First, let me say how sorry I am that I don't have pictures to go along with this post. Sad but true. However, since the whole point of my blog is to eventually print it out as a memory book, at least we'll have a written account of our activities this summer.
And we've been pretty busy this summer! To help keep us entertained and to help out my sister and brother-in-law, I've been keeping Ben and Claire on the days when Jennifer works. It gives them a little summer break from day care and we certainly enjoy the extra company and playmates. So many days this summer, I've been up at 6am to greet them! That's really early for summertime! But we've enjoyed having them. Ben, Andy and Colin love to play the DS and Wii together (and occasionally get upset when I limit their electronics time) and Claire has thoroughly enjoyed leading Elizabeth and Ryan around in various forms of pretend play (school, mom and dad and baby, or whatever camp she puts on for them that day).
Some of our days have been full of fun and others have just been calm and relaxing. Well, is it possible to be relaxing with 6 kids in the house?! Actually more than you'd think because they get along fairly well and keep each other entertained. The kids have been to the park many times, had lots of picnics, gone to storytime at church, joined the library reading club, seen a magic show, gone to a new splash pad near us, seen lots and lots of movies (gotta love air conditioned activities!), and played with the rest of their cousins. And spent lots of time in the pool! That's what they beg for every day.
Andy and Ben attended a soccer camp and had fun working on their skills with "real" soccer players instead of just their dad coaches. Colin, Ryan and Elizabeth were able to attend a little arts and crafts camp at the community center where they enjoyed making fun crafts and eating fun snacks.
Ben, Andy and Claire enjoyed WinShape C3 camp at our church. It's a super fun Christian camp put on by Chick-Fil-A. It's an all day affair for one week and the kids absolutely love it. In addition to normal, high-energy camp activities, they choose 3 tracts of activities. This year, Andy did secret ops (learning to serve others in secret), fast food (cooking simple snack recipes), and soccer. On Friday we got to attend Family Fun Day and see what he'd been doing all week. There was also a car decorating contest and I'm proud to say we won 2nd place!!! Our car was pretty cute, but I think we won because we dressed all 4 kids in blue (Andy's village color), blue hair paint, and blue face paint. Bonus points for involving the whole fam! It's a super fun camp that's well worth the money! We highly recommend it!
We also had a fun vacation in July! First, we drove to San Antonio and spent the night with my college roommate and BFF, Jill. We had a great time catching up with Todd and Jill, but our kids thoroughly loved playing with all the Kobayashi kids! I see many more visits in our future. The next day we left for Wimberly, TX and joined our cousins at a little swimming hole called the Blue Hole. It's just a little spring-fed creek that has lots of rocks on the bottom (perfect for throwing!) and 2 rope swings (perfect for jumping!). Just a simple little activity that we loved! The following day we went to Schlitterbahn!!! We hadn't been since Elizabeth and Ryan were very little and the kids loved being there. Andy and Colin loved all the rides. Ryan and Elizabeth were drug crying onto some of them, but they eventually learned to love them (or tolerate them). :) It was a full day of fun there that they'll remember for awhile. Our last water day was spent on Lake LBJ. Along with the Milholland, Cook and Baggett families, we rented 2 pontoons boats, 2 inner tubes, and 2 jet skis...yes, we need 2 of everything to accommodate 21 people. We spent 8 hours having fun and swimming in the lake! And there's nothing like 3 days in the sun and water to completely wear out your children! Before driving home the next day, we took our crew back into San Antonio. They loved walking around our old college campus, Trinity, and seeing different parts of it. We showed them our old dorms, the dining hall, and the swimming pool where we met! Ryan and Elizabeth were a little confused because we called it our school but they couldn't find our classroom or teacher. They didn't quite understand all of it but they did love the tiger statue! Then we attempted to see the Alamo, but it was too miserably hot and we were too miserably exhausted by then. I think we stayed maybe 15 minutes before opting for snow cones instead. But it was a fun summer vacation for all of us! (Oh yes, and Ryan was quite the trooper, despite the 101 fever he kept developing...because it's never a Graham family vacation until someone gets sick!)
Since vacation, we've really just been hanging out trying to stay entertained. We've gone swimming, played with friends, gone swimming, made crafts, gone swimming, put on puppet shows, gone swimming, and taught the kids how to pull weeds outside. They actually get into it occasionally. And we've gone swimming some more. Seriously, when it's this hot outside, what else is there to do?!
Even though it's been a fun summer, I think we're all looking forward to school starting. The kids say they're not ready for it, but everyone is starting to argue more, they're bored with our summer activities because nothing is new anymore, and there are no more camps or vacations to anticipate. I can't say I'm ready for the scheduled life again or the after-school busy-ness, but new seasons are always exciting and we have lots to look forward to!
