Summertime...

Summer means many things to us. It's a time to be lazy, but also a time to be busy. School may be out, but VBS, yard work, housework, and all manner of vacations and visitors will take up our time. But we also have time for the things we forget to do during the crazy school year. For example....

Summer is crazy board games with drawing and sculpting and acting things out. It's a time for insanely long games of canasta and pinochle. It's a time for finally getting around to beating the video games we got at Christmas.


Summer is concerts in the park and friends over with no more agenda than "play". It's a time for walks and playgrounds.

Summer is feeding baby ducks - aren't they cute?? It's a time for chipmunks in the yard, and birds singing us awake.

Summer is getting as wet as possible, as often as possible. Fountains, waterslides, rapids rides, or just the hose in the backyard will get the job done.

Summer is Dorney. As many times as we go, there's always something new - like Nicky getting to dance on stage with Linus last week!

Summer is movies. Lots of them. A cool, air conditioned theater on a hot day, with a fun or funny movie - sometimes even free!

Summer is thunderstorms, rolling through for hours or minutes. It's the muggy air before the storm and the cool breezes after. Summer is rainbows.

Sadly for me (but NOT for the kids), summer is Grandma's house. Tuesday, my kids will be kidnapped.... er.... BORROWED *ahem* by their Grandma. Then, summer will be fishing, boating, swimming, ceramics, woodworking, quilting, getting spoiled senseless, going to castles and zoos, learning piano, and playing games in the camper. At least for the kids it will! For me... well, I needed two weeks to get ready for VBS anyway. And I'll be doing some consulting at Scott's work again. So hopefully, that part of summer will fly.

Longwood Gardens Photos

This SHOULD be a lovely slideshow of floral and landscape photos. If not... well, it's working on my end! (Sorry!)

Created with Paul's flickrSLiDR.

Longwood Gardens

"The earth laughs in flowers."

Longwood Gardens, near Philadelphia, is purely beautiful. I don't know whether it inspired me to garden or left me despairing of ever acheiving an effect 1% as lovely. Either way, we had a lovely day rambling around the gardens and conservatory. (Although the blinding mid-day heat nearly derailed our good humor!)

I'll post MANY many pictures of the landscape and flowers later (I'm hoping to figure out how to make them into a slideshow, since I have so darn many gorgeous shots) but for now, here's a few shots of the kids enjoying themselves. One of their favorite things to do was to follow the maps and lead us to the different gardens. Who knew maps were so entertaining?

Nicky seemed to enjoy the gardens' many fountains the most. I think he would have enjoyed playing in them more! Luckily, the children's garden did have one fountain to splash in!

Kai, true girl that she is, was a big fan of the roses, both outside and in the conservatory. No hothouse orchids for her!

For a little hands-on fun, we built this "tree fort" out of materials left in a field for that purpose. Why is picking up sticks more fun here than in the backyard? 'Cause I've got quite a pile that need my attention.... and NO desire to clean them up!

Nicky and Kairi also loved the audio tour of the conservatory. Finding the plaques with numbers, punching them in, and listening to recordings about what we were seeing made it much more interesting.

Our real favorite part of the gardens came later, though - Scott's promised me he'll blog about it, but I'll just mention here that Gaelic Storm ROCKS!!!

Busy, Busy, Busy

So, it's been crazy around here. The end of the year (Yes, I know it's June, not December. Trust me, this is the end of the year.) is full of all manner of last minute competitions and shows and events. Finally, finally, it is all done. Now I have a chance to record it here.

Sneaking in Fun

First, we hopped over to Dorney for a little after hours fun. I LOVE amusement parks and carnivals at night - they are SO atmospheric. We will probably get sick of Dorney by the end of the summer, but right now it's still novel and fresh. The idea of getting season passes to save money won't work, though, if we keep buying yummy treats while we're there!



Dance X-plosion

We took Kai out to Sparta, NJ (about 6 hours of time, all told) for a three-minute dance routine. *sigh* It was certainly a long day, but it did pay off. The girls danced fabulously to their "9 to 5" number, and won the adjudication of "Extreme Gold" along with a First Place trophy for Petite Small Group Jazz and a Fifth Place trophy for Overall Petite Small Group. Not too shabby!! We're very proud of her. It's a lot of extra work being in competition, but she always rises to the challenge.

Spring Band Concert

Speaking of a lot of extra work, we next headed to Kai's band concert. Nicky managed to stay awake for the whole thing this time - go Nick! Kairi did a great job. She and Sheridan had so much fun. They are both taking band next year, and are planning to audition for the jazz ensemble. I hope they get in - Kai has to audition as a pianist, since horn isn't a jazz instrument. The only problem is, starting in middle school, we'll be off to band competitions, too! Saucon recently swept the awards at Music in the Parks, though, and we saw an AMAZING concert by the high school jazz band, so I foresee many accomplishments in Kai and Sheri's future!


Art Competition

Were we on the topic of talent? Well, Kai and Nick certainly have it in spades. They entered an art contest at Daddy's work. Nicky had to compete against his sister, so he settled for an Honorable Mention prize for his adorable alien picture. (Which was still a great Crayola art pack and his picture framed!) Kai, on the other hand, won the 7-12 age division with a jungle scene the office called "Smiling Big Cats and Waterfall". She got an art lesson, movie tickets, and her picture will be displayed in the offices of Sungard. She had the art lesson tonight, and enjoyed it a lot... but I'm not really sure we can fit MORE lessons in her schedule!



5th Grade Farewell and Graduation

I was also sad to see several milestones in Kairi's life go flying by the past few weeks! She went to her first "dance", which fortunately was mostly swimming, volleyball, eating, and games - although some dancing was involved. From what I understand, the order of the day were group dance songs like "Cotton-Eyed Joe" and "ChaCha Slide". Isn't she cute in her matching dress and swimsuit? She went to her middle school orientation. She finished her DARE program and got a backpack, t-shirt, bracelet, lanyard, 2 pins, a certificate, and a bunch of other stuff. (How is that fair? I mean, I'm glad, cause it's my daughter, but the inner city kids who could USE this stuff just get a t-shirt, and the spoiled suburbanites get all the freebies. They even have free day camp in the parks for the kids in our district. Go figure. Off my soapbox, back to proud mama...) Last, but certainly not least, she graduated from 5th grade. They had a ceremony, complete with "Pomp and Circumstance". Kai was honored for being in chorus, band, and a girls group (a peer assistance sort of thing), along with completing the Hundred Book Challenge, and some other things I forget. All I know is, they kept asking students to stand up for this or that or the other, and she was always getting up.


So that's it, in a nutshell. The kids got their report cards today, and are now FREE for the summer. (They both did well. A's for Kai, S's for Nick.) We're glad they're so involved and dedicated.... but now I want to dedicate ourselves to doing NOTHING for a few weeks!!