought she might be pregnant. Sure enough, we spotted a large white thing in the cage and discovered that she had laid 5 eggs! We took them out of the cage and brought them to our friend who breeds snakes so that he can incubate them. So far two of them look healthy and should hatch in two months.

After we took the eggs out, this is what the snakes were doing. They looked so happy with themselves!

I bought a summer pass for the boys to the local trampoline park. I was worried that I wouldn't use them enough to justify the cost, but the first time we went the boys jumped for four hours! A friend of mine got the pass for her kids too, so she met us there and we got to talk while the boys jumped. So much fun, I can't wait to go back!

First Week of Summer Vacation

James saying goodbye to his teacher right before leaving on the last day of school. He was so excited to be done with 2nd grade, but he said he will definitely miss his teacher. I will too!

Anthony took the first week of summer vacation off of work so we could staycation at home. While driving around we passed by a few signs for local springs, so we decided to stop and check them out. Swimming isn't allowed in these springs, but it was still fun to look at them.

James was excited to discover the boil of the spring where it comes out of the ground. Nature is amazing!

The water was so clear, you could see the fish looking at you:

The second spring boil was in a little cavern:

The next spring was a hole called Green springs because of the green sulfur/algae water. Very strange! We found a little creek that we could taste test the sulfur water and James said it tasted great. No thank you!

Later in the week we drove to Gainesville to visit my mom and for Anthony to help my brother do some work on our condo. On the way there, we took a break to walk around this interesting yard art store. We pass by it every time we go to Gainesville, but we almost never stop and look around.

We ate dinner in Gainesville at a pizza place that gives kids pizza dough to play with while you wait. We waited so long, Rett started eating his pizza dough!

While Anthony worked at the condo, my mom and I took the boys to Otter springs near her house. The springs were sooooo cold!! The weather was overcast and started to rain, so we moved to the indoor heated pool. The boys loved it!! Some older boys spent hours inventing different ways to jump in the pool, so James decided to try it at the shallow end. He discovered his new favorite thing to do at the pool!

While watching movies at my mom's we realized that the remote control was missing. Since it is the only way to work the tv, we really needed to find it! We looked everywhere we could think of and couldn't find it. Then my mom offered a candy reward to the person who finds it, and what do you know James found it literally inside the couch cupholder! Apparently the bottom of the cupholder broke and the remote fell down inside of it. I couldn't believe he found the remote, that was the most impossible place for it to be!