Splashing in the Ocean at Myrtle Beach

We spent this morning waiting for the truck to be fixed.  It ended up being some valve that locked up and needed to be replaced but it was done before lunch time.  So Daddy and I took the kids to the beach for a little while, while Stephanie went to a water park with a dance friend who is staying in the same hotel we are.

The biggest surprise (to me anyway) was that Georgie - who usually hates even a drop of water on his face and has never been very adventurous - LOVED the ocean.   He splashed right in to the surf and had a great time jumping waves.

Vicki ended up getting completely drenched right away and wasn't too happy about it....

so she sat out for a while making sand castles.

Meanwhile, Daddy took Georgie out body surfing.

Vicki did eventually get back in to the water...

while Georgie sat out for a while practicing his letters in the sand.

Stephanie is dancing her two production routines tonight at 8:30 so we headed back to the hotel to relax.  I think we're going to be spending a lot of time at the beach this trip.  :-)

Traveling to Myrtle Beach

We spent the weekend traveling down to Myrtle Beach for Stephanie's Dance Nationals.  Saturday wasn't so bad since we only went as far as Maryland (about 4 hours) and spent the night at an old friend's house.  I didn't fall asleep until about 4am and was up by 6am.  Since Daddy is always an early riser we decided to get a jump on Sunday's drive and carry the kids out so they could continue sleeping.

This picture makes me realize why so many people ask me if these guys are twins.  They really do look alike.

The drive wasn't too bad until we were about half way through North Carolina.  It was a beautiful, sunny, 95 degree day.....and the air conditioning on the truck stopped working. :-(   We ended up making the rest of the drive with the windows open to at least keep the hot air moving a little bit.   But, we all made it and tomorrow is a new day.

Captain Vicki here - Ahoy Mateys!

We went on another camping trip over the Fourth of July weekend, this time in Egg Harbor.  On Saturday we all went out fishing by Absecon Bay.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera since there was lots of picture-worthy fun.
 
Vicki had a great time playing Pirate and pretending to drive the boat.  "Captain Vicki here, Ahoy Mateys.  Yo Ho Yo Ho, a Pirate's life for me.  We are mighty Pirates."  Whenever Daddy had to take over steering the boat (anytime we were actually moving), she'd say "Aye, Aye Captain Daddy".

Vicki caught her first (and second and third) fish.  All three were flounder that were too small to keep, they were the first catches of the day and all three were caught within 10 minutes.  She reeled them in all by herself.

Shortly after, Georgie caught a Sea Robin - also not a fish we keep.  Daddy ended up catching the only keepers - two fish that were absolutely yummy cooked in Zesty Italian dressing since we didn't bring any garlic, onion or olive oil camping.

Mommy caught the last fish, another little flounder that was too small to keep.

Back at the campground, we cooled off by swimming in the lake.  It was a very hot weekend (hitting the 90's here which is pretty unusual) so being in the cool water was wonderful.

Another first for the weekend - Georgie stepped on a bee and was stung.  At first we thought he picked up a splinter - both kids were running around the campsite barefoot - but it swelled up pretty quickly.  He was not a happy little camper for a little while.  Although he seemed to enjoy making Daddy carry him from the picnic table to the chairs around the fire and back again (a few times).   My poor little guy, doesn't he look pitiful?

Later that night, after some ice cream helped his foot feel better (along with Benedryl cream), we went over to the beach to watch the fireworks.  This is the first time the kids have seen fireworks since we are usually away from home and don't know where to go to see any.  Georgie is also very sensitive to noise so we weren't sure how he would take it.  He did okay for most of the show.  When they started going off all at once, he didn't want to stay anymore and went back to the campsite with Daddy.

Daddy is always telling me that getting dirty is all part of the fun of camping.  Evidently Vicki agrees with him wholeheartedly.

This is our last camping trip for a while.   We're heading down to Myrtle Beach soon for Stephanie's dance Nationals, then we have our Annual Pool Party/BBQ.  We are considering a trip up to Mystic Connecticut for Labor Day weekend.

Summer School

I have been planning to homeschool year round to account for the frequent breaks we take but so far we haven't achieved much.  Between all the year-end stuff we have to do for Stephanie's school and dance, camping trips and preparing to go to South Carolina for Nationals, things have been chaotic.  But, I did manage to pull out a couple of things for the kids to do.

