Summer Days

Yes, I apologize to those of you who check the blog regularly. It has been a while. The girls have been out of school for three and a half weeks, and I needed the break.
As soon as the girls were out of school the last day, the whole family went camping for the weekend with some fellow Pioneer Girls and their families. That Sunday, after we returned home, the girls headed out for the first night at Vacation Bible School at a nearby church. Some friends from school shared with us that the theme for the week was Joseph and Ancient Egypt, and I knew the girls would love it. (They did.)

It was more than a little rough that week, though, since VBS didn't finish until 8:30 every night. Yes, it's summer, but  that made for late nights and one or two grumpy girls for most of the week. Caitlyn also had a day camp that week, Monday through Friday. It was a theater camp, and they learned and performed music and skits from the movie Brave.

(Caitlyn played the part of Queen Elinor)

Whew. After that week, I was ready for summer "break" to begin in earnest. Last week was our church's local mission week, though, and Chad was gone again this year for the whole week. The girls went to our church's VBS during the mornings, and I helped make and deliver lunches to one of our other camp sites every day.

We have been both strawberry and blueberry picking with friends. The girls have also been spending a lot of time playing with the neighbors, which I have definitely appreciated. Amanda and some of the neighbors even ran a very successful lemonade stand during softball tournaments at the park.

However, the neighbors with whom the girls play most of the time are about to go on vacation for three weeks, so I'm planning a little more for the coming weeks. A few weeks ago, we read the first book in a series about the adventures of a little cat.

The series is written by Julie Andrews, so I thought we'd give them a try, since the girls are big fans of The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. They loved the first book, but our library doesn't have the others, so it took a couple weeks to get them. The second book takes place in France and the third in Italy, so I thought we'd make that our theme for the weeks ahead. (The fourth and final takes place in London.)
We're doing a U.S.A theme this week, because it just seemed necessary, and then we'll read our France book next week.
For this week, I pulled every picture book in our collection I could find that takes place in a particular state, or mentions more than one state, along with other patriotic, presidential, or U.S. history books we own. We have our U.S. map ready to identify the different places, and Amanda gets to review her capitals for every state. We're also planning some yummy red, white, and blue treats for the week, which I'll try to have up later this week, along with some other things we hope to fit in.