Fishing

John and the boys have figured out the walleyes. They have been fishing almost every weekend and haven't been skunked yet! We have been eating fish at least once a week lately! Yummy!

Froging

Frog catching has been going extremely well! The kids are rarely without a frog in a cage somewhere. John takes them to a pond on the other side of the subdivision on the weekends. They are gone for about 20 minutes and then they come home with tons of "high jumpers". Last weekend the frogs all got out of their bucket in the back of the pickup truck and there were frogs hopping everywhere! It would have made a great video!

Birding

Summer school has been going well. The kids have made lots of new friends and they are enjoying being at school together every day. They are all in different classrooms but they go out for recess at the same time so they have been hooking up on the playground every day. It is cute to hear them plan out where they are going to meet as I am driving them to school every day. "If you get there first save me a swing ok?" "If there are not enough swings we can do spider swing ok?" 

The kids do not have school on Fridays so I drove them to Two Rivers last Friday and we spent most of the day on the beach on Lake Michigan. There were only 2 other people at the beach so it was very relaxing! I actually read 100 pages of a book sitting on the beach in the sun! The last time that happened was in high school!

We are still in the nap phase-out process. Its good some days and horrible others. But after lunch Shane takes a nap and I do homework with the boys. Then the boys can play outside until Shane wakes up and then we all do something together. Then John gets home and we eat dinner while everybody whines because they are SOOOO TIRED and we send them to bed by 7pm!

Last week after homework the boys went outside and caught a bird in their butterfly net! I was shocked! They couldn't understand why they are allowed to catch butterflies but not birds. Hmmmmm... The birds in this neighborhood need to step up their reaction time clearly! Maybe I shouldn't ignore them when they tell me that they are going to catch a chipmunk! 

I have been spending all of my free time going to war with the birds in my yard. They like to sit on top of the swing set and poop on the kids swings! It drives me crazy! I stained the whole thing and it was almost like it made the problem worse. So I went out and bought an owl and mounted him on the birds favorite perch on top of the swing set. So far it is working on the bird poop and I am hoping that it will serve as an added bonus to animals thinking about checking out our garden as well. We have not needed to fence in the garden yet and have already been enjoying lettuce and radishes this year.

We started our new summer schedule this week. Wyatt, Jonah and Sam are enrolled in summer school this year. They go to school from 8am until 11am Monday through Thursday. Then we all come home and eat lunch together. Shane takes a nap and I do homework with the other boys and then the kids go outside and play. We are also phasing out naps for Jonah and Sam so that they will be ready for full day kindergarten in the fall.

It is only Tuesday and the school thing is going great, but the nap thing....not so much! There are tired crazy boys everywhere that I look! I am re-thinking the nap thing and am going to try every-other-day naps for a while and then total nap withdraw later.

I am enjoying the massive reduction in driving that the summer schedule requires! It is amazing how much driving that I did last year! My day was so fragmented before! It is nice to do stuff in the afternoons that doesn't require me to drop everything and drive away at exactly 2:45 pm to pick Wyatt up from school!

We used our free afternoon today to get all of our Father's Day shopping done and only knocked over 1 display in the process! That is a huge improvement over last year! Things sure are starting to look up!