Settling in over the Summer

It has been quite the Summer. We've pretty well settled into the new normal that has been permanent social distancing. When we first started nearly 6 months ago, it was quite a bit of an adjustment with practically overnight schools closing and moving to working from home. We have had a really quiet Summer not going on trips or to museums or any of the normal things we usually do. Missing just random interactions with strangers at the grocery store or park was something I was surprised at how much I missed at first. While all the changes were hard at first, we've settled in pretty well. It's amazing how you can get used to even big changes so quickly. 

We haven't gone to any splash pads or pools like we usually do in the Summer. We did find some ways to keep cool while social distancing. We got 4 water guns and have had family water gun fights. We've been running through the sprinklers. We've played in our backyard baby splash pad we've had for a few years. Then we also bought a slip and slide and have been playing with it a lot.

We've also been to the pond and lake near us and splashed around and been stand up paddle boarding which has been really fun and we've been able to do while social distancing.

We didn't do our normal big Summer birthday party but we did little celebrations at home. We did presents and cake and ice cream at home and spent the day on each of the girls' birthdays just playing with their new toys that they had gotten as presents. We were a little more liberal with the birthday spending budget as I treated it kind of as part of the entertainment/party budget. The girls love playing with their new toys so they both had really fun birthdays.

For Jenny's birthday, she wanted a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting with pink sprinkles and rainbow sprinkles and a #4 candle. She also wanted 'C' and 'c' shape cakes as in 'C' for cake. She's really into letters lately. They weren't too hard to make as I just baked them in pie pans and then cut them to shape.

Tessa wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting in 'T' and 't' shapes with a mermaid theme with rainbow sprinkles and a #6 candle. It turned into a bit of a hodgepodge of a cake but she was happy with it so I was happy.

Then the best part of making cake of course is licking the bowl!

Last Summer we read our first chapter book - Charlotte's Web. The Lehi library had selected it for the Summer reading program. It took us the entire Summer from early May to late August. This Summer, with it being harder to get library picture books, we've spent a lot of more of our reading time reading chapter books. We read James and the Giant Peach, Holes, and the Phoenix of Destiny, as well as half of The Boys Start the War. We did little parties to celebrate finishing each book which made it fun.

We read James and the Giant Peach first and did it as a book group with a cousin and sister-in-law in our circle so it was really fun to get to have the party with a friend. Tessa made decorations for the party.

We made ladybug hats.

We played a matching memory game that had pictures of characters from the book to match with descriptions.

We decorated cupcakes like ladybugs.

We made paper airplanes decorated like birds tied to a peach.

We made dirt cake with gummy worms.

We also made centipedes from green grapes, did quiz questions about the book, and watched the movie of the book. We had a lot of fun with the party! For our Holes party we made baseball caps like Stanley wears in the book.

We ate sunflower seeds, onion rings, and sploosh (the food not the shoe deodorizer) on waffles.

We made our own nail polish like the Warden does in the book. We used kool-aid though instead of snake venom.

We acted out the whole book like a play. We also "dug" for treasure. The girls didn't want to dig real dirt so I buried their treasure under blankets and they had to find the right pile of blankets. For the treasure, I put gold wrappered candy in a suitcase. The girls had a hoot finding the the candy.

Then we also watched the movie Holes. It was a really fun book and a fun party. Next, we read Geronimo Stilton and the Phoenix of Destiny. It's not a book I would have picked but it was a free hand me down book we already had on the bookshelf and one the girls asked to read. It's a chapter book with lots of pictures and humor kids enjoy; they loved reading it! For the party, after finishing reading it, we made a dragon craft since there are many dragons in the book.

Then we also played this chasing game where we pretended to be characters from the book. We also made extra chewy, extra chocolaty chocolate chip cookies like Geronimo makes in the book. Then we also did some quiz questions from the book and we watched an episode of Geronimo Stilton.

It's been a fun if not unusual Summer. Some of it has even been good. We've gone on a lot of family walks and bike rides and hikes and spent lots of time at home as a family just playing and doing crafts. It's been a little bit nice to be forced to slow down when I used to be so "go, go, go" particularly during the Summer. It's been a bit of a transition but I think I've settled it by now. At the start of quarantining, I regularly googled, 'How long are we going to be quarantining?" and "Will school re-open in the Fall?" but by the end of the Summer, I feel like I've settled in and even appreciate some aspects of the change. We've even decided to homeschool/online school this Fall. It's been a lot of preparing but we start next week and I think it will go well. Wish us luck!