Scrapping in Circles: Preparing for Summer

Our new digital camcorder arrived today. We ordered it through Costco online since our local Costcos didn't carry it. I can't get over how small it is!!! Our old one was purchased 9 1/2 years ago (for our first Thanksgiving together). This one is smaller than my digital camera. Plus, it takes digital videos. I can't wait to do some videotaping!

At moms' group today we planned our summer activities. My calendar looks so full already! I hope things work out okay. I have to figure out how and when we're going to fit swim lessons.

Currently, we have two park days and one walking day each week. I wish we could start them earlier since my kids are up anyway, but they all start at 10 AM. Swim lesson times are either 10:35 AM or 5:05 PM if I want to get all three kids in the water at one time (which I do). I'd originally wanted the morning one, but now, with all these other activities, I'm wondering if we should do evening ones. Decisions...decisions...decisions.

Brother was disappointed to see the gray skies today because we bought a slip and slide and haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Every so often he brings it to me (in the box) and talks about the different ways he is going to run and slide on it.

Brother is also addicted to playing with the Loving Family set. We had some friends over earlier in the week and I pulled Sister's Loving Family dollhouse out for the little girl to play with.

Brother was all excited and immediately began setting everything up Sister's way and created many crashing and falling senerios. Sister has been playing with it again too and they keep asking to leave it out. I guess we wont be selling it in the garage sale this summer after all.

I am enjoying the cool weather today. After a couple weeks of high temps, I needed some cool weather to cool my house down and get a decent night's sleep. Although I enjoy sunny weather, I don't like it at night time or too many days in a row. I guess that is my Northwest nature.

Sister is almost done with school. While she talks about how excited she is to be done, I'm pretty sure that will last about a week. After that she'll miss all her friends and start begging for play dates daily. I hope some of her friends attend the park days. I don't know that I'm up to having play dates all the time for her.

Yesterday Sister had a field day at school. Her entire K-8 school was broken up into five teams. It was fun to see all the grade levels working together. The eighth graders were the game coordinators. They came up with some creative and exciting activities for the kids. What a wonderful end-of-the-year event! It was so hot though!!! Those kids were sweaty balls of exhaustion by the end of the day.

Last Tuesday was the talent show at Sister's school. While Sister likes the idea of being on stage, she gets terrible stage fright. Therefore, I wondered if she'd actually be able to complete her talent act. We chose a poem for her to read, "Six Brussels Sprouts" and listened to her practice it for two weeks. It wasn't her best performance of the poem, but I was proud and relieved that she was able to finish the entire poem. The more she practices, the more comfortable she'll get. She was so proud of herself. Baby Bear is getting so big. It's difficult to keep anything away from him because he has figured out how to get around along the walls and furniture. He finally figured out how to get down without just letting go; he leans over and holds onto the ground while he lowers himself to his stomach. Why not just sit? I have no idea. Probably for the same reason why he wont crawl on his knees still even though he'll get up on them to pull up on furniture. His favorite activity is pulling the books off our shelves. I've tried to block them off, but he somehow still gets to them. So, I spend a lot of my day putting books back onto the shelves.
I finally heard him say, "Mama"! He says Mama, Papa, Bye Bye, and Hi. Unfortunately, he doesn't say them on command and they are often said randomly. He will say Mama more often when he wants to be picked up, but I don't know if he has completely made the connection yet.