Post school we had our awesome vacation, which was followed by a week of minor mourning. Now we've moved on to the "enjoy summer" phase of 2015. I like it!
This is the first year we haven't scheduled a bunch of camps for Spencer and Quinn. Spence has a kind of odd schedule this summer with his football obligations. They schedule these practices either in the evenings or EARLY in the mornings. So he could do local camps if we wanted, but I didn't want to over schedule him for this short period of relative downtime. Quinn has even fewer plans. We looked at a couple of camps for him, but nothing really fit our interests and/or schedule. So he's livin' free and clear for the month of June. (Both boys are doing a sleep away camp over 4th of July week and we have a couple of other camps booked for July, so June is definitely the more laid back month!)
This novel down time has been pretty fascinating to watch. We decided that we would request the boys spend 30 minutes a day doing something productive around the house. Spencer has taken over almost all outside lawn care chores. It's amazing how much you can get done in 30 minutes if you want to move on to something fun. Quinn has cleaned walls and scrubbed doors and organized all sorts of stuff. These little chores are a great way to keep the house mostly clean and help the boys understand that they are expected to be contributing members of the family - at least for 3.5 hours a week!
After the daily chores are done, Spencer does one of 2 things. He either disappears to his room with his music or he disappears out back to his tree fort. The tree fort is pretty awesome - in a thrown together with stuff laying around kind of way. He seems to enjoy some solitude (with classic rock music company) and has worked very hard to build a spot that he can call his own. He's constantly dirty and stinky. Quinn is, as always, a social butterfly and is almost never home alone. He has a little pack of friends and they spend hours and hours together every day. They roam the streets like a little biker gang. They take turns going from one house to another to play games and drink sodas. They have epic (and loud) air hockey tournaments in our basement. Recently they found a set of walkie-talkies in our basement and they split them up so they can be in constant contact with each other. It's so refreshing and so SUMMER!!
The little guys' schedule really hasn't changed much. They are both still at Goddard every day, but Zane is now in their summer camp group, which means he can go on the field trips. Oh My Goodness does he love that! They have been bowling and miniature golfing. They have had the Kona Ice truck visit and have enjoyed a much more laid back, fun agenda. There are MANY more fun things plans for the rest of the summer for them. Summer is pretty awesome!!
This week we have more of the same. A very few evening events, a whole lot of food from the grill, a couple of visits to the pool (which the LBs are really loving this year), and maybe a special summer fun something thrown in for good measure. It's pretty amazing how enjoyable a simple relaxed visit to Chill Hill for froyo can be when your normal routing just doesn't have space for stuff like that!
Enjoy summer everyone! Hopefully you are also able to find some time to relax a little more and enjoy the people around you a little more. It's good to reconnect!
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