Summer Recap 2018: Week 1

Since Zach and I were on our romantic Disney trip the first true week of summer we’re kicking off our first official family week of summer the week after we got back: May 31st – June 9th! (Yes, it’s longer than a single week ha! I just combined the days we got back with the week following) If you’re new around here I typically do a monthly summary post year-round of all of our family fun as well as an individual monthly summary post for each kid. In the summer though? I stick to a weekly post that covers EVERYTHING from that week!

Structure is important to me, even in the summer. With a new baby this year I knew a lot of our days and time would be spent at home so Spear could get all of his naps in! I sat down with the kids and came up with a very rough daily routine. Notice it’s not time specific, I know Spear’s set schedule so I base things off that but nothing with the older three is as set in stone!

You can also read more on summer scheduling in these posts:

• Creating a Summer Schedule and How to Keep It
• Balancing Fun and Structure During Summer
• Preparing for Back to School by Keeping a Summer Schedule

We also create a bucket list each summer of things we want to MAKE SURE we do. I really tried to keep the bucket list practical and do-able. For example, in the past we’ve lived at Wild Adventures over the summer. With a new baby? I didn’t even buy passes and explained to the kids that we wouldn’t be doing that this year. Each summer we take a trip to the peach shed for ice cream. Also not practical with a new baby. So we planned for LOTS of FUN but also kept it realistic!

Can’t have summer without some corn on the cobb! And an excuse to use some of my Target – Disney Haul finds 🙂 

Who sees a rainbow and doesn’t take a picture?

Something I really, really want to make a top priority this summer is shifting some of the household responsibilities that I currently manage to others who can also manage them. First step? Do a little kitchen rearranging so the kids can REACH everything THEY need. I moved the bread basket lower and put their cups in a tub and stacked their plates in an easy-to-reach spot.

Not only does this allow for them to easily grab items to help in meal prep…but it allows them to be able to PUT AWAY the clean dishes each morning. Double mom win 🙂 

After Tess’s Spring Evaluation I knew learning time would be an important part of our day this summer. I want to make sure she’s fully prepared for K4 in the fall and it’s also always good to keep the older kids up to speed with their skills as well. 

My main passion when it comes to learning time for my kids is reading. If you noticed on our summer schedule Kye and Britt don’t have to sleep during nap time but they do have a full hour of reading in their beds. This allows them rest but also that time to focus on reading and keep those skills in place. No summer slump here! They also are allowed to read in their beds at night before falling asleep and if they wake up before it’s time to get up in the morning they are allowed to read. By giving my kids a LOT of reading opportunities, they’ve both truly become avid readers!

Britt said her favorite thing about school was doing the school work so she busted through the packet of worksheets her teacher sent home for summer super quick! She is ALL about the learning time!

We LOVE these Melissa and Doug Puzzles. They’ve really helped her learn and are super fun!

Here’s a video 🙂 

Someone is bitter that Mommy didn’t take him swimming ha!

Hello Summer and our Post-Lunch swim time!

Our oldest two are allowed to watch Star Wars and they have been SO PUMPED to see Hon Solo! We got a sitter for Tess and Spear so we could have that quality time with Kye and Britt. We got popcorn and candy and all wore our Star Wars gear for the fun night out (yes, night! Bonus fun for getting to stay up late!). 

Struggle with #popcornpants at the movies? That butter stain that is SO hard to remove? Enter my GENIUS idea to put a plastic bag around the popcorn bag…it keeps in all the grease and avoids any mess! Whoop whoop!

I had quite a few thoughts regarding the Hon Solo movie so we put together a YouTube video here of our family review of the movie 🙂 Overall it was a WIN to us!

All four kids home all summer? Bring me ALL the coffee (especially in my cute Mickey Mug from the Target-Disney Line!)

Another big thing this summer is that I REFUSE to feel GUILT over having a baby at home that needs nap. It’s a struggle for me because that last TWO summers we’ve been super, mega YOLO. I knew a baby was coming our way at some point but I didn’t know when so we lived it UP. And it’s a bit of a hard adjustment for us ALL to go from go-go-go do-do-do fun-fun-fun to being at home allllll the time. 

