The heat and humidity have hit hard. Usually, we don't have much rain this time of year, but man we just keep getting hounded. We had one storm this last week where the whole back yard was flowing. I have no idea where all the water was coming from, because we don't have a stream or river close to our house. It was flowing so hard under the back fence that it washed out quite a bit of dirt. We always have nature flow on the side of our house as the water drains to the street, but this was nuts.
My poor garden is getting hammered. If it's not the excessive heat it's the rain, or the bugs. I've been killing worms, grasshoppers and aphids. The tomato plants have been struggling. I've started seeing new buds, so I am hopping that we get another round, even if it is smaller.
It's hard to believe that we are three weeks into school. All of the kids have done well with sliding back into routine. One nice thing about homeschool is I don't have to reteach school routines from scratch every year. We always review, but after three years even Liam knows what to do. All are settling into the new curriculums well and Hyrum is taking a more active role in completing his school. It's been nice to not have to worry so much about teaching Hyrum and all the other kids. Lila's reading is coming along enough that I feel like I will be able to turn her loose on some subjects, because she can read the instructions by herself. Math is Liam's strongest area, but he is quickly gaining in literacy. I've seen him sitting with books more and more and wanting to know what the words say. I have started reading a chapter book to the kids (The Wild Robot) and they have all loved it. Liam enjoys it the most, which is a little surprising. He's usually the one that grabs the book and sits forever on the couch asking is it time.
With the heat and rain the kids continue to be creative in their play. A couple of fun things are the boys spent time trying to figure out a dino stacking game. It's really hard, but somehow they figured it out and can do it easily now. On another day, I turned when my name was called to find that the boys had learned a trick. They immediately wanted to know if dad wanted to join when he got home. It was pretty challenging, but they managed a few seconds.
Lila has been play more with her hair braiding and wanting to do it herself. Lila was putting ponytails in her hair and apparently Owen wanted some or she convinced him to let her, but they came running around the corner calling for me to look. All sorts of interesting things happen when I don't know what is going on.
I snapped this one, but because I needed to remember that despite all the fighting they do get along and are capable of playing nice.
Hyrum did a round of swim lessons and the middle two did another round of lessons. I was really shocked at how well all of them are doing, especially Lila and Liam. It makes water activities so much less stressful.
Hyrum also had testing for Kuk Sool. He passed and will be moving up in belt color. He was a little concerned about remembering everything, but he did well. I was nervous with breaking the board. It took him several tries but he was finally able to kick and break the board.
We made a summer bucket list and are slowing trying to get some things checked off. It's not that long of a list, but between the rain and summer just slipping by, we haven't checked too many things off. This week end we finally made it to a local waterpark. It took us three summers to try it out, but we finally make it. The older kids stayed for six hours playing and having a blast. Poor Owen made it until about one. At lunch he was exhausted, so I took him home for a nap. Tim was a champ and lasted the rest of the time. Everyone enjoyed themselves and we managed to not get burned, just some rosy checks for a day.
It will be another hot week, so it will be interesting with the kids stuck inside. Until then!
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