Our Week with Melty Weather

It's been a busy week!  If you missed it, we went to the zoo on Monday.

Our small guests have been rediscovering all our preschool toys, which is fun.

We went to the park to run off some energy.

Hannah and Katie are getting braver about the swings.

Actually, they're pretty brave about everything!

Monkey see, monkey do.

Speaking of brave, Hannah was mastering the bucket stilts this week.  I'm so impressed with her.

Our little guests rediscovering all the preschool toys means that the other kids have been rediscovering all the preschool toys too.  Which is understandable for Hannah and Katie, who didn't have access to an abundance of toys when they were little.

It's a little bit more surprising to find my home grown 12 year old feeling the need to play with baby toys.

I'm going to call this summer math skills.  Those are baby food pouch lids.  Sorting, classifying, multiplying...

It's been such fun having these sweet little girls back with us.  Some of the clothes they wore here last year still fit, plus I've pulled a few things out of Katie's drawers (which needed to be gone through anyway).  This skirt?  Still a wee bit too big.

Sam and I used to take them grocery shopping together last year, and he was quite happy to revive that practice.  With two carts, I don't realize how much stuff we've got until we get to the checkout!  The little ones enjoyed the balloons we brought home.

I had to laugh at Katie's face when she woke up from nap time.  Blink, blink, they're in my room.

In other news, we're starting the back to school shopping around here.  Bri needed a new backpack after 2 years, and both Bri and Eli got at least some of their school uniforms.

Other than that, we're pretty much enjoying summer and trying not to think about school starting in less than a month.  I haven't bought curriculum yet, but I recently realized that I *could* get started with just what we already have.  Katie is not done with last year's math yet, so she's got a book to work on.  Hannah already started her 4th grade math book early, upon finishing the 3rd grade one.  And Jack is doing his math online.  All 3 kids still have work to do in last year's spelling books.  And we have plenty of science and social studies resources around here.  I was waiting for Paul to tell me when it was a good time to buy curriculum, but now I'm thinking we can just make do for a while.

Katie was so cute.  She asked me "Why do grown ups wear rings?"

Nice to see the bonnet I made for Brianna years ago still getting some play time.

This is "going to the splash park" hair.

We took this review item to the park to launch... only somebody (me!) put the batteries in the remote wrong, and the boys couldn't get it to work!  Eli figured out my mistake after we got home, and we rescheduled the launch for the next morning.  It's been 100* here lately, and I just couldn't go back outside that day to take pictures.

The little ones got to play in the splash park.  We usually avoid the splash park because Hannah and Katie can't get their prosthetics wet, so this was different for me.

After the splash pad, there was plenty of playing on the playgrounds.

It's funny to see how anything one does, the other wants to do, too.

Jack still barely fits in the baby swings.  I thought sure he was going to be stuck there, but he managed to get out.

It's always cool to me to see which siblings "click" in a big family.  Sam and Hannah are buddies, and Josiah and Katie are, too.

On the way home from the zoo, I challenged Katie to draw a bus.  She's getting quite creative in her drawings.  This morning, she showed me a zebra.

I pulled out a big coloring pad and let the Little Ones share a page.  I need to get out the Kwik Stix and see what they think of those!

I was cleaning up the school room a bit and came across this puzzle.  I told Katie to take it to her room, and the next thing I knew, she's assembled it!

I thought this week would have less running around, but that hasn't really been the case.  Eli's football practice and the big boys' workouts with the Marines and the Army have kept us up and about early every day.  All the running around has been good, though, since I've managed to go for walks at the park couple of times.  I'm down 15# since June 6, so I'm pretty happy about that.


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