But I’m not going to beat myself up over that. Boredom for kids is a POSITIVE thing and I have seen so many benefits already this summer by just letting the kids figure out stuff to do. Hello, siblings are a GIFT to each other so they have built in friends to get creative with 🙂 

I see LOTS of fort building coming our way over summer!

Carter celebrated his 4th birthday! 

Besties!

Britt was alllll about the fun scratch off scene!

I laughed when I started editing these pics for this post…Spear wore this SAME outfit to Cam’s party in July haha

All the party crew!

I love that our kids have such sweet friendships at church and I love that our preacher and his wife make such an effort to really spend quality time with the kids of the church family. Kye and Jack went to The Mill with Mr John and Mrs Liz for some fun pizza time together before both also heading to Georgia Bible Camp for the week!

Just a little pizza

Ready for an awesome week at Georgia Bible Camp!

This girl is such a princess 🙂 

Britt’s love language is quality time and physical touch which lines up just right with Zach’s so these two know how to give each other the love they enjoy best!

With Kye gone at Georgia Bible Camp for the entire week I tried to make it really fun for the girls. It works out well since the girls really are the two closest out of all the sibling pairs so this week gave Kye a BREAK and allowed the girls to really enjoy their special bond! 

I made homemade waffles!

Cool Mom Monday 🙂 

I recently discovered that Britt uses her top bunk as stuff animal storage haha Clever girl 😉 They LOVE getting up on the bunk bed with ALL the friends!

We swam SO MUCH this week so get ready for lots of swim pics! ALL Britt wants to do during summer is SWIM and we have a pool so we SWIM 🙂 

This baby float is a must have!

My children are FISH!

Tess has gotten SO BRAVE this summer! I was nervous because it’s the first year we haven’t done any updating for Tess with swim lessons but I felt like she didn’t need it and it’d be a big hassle with the baby so I didn’t sign her up and I’m glad I didn’t b/c she did NOT need the update! She is AWESOME! She’s now swimming on her own not needing me to be in the water to swim with her, she’s jumping in the deep end and just swimming EVERYWHERE! It’s awesome!

This was a one time thing haha I didn’t realize they were jumping in literally together!

I wasn’t able to take Kye to drop him off at camp so I made sure to go see him for a bit by myself during the week. Last year when I went out to see him he was kinda like a quick wave then back to his friends but this year he RACED up to give me a HUGE HUG and it was so sweet. He didn’t want me to leave and asked me to stay to watch him climb a tree and then walk across a log. WHHHHAT. Um. I totally wanted to head out prior to this risk taking!!!

Last year he did a zipline thing and his camp counselor sent me a pic afterwards and I was totally chill and cool about it because I didn’t know it was happening during and had proof that my child was alive and well and smiling after the fact. 

But this? 

Yall I was freaking out. But didn’t want to let it on b/c, duh, had to be the “cool mom” in front of all of his camp friends but mostly because I didn’t want him to become nervous. I never, ever want to hold my kids back and I’m so proud that he’s braver than I am and I want to encourage him to be adventurous and try things!

He volunteered to go FIRST and I watched as he climbed up a tree and then walked across the lonnnng log way up in the air and then jumped down! 

So so proud of him!!!

And I got video of the whole thing too: 

Going across

Jumping down

Back at home the girls, Spear and I were all about pj time and playing games and just hanging out 🙂 

And baking!

And so much swimming!!!

Tessie does all these funny poses before she swims 🙂 

This is my go-to look out by our pool. I LOVE that we have a privacy fence and that I can literally throw on some super old bathing suit, some random sunglasses and an old trucker hat and just not even care 😉 

Book Club Book for the Month of June: Eleanor and Park

I also put together an Amazon list of all my book reads (all of the Book Club ones are on it already and I’m working to add others I’ve read!). You can view the list here!

