May the summer begin!

This may be the best "Welcome to Summer" picture ever!  The day after school ended we went to the First Friday Mass with the homeschoolers, then to the pet store to bring home the bird, and then we were off to the pool in our neighborhood.  I ordered pizza to be delivered to the pool and dad met us there for dinner and swimming.

We've been swimming and had a few homeschool events, like a Poetry and Tea for Teens and a chess match for the boys.  I joined a gym and am exercising regularly after a rough start where I got a crick in my upper back after jumping in too hard.  Judah fell off of super high monkey bars that he shouldn't have been on and landed on the top of his foot.  I waited a day, but ended up taking him for an x-ray when he still couldn't put any weight on it the next day.  It turned out to not be broken, thankfully!  He was back up and moving on the third day.  

Genevieve has been having ongoing foot/ankle issues.  Since we have more time in the summer to deal with it and she decided she wanted to do the 100 mile challenge with the cross country team in preparation for the coming season in the fall, we got her x-rays and are now seeing a physical therapist to try to resolve her issues.  She has a collapsible arch and the first change they made was ordering her some special shoes with an orthotic insert.  I was really amazed at how different her gait was when she put on these shoes.  As I write this she is has a mile count of 22, I believe.

Then week three of the summer was VBS.  It is the first time EVER that all my kids can go to VBS ever.  Isaac was sick the first two days and Hannah missed one of those days from feeling poorly as well.  In the afternoon on these days, the girls have basketball camp too.  I got to exercise, shop, and work on my to-do list all morning!

Bobby's group

My girls said that all the high school girls are smitten with Drew and are always saying hi to him and saying how cute he is.  Oh boy!  Bobby thinks VBS is totally unfair because his two older brothers have red shirts and are in the same group with their cousin.  Plus, they didn't even let him mix his own slime, and he found out later that the red shirts got to.  The injustice of it all!  By Wednesday he was dragging his feet saying goodbye to me and not wanting me to go.  Monday and Tuesday, he was fine. 

VBS Camp Family Style

We were going to miss our church's VBS and so I suddenly had the bright idea to have the older three kids put on a VBS for the younger three kids.  I planned out a simple three day curriculum, camp t-shirts (that I majorly helped with), and assigned the three big kids their specific jobs.  Isaac was in charge of snacks, Genevieve was in charge of music, and Hannah was in charge of story time, arts and crafts, and the memory verse because they were all pretty closely tied together.  Holy Heros has a ready-made VBS for just such an occasion as this, but I looked at it and it was a little too involved.  I wanted something easy that I could mostly hand off to the older kids.  So I made ours up and am sharing it here.  I think that it was a wonderful experience for all of the kids and we will do it again in the future, even if we do go to an official VBS.  Even if it is only for one morning, maybe an Advent VBS day as a break from school or something.  Who knows!

I wasn't a huge part of this in action, in fact two of the days I was out when they were doing it, so I didn't get pictures of it in action.  I did get pictures of some of Drew's coloring pages and one craft.

Day One:

Story:  The Calling of the Apostles with coloring page

 

Memory Verse: "Come," Jesus said, "Follow me, and I will make you Fishers of Men." -Mark 1:17

Craft:  Write memory verse on light blue construction paper.  Use a dark blue peeled crayon on it's side and place netting under the paper to make it look like a net.  Glue goldfish snacks onto paper.

Snack:  Goldfish in snack baggies with a "net" drawn on it (aka blue cross hairs with a Sharpie)

Songs were the same all week.  Jesus Loves Me, Jesus Loves the Little Children, Baby Shark, This Little Light of Mine.

Day Two:

Story:  Good Shepherd with a coloring page

Memory Verse:  "I am the Good Shepherd; a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." John 10:7

Craft:  I drew a simple sheep on a paper and wrote the memory verse on it.  Everyone got to glue on a cotton ball each time they finished the sentence, "I love (insert name of sibling here) because..."

Snack:  Popcorn

Day Three:

Story:  Jesus Dying on the Cross with coloring page

Memory Verse:  Dear children, let us not love in words or speech, but with action and in Truth.  1 John 3:18

No craft that day because life got the best of us.  Drew learned the three verses very well and Judah knows them fairly well also.  After they completed the VBS stuff for the day, the older kids put on a religious movie for the younger ones as a reward.

At the beginning of the week we made these Divine Mercy tie dye shirts.  They turned out well and Brian insisted we use puff paint on them.  So we wrote "Jesus I trust in You" on the shirts.  The kids got carried away and did bonus tie dye shirts and puff paint shirts with old white t-shirts from the boys' drawers.

Here's Bobby's!