Last week of Summer (Finally)

 We made it to the last week of summer. Finally. The spring break that never ended and turned into summer break comes to an end tomorrow. Kind of. The kids will still be at home, but school starts tomorrow and they will have to be ready by 8am and have school work to keep them busy and video lessons to attend throughout the day until 2:30. 

We managed to squeeze in a lot of fun for the last week of summer. 

Last Sunday a friend dropped off a huge bag full of girls' clothes. She got it free from someone, let her girls pick out everything they wanted, gave it to her sister-in-law who got everything her girls wanted, and still by the time it got to us there was a ton of clothing. Peyton and McKenzie were staying at Grandma's last Sunday night, so they went through and picked out some clothes they liked, my girls got some, and Eloise got some. Megan just found one dress that fit her, but I think the others all got 4-6 pieces of clothing they liked and that fit. 

When McKenzie was here hanging out for a while on Sunday they decided to do a fashion show. Our hallway was the runway.

New skirt:

Cowgirl Annie:

Ryan tried on some of the clothes just to be goofy, then joined in the fashion show on his own terms. Though he did find a Brazil shirt in the mix that was unisex, so he got a piece of clothing from the lot, too.

It was 100+ degrees outside, but they all still liked the hoodie.

Megan's new dress. She has always had an affinity for denim, so this was perfect for her.

Annie the model:

The braids really help her pull off this look...

There was even one pair of overalls too big for everyone else that fit me. Here's my fashion show:

There were 4 pair of jean pant overalls, one khaki short overalls, and Megan's dress that she counted as an overall dress. All super good quality and totally in fashion these days. 

Monday McKenzie and Peyton and some of the other Knights came over for yoga.

After yoga we did AstroCamp and learned all about light and lenses. AstroCamp has been so worth it. It had so many great things to learn and fun experiments and activities that really taught concepts well, and that worked for all ages. Rachel took a couple of the magnifying glasses from one of the lens activities and made herself double monocles. 

Afterwards they went to Grandma's house and made t-shirts similar to tie dye style, but with sharpies and rubbing alcohol. They turned out pretty nice.

Tuesday we went to the mall to do a mall scavenger hunt with the Allens. We split up girls vs. boys and had a lot of fun. We had to do things like try on 4 pair of sunglasses at once, try on the highest pair of high heels you can find, pose with 5 mannequins (we got that all in one shot):

take a picture of your whole team on an escalator:

And take a picture of your favorite puppy at the puppy store.

Everyone had so much fun. They want to go back and do it again for a family activity, maybe with their cousins. 

Later Tuesday we went to Jill's house. They went on a trip a few weeks ago and have been self isolating for a couple weeks after getting back to make sure no one caught COVID, so it had been a long time since we had seen them. It's always nice to let the kids play and have a chance to talk to my friends. Megan was happy to have a baby to play with.

Wednesday was the last day of swim lessons for our kids. They have all done so well this summer and made great progress. If Megan goes back to Sunshine Swim School in the spring she will be an Otter and get to start learning breast stroke. She has gotten better at freestyle and learned elementary back stroke and regular back stroke this summer. Ryan learned breast and butterfly this summer and built up his endurance and speed quite a bit. Next summer all 4 kids will be able to be on swim team if they want to.

Thursday we had a chance to go help out at a food bank so I took Rachel, Annie, Jared, Eloise, and Rachel's friend Eliza along to do some service. Unfortunately their fork lift had broken so they weren't ready for us to start when we got there, so we just stood around and waited for a long time. They borrowed a fork lift and had almost everything moved to where it needed to be for us to be able to start, then that one broke down. By that point we could only stay for 10 more minutes, so we just left, having spent 2 hours there and accomplished absolutely nothing.

We stopped on the way home for pizza anyway, since if we had been able to stay longer to help we would have eaten pizza they were ordering for everyone. 

But we had to head home to get the kids to their meet the teacher appointments. Megan, Ryan and Annie got to meet their teachers and see their classrooms and pick up a packet of stuff for remote learning. It was nice to just be back on campus for a little while and the kids are really looking forward to being able to be back at school hopefully relatively soon.

The kids each brought their teachers a back to school gift we made with the new Cricut I got from a friend:

Friday being the last official day of summer vacation the kids were insistent upon our annual tradition of Brain Rotting Day where they get all day in front of a screen with no screen time limits. 

We wrapped up the day watching Upside Down Magic at Todd and Savannah's with pizza, popsicles, popcorn and candy. 

Rachel has become wise in her old age. She realizes that if she gets me in a good mood I'm much more likely to say yes to her requests. So she'll clean the house then ask to watch Lego Ninjago. On Saturday she decided to fold all the laundry and put it away for everyone in the family. I walked in to my bedroom and caught her folding and she gave me the evil eye because she wanted to have it all done before I saw. 

I was surprised, however, when I told the kids it was time to go take care of laundry (thinking they'd be surprised and grateful that Rachel had folded it all for them) and we walked in to find not only had she folded it all, but she also put it all away. And she didn't even ask to watch Lego Ninjago right away. She may have actually been doing that all out of the goodness of her heart. 

I've spent a lot of the week getting school stations ready, schedules figured out, plans made to make remote learning hopefully a successful experience for us all. We'll see how things go this week.