Zach and Mrs Charlotte both went out during the week to visit Kye (yes, we packed multiple outfits. A common trend among campers is to LIVE in the SAME outfit all week haha) and he was happy and having a blast each time! Last year it rained a TON during his camp week so it was nice that they had a lot of sun (although hot!) this year. 

Even though Kye couldn’t be there we still had Katie over for her birthday celebration! 

Something about Auntie Katie brings out the performer side of our children. The girls were ALL about putting on shows for her. I was happy about this because Tess has been in LOVE with the song Hallelujah by Pentatonix for a long time and she’s always SO cute in the car singing it and I was pumped to FINALLY get it on video 🙂 

Here are their performing videos from that night as well as some prior performances during the week:

• Tess: “it should’ve been us”
• Both girls: “hello”
• Both girls: “hallelujah” 
• Tess “hallelujah”
• Britt “it should’ve been us”

For Katie’s gift I couldn’t pass up SAVED BY THE BELL THE GAME! Whhhhat?!?! What’s even more epic is that Katie said she bought the same exact gift for Zach for his birthday haha. You know you wanna get one for your next gift too…here’s a link 😉

Yes, Zach had us watch the video instructions haha

So. Much. Awesomeness.

And, not surprisingly, Zach won

#zackattack

Another day, more swim fun!

Awesome. 

Rather than post all the videos throughout the post of the swimming (the kids LOVE for me to take videos haha) I figured I’d post ’em all here:

• Tess deep end jump!
• Tess’s pre-swimming ritual 😉 
• Another Tess deep end jump
• Britt’s flip and her adorable gymnastics finish
• Tess jumping in 
• Britt jumping
• Tess really likes to take videos of her jumping haha
• Last of Tess!
• Britt loves swimming

Britt did well during nap time this week being solo. She got creative and made a mini-fort on the couch for herself to watch Star Wars!

I really wanted to plan something girly and special and fun for our week while Kye was gone and I decided to do a movie theme Aladdin day. Since Jasmine is such a main figure I did a lot of girly type crafts and such to make this day just perfect for my sweet princess sisters! We had SO MUCH FUN and I bet when we reflect back on this summer that this movie day will be one of Britt and Tess’s favorite memories. You can see all the details of our Aladdin Movie Theme Day in this post!

And you can see a taste of it in this video: 

Sometimes we don’t have a ton of time for swimming so I’m getting creative on ways to watch everyone at once. Pulled Spear’s jumper by the window, I stood on porch, and girls swam!

They ended their special sister week with a sister sleepover!

Zach ended his week with something epic too…his first hole in one EVER!

The girls, Spear and I all went to get our favorite big brother from camp!

This year he had to attend with a different church group than last year due to scheduling conflicts. I’m hoping next year it all works out better, he said he still had a great time but he didn’t mesh as well with this particular group of church friends. He said the kids were more cliquey and less welcoming which was sad to hear and I hate that it starts so young! He’s still so glad he went and can’t wait to go next year!

Even though we had just had a movie day this week I wanted to do something fun and special for the night Kye got home from camp and thought a family movie night was in order!!! I had purchased Pete’s Dragon awhile back and none of us had seen it so it was a great surprise 🙂 

I used nutter butter cookies and covered them in green-dyed melted chocolate! Perfect “dragon claw cookies” when topped with cashews!

We also did one craft while waiting for dinner…we made our own dragons!

For this craft you need:

toilet paper rolls

paper

tissue paper

pom poms

eyes

How cute did they turn out?!?!

And so fun to play with too!

Dragon sisters!

Our dinner! I just made a regular dinner and put a dragon twist on the names for everything to make it more fun 😉 

We had our Parker Family pics this week and I’m SO thankful and appreciative to everyone who helped vote and decide on my look for the session. I LOVE THIS DRESS! If you haven’t already scooped one up, here’s the direct link. It’s super flattering and comfortable and I love it!

Whew! That’s it for week 1 (well 1.5 but still!). We have had a PACKED summer and there really won’t be many of these weekly summaries because for so many of the weeks we’ve been TRAVELING!