Family Reunion

This weekend we went up to Lampasas for Bill's annual family reunion. We had a very nice time visiting with everyone, and the kids were thrilled to see their cousin, Kenzie. Aunt Mary was kind enough to rent a giant blow up slip 'n slide for the kids.


The big "kids" got in on it too....


That night, Bill, the boys, and I went back home, but Avery stayed in Lampasas with her cousin Kenzie. One night wasn't enough fun, so the next morning, they called to beg for more time. So we met them halfway and brought Kenzie back home with us. The cousins all had fun together, and Kenzie was a joy to have around. The girls stayed up late for a second night, but managed to sleep in pretty late.


After an afternoon of swimming at Mamar's, it was time for Kenzie to have to go home. We miss her already and can't wait for her to come back!

Friday Night Game

Last Friday, we spent a fun-filled evening with friends at an Express game. We'd never been on a Friday night before, so seeing the fireworks after the game was a special treat for us. They were amazing!

Pflugerville Baseball Camp

Rhys spent a week at the end of June at a baseball camp in Pflugerville. It was a great week, despite the heat! Rhys's good friend JT went too, and they had a lot of fun learning new drills, practicing hitting, and, of course, scrimmaging. Rhys was tired by the end of the week, but not too tired to ask if he could go back for another week!

San Antonio

After seeing Dinosaur George at a summer library program, the kids were desperate to go to the dinosaur exhibit at the Witte in San Antonio. I wasted no time in planning it, and since Bill had to work anyway, I decided that the kids and I would go ahead and stay over night and make it a two day getaway in San Antonio.

After the quick drive to San Antonio, we arrived at the Witte and saw this awaiting us:

This was definitely the biggest animatronic dinosaur in the exhibit, but the ones inside were pretty cool too.

Eeek, scary!


After seeing everything in the dinosaur exhibit, we explored the rest of the Witte.




After getting our fill of the Witte, we headed to our hotel. We don't get much occasion to stay at the Hill Country Inn and Suites since San Antonio is so close to home, so I jumped at the chance to stay at our favorite hotel. It's such a great place for families. Each little cabin has its own kitchenette, and in the middle of the property, there's a great pool and playscape. As soon as we checked in, we went straight out to the pool.

And first thing in the morning, the kids took full advantage of the playground right outside our door.

We intended to go to the Riverwalk, but after experiencing the heat in the morning as we played outside, we realized the Riverwalk in the afternoon wasn't the best plan. So, instead, we opted to go to Natural Bridge Caverns.


We stopped to mine for gems, fossils, and arrowheads before the cave tour.

Then we did the tour. The caves were breathtaking! (And not just because we had to walk miles and miles.)

Final History Party

We wrapped up our year of studying the Middle Ages with a big party at History Co-op. The kids all came dressed as a historical figure from the medieval period. Avery, of course, came dressed as Joan of Arc (and recycled her Halloween costume), and Rhys was dressed as a Crusader.

The kids worked hard to put together presentations on different aspects of medieval history, and they all did such a great job! Rhys presented on the feudal system. He made a poster illustrating how the system worked and stood in front of the group to explain it.

Avery's presentation was on religion in the medieval period. She chose to focus on the big three: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

After all the kids finished their presentations, we had a medieval feast! We brought Russian gingerbread. We also feasted on mince-meat pie, Alfred cakes, and "ale".


One of the other families brought German Springerle cookies. They were so beautiful...it was almost sad to eat them! (But they were very yummy!)


And we celebrated the end of the preschoolers' study of the alphabet with letter cupcakes.

After the feast (and after shedding hot costumes), we did a timeline activity. This was the activity I was in charge of, and I spent a lot of time at home fretting about how to do it. We didn't focus at all on learning dates, so I didn't want the timeline activity to be too difficult and frustrating. In the end, I decided that we'd just give it a whirl, and if it was too hard, I would help them. Well, it turns out that I didn't need to worry! I was so impressed with the kids. They worked together and used the few dates they did know to figure it out. They were able to make connections between events and cultures that I didn't imagine they'd understand. I can honestly say that the kids learned more this year than I could have hoped for.


Next up: trebuchet!

The last act was a little tournament dueling. The preschoolers dueled a la "Between the Lions" by putting words like "moat" and "queen" together.

Final T-ball game

In early June, Griffin wrapped up his first season of T-ball. All-in-all, it was a huge success. He had such a blast, and Bill had a lot of fun coaching the little ones. Griffin can't wait to play again in the fall!

Sliding into first (with nobody even attempting to throw him out):


Go Hooks!

Poor, neglected blog

Blog? What blog?! Wow, it's been six weeks since I've posted anything. As I do every summer, I get out of the blogging groove and neglect my poor, abused blog. Somehow when things get less busy I forget to post about what we are doing. Well, here's a quick recap:

Avery is busy getting ready for music camp, which starts later this week. Rhys has done a baseball camp and will do basketball camp next week. Griffin finished two weeks of swimming lessons and is now swimming on his own! Bill and I are in the early stages of training for a half marathon, and I'm a planning fool: planning for the school year, planning for some classes I'm going to teach next month, and planning for our summer vacation. Add in lots of swimming, movies, library programs, mini-vacations, Round Rock Express games, and lots of time with friends, and that pretty much sums up what we've been doing the past six weeks.

Never fear: my compulsive photo habit hasn't taken a summer vacation. There will be many pictures to come!

Short timers

For the past two weeks, most of our activities have been winding down. We had a tie-dye/swimming party to wrap up science co-op for the year. Rhys's baseball season ended with a rainout (boo!). Griffin is down to his two last t-ball games. His preschool group wound up their alphabet study with letter Z. And we finished up our last couple of chapters of history with a brief co-op lesson and lots of play time at the sprinkler park.




Really, though, we can barely focus on anything. We're ready for summer. We're ready to laze around, read through huge stacks of library books, and swim until we shrivel up. I had big plans to finish up some things we didn't get to this year -- and we will -- but first, we're going to take a nice, long break and enjoy our summer.

Divide and Conquer

Today was a great example of one of my favorite things our homeschooling circle does -- the Divide and Conquer. We generally do things in multi-age groups, but sometimes dividing the group by age makes sense.

This morning, the "big kids" (ages 11 and up) all went to a friend's house to solve a mystery designed by one of the other moms in the group. The kids do these a couple of times a year, and they really look forward to it. The mysteries are always amazingly well researched and planned, and the kids love to get together to try to figure it out. This time, they had a murder mystery to solve set in Texas in 1841. Things they'd learned from their tour of the French Legation museum a couple of months ago were referenced. They had lots of information, clues, and even a code to decipher -- but they worked together and managed to crack the case.

Meanwhile, the middle group (7-10 year olds) went to another friends house to swim.

And my charges?

This motley crew of five year olds.

We had a fun morning of sprinkler playing, lego building, and cinnamon roll making. Sometimes it's fun to just do five year old stuff without all those bossy older siblings around.


I thank my lucky stars every day that we live in a place with such an awesome community of homeschooling mamas and kids!