Closing Ceremonies

Summer vacation is over!  I'm so glad we had the Olympics to keep us entertained for the last two weeks of summer.  The kids really enjoyed watching the Olympics and I'm glad they have some new heroes to look up to.  (And not just superheroes and pro wrestlers.  It's fake!) 

I made sure we got out and played before Harrison and Chloe went back to school.  We went to Citygarden last week and played in the pool and splash pads. 

That's when I remembered that Citygarden is awesome and we need to go to there more often.  Except next time I should bring more change for parking meters.

Harrison wanted to race Chloe and made me time all of his "laps" around the tiny pool.  I'm pretty sure 23 Olympic medals are in his future.  Comin' atchya, Michael Phelps!

Okay not really, but all of the kids are much better swimmers than when the summer started.  We're really proud of how far they've come.

These boys spent the summer wrestling each other while their parents kept insisting that they not.  Oh, boys . . .

Harrison conquered the giant bunny.  (Not a euphemism.)

So much love.

We also took a trip to the Botanical Gardens last week.  They've had a Chinese Lantern Festival there all summer, but we had not yet seen it.  Wow!

Everything that's not an actual plant in this picture is a giant lantern.  (Except my children and the lady in the blue shorts.)

This ship lantern is made almost entirely of water bottles.  I've always wondered what happened to those bottles I recycled.

What could they be thinking?  Oh, boys . . .

Chloe decided to practice her balance beam routine. And Jeff is teaching her Portuguese to prepare her for Rio 2016. U.S.A! U.S.A!

Miles decided to add scarves to the routine, so now we have rhythmic gymnastics covered, too.  (He totally nailed the landing, by the way.)

So much love.

If you've been to this blog frequently over the past few months, you may be wondering why it's taking us so darn long to read Michael Buckley's The Sisters Grimm: Book One.  I started reading it to the kids at the end of the school year and then decided to take a break from story time for the summer.  (We let the kids stay up later and we played together as a family in the evenings.)  We borrowed the audio book for our road trip, so we finished it last month.  I loved reading this book out loud!  It wasn't