My Weekly Notebook: river, lake, and blue raspberry syrup

 

Life this week...

It was a hot week. Like nearing and over 100's. Which meant a lot of inside time keeping cool or if we were outside we were (hopefully) in water. I wanted to go to the coolest place with water, the coast, but it just didn't work out.  We did go to the public pool, and of course we have our little backyard pool. Water and air conditioning were definitely the biggest needs of life this week!

Homeschool this week (summer edition)...

I am still very much in the planning for next school year and life lessons of summer season right now. We had some big things that needed to be done this week, so we didn't get much "school" done. I'm ready to get back to it next week though. Alex is in the middle of a science project that has been on pause for a few weeks, and I'm ready for him to finish it. We are also in the middle of reading Summer of the Monkeys that we need to continue.

Mom-school this week...

Not much for me either, but I did have fun trying out Alex's mini light bright. It's still kinda fun to see the little pegs light up when they go in the holes.

 

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

Like I said, we went to water, a lot. First outing was the river with our co-op friends for a park play day. We went to Dallas City Park. It has a swimming hole in the river, and it's a gorgeous park. I'd like to go back sometime and explore on a cooler day.

Alex enjoyed swimming in the river.

 

A different day we went to the lake and took the boat out. I only got one picture from that outing. Alex is ready to go boating. It was super hot, and we couldn't wait to get in the water.

 

My favorite thing this week was...

Attending a picnic with my clogging dance family. It was a clog-down show-down. I decided not to dance, but it was so much fun watching. I kinda regretted not even trying in the end. We also played a few fun games as teams. It was good. Being a part of this clogging studio has been so good, and such great people.

My kids' favorite thing this week was...

Alex  was super excited about buying his favorite syrup flavor to make his favorite "dutch" soda called Dinosaur Egg. Now he can make it whenever he wants. 

These are the 2 syrup flavors in the Dinosaur Egg. We thought we had a Torani Strawberry syrup, but turns out we didn't. We only have the Hershey's strawberry syrup, but it worked! We'll replace it with Torani when the bottle is empty.

 

Things I'm working on...

I am working on so many things, but I think for today I will say I am working on a stars and stripes quilt that I hope to finish before summer's over. I've only got about 1/15 of the fabric cut out. Guess I should get on that!

Random things the kids worked on...

Alex has been working on this LEGO boat this week. He decided to build the side walls with holes so the water would drain quickly. Then he had fun playing in the pool with it to see if it would float.

 

Something I accomplished...

I helped the boys clean their room and I finally got blinds and a book ledge up. They haven't had real blinds for a long time, and the book ledge we've had in waiting to up for a while. Their room looks awesome now, and we can finally walk in there!

New blinds up

A new book ledge for under Alex's loft bed. He's so happy to have that.

What we're reading...

I am reading Little Ford Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett to preview for this school year. It is one of the books that Alex is going to read. So many good books on deck for this school year. I hope to read at least a few before hand, but most I will probably just read right alongside them. This book is so good so far.

 

 

Outdoor time... 

I took a walk early one morning and really enjoyed all the beautiful flowers and lovely green grass of some yards. Oh and it's the end of July so I counted up our estimated hours outside this month. We have a total of 69 hours outside! I'm pretty happy with that number. It puts us well over 100 for our first 3 months of counting our outdoor hours.

Some flowers on my walk

I'm grateful for...

A new month. The month of August is a fun one for our family with so many birthdays.