It's usually a dreaded week of the year: SCOUT CAMP
A week where I pull duties as a single mom while my husband uses a week of his vacation time from work and takes the youth from our church on their summer activities. Off and on for the last 8 years or so we've endured mountain biking, camping, rock climbing, etc. Stephen loves it, I support him.
So this week in his absence we stayed busy: (sorry for the lack of photos--Stephen had the camera)
TOY STORY TRILOGY:
We watched the whole Toy Story Series 1, 2 & 3 This was pretty fun, we own the first one and that's all my kids had ever seen so on Monday night we reviewed #1 (a perfect FHE activity!) and then on Friday night we borrowed #2 from some friends and THEN when dad got home on Saturday we watched #3 which we rented on Blu-ray. They were really cute. I think I still like the first one the best but the last one was pretty cute too!
SWIMMING:
Every morning, except for Tuesday (we had doctor appts) we hit the community pool by 9:00 and would swim until Matthew needed a nap, at around 10:30. This was so ideal for us as Lindz and Sam just finished some swim lessons last week so this let them get even more exposure to the water and let me reinforce what they'd learned. The pool was not crowded at that hour so I could keep a better eye on my kids. And it allowed my kids to get a bunch of energy out and helped them be pretty mellow for the rest of the day.
CHORES & LESSONS
Another way we stayed busy was a chart of chores and lessons that we did faithfully each day. My children already do a daily chore but in the summer we add to that chore list as they are home and around to learn AND with them all being home, keeping the house in order is a lot more work. That combined with Kaitlyn's daily piano practicing and Sam's reading lessons, we were pretty full.
DEVOTIONAL
My favorite thing about summer is the added time in the mornings where we get to really study the scriptures and go into more detail teaching and explaining the gospel found in them. This week was 2 Nephi 31 and it was fun to create a diagram showing a path that leads to heaven that has a gate you must pass through to get on. Doing this diagram with Sam and Kaitlyn really helped it click for them. They were all into it and it was a great mommy moment for me!
The other thing that they're really into is "marking" their scriptures. Parts that they really like, they'll highlight and mark up. Sam even has taken to opening his scriptures on his down time and "looking for words that make him feel happy inside" and marking those. Sometimes I wonder if it's going to get out of hand and if they'll miss the concept of highlighting because it seems so much like being able to color in a book (total no-no in our house) but for now, if I'm guiding it it's working ok.
Throw in a couple doctors appointments and an adventurous purse shopping/kick board shopping/sonic ice cream treats outing with our favorite Rachel Hay--one of my most special friends--love this girl. (And my new purse is super cute!) And that was the week!
So that's how we did it, we just stayed busy. And know what? I LOVE having all my kids home with me and planning our week of activities and doing special things with them. Bring on the rest of the Summer!!
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