I recently purchased the Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center for each of the kids.  These come with a set of templates but you can also use in your own, which makes it a very versatile tool.

Georgie started by tracing his letters.  This is a sheet I printed out for him to practice lower case letters.  After tracing the letters he wrote his name at the top and a few random words at the bottom.

He was having a lot of fun with the wipe-off board so he wanted to continue playing with it.  Using one of the templates that came with the Activity Center, he thought of words that began with each letter of the alphabet.  He was able to think of words on his own but couldn’t spell many of them so I would spell them for him to write.

After the word hunt, he decided to write a story.  The picture at the top is a clock (his current fascination) which has nothing to do with the story itself.  This is another one of the templates that came with the activity center.  The story is “The dog with polka dots plays with the cat.  The End.”

The kids played with our balance scale and Unifix cubes for a little while….

and then I was brave enough to pull out our rice bin again.  I finally managed to color some rice which made a nice pretty rainbow…

which lasted about 10 seconds.  About how long it took for rice to get off the towel I laid down and onto the carpet.



I’m still going to try and get in the occasional school activities during the summer but I’m letting go a little bit so we can enjoy ourselves as well.

Working Together

It's always nice when you see your children work together toward a common goal. 

There are many things that we are not ready for Vicki and George to use without supervision.  Many of these things are kept up on shelves out of their reach.  Due to the habit of climbing on anything and everything they can carry, push or drag where they need it I have removed all plastic bins, drawers and crates, all toys that can be used to stand on, and I make sure no folding tables are left up, no laundry baskets left lying around, etc.   And, it seems to be working.  It's probably been a whole week since I last had to take away something they had managed to get down on their own. 

Then I walked into the living room to see this:

I could hear Vicki saying, "Can you reach it yet?  Can you reach it, Gorgie?"

Now what do I do?

Father's Day Craft

I bought a handprint kit for the kids to make gifts for Father's Day.   The kit came with individual packages of clay, plastic molds and letter stamps.  The Party Pack has enough to make 10 handprint plaques.  The kids have three grandfathers plus Daddy, so I thought 10 should be enough for us to get some decent handprints.

I followed the instructions on kneading the clay and putting it in the plastic molds.  This would have been too hard for the kids since I found it tricky getting it to the edges and smoothing it out.    The clay was not very soft and when the kids went to make their handprints, they were unable to push down hard enough, even with my help, to make a noticable handprint.  So, we had to come up with a Plan B.

I had seen a post about clay mosaics at Shannon's Tot School and had wanted to try it for a while so I figured this was the perfect time (since I had a big lump of clay just drying out on my counter).  I used a heart and a star cookie cutter and let the kids fill them in with beads and stick-on gems. Vicki insisted on pulling the paper backing off the gems even though it wasn't necessary when squishing them into clay.

They came out pretty cute but I wasn't sure what to do with them next.  I decided to flatten out another package of clay into a plaque and put our mosaics on it.   I also used the stamps to write #1 Grandpa on the plaque.

The kids had fun doing this but it was a lot of work (for me) putting it together, it's very heavy and probably fairly delicate so I decided to do something a little different for the other two grandpas (both of whom go by Pop-Pop).

I laid the clay out in the molds, wrote "#1 Pop-Pop" and "Best Pop-Pop" on them, made a slight impression of the heart and star cookie cutters and gave them to the kids with more beads and gems, with instructions to not put too many over the words.  Notice this time the beads and gems are in a bowl, not just scattered on the table.  I learned something from our first attempt.

The kids had a lot of fun with this project.  It was easy enough for Vicki to do and I think the results were pretty cute.

After we cleaned up our clay and left them to dry (it's been two days and they're still not completely hard) we made cards.  As usual, Vicki had to do some body art as well.

Vicki tells a story

Georgie has loved to tell stories for a long time.  They are often extremely entertaining if a little off-beat.  He especially loves when we drive some of Stephanie's friends home from school and he has a new, captive audience.   A couple of them still laugh about the time he started his story with, "This is a story about a dog and an alligator.....Once there was a donkey...."

Today Vicki told her first story.  We were driving Steph's friend Alyssa home and George decided we needed to all take turns telling stories. 

Vicki's story..."There was a horse on a rainbow.  She slid down the rainbow and stood on the ground.  THE END"  Not bad for an almost 3 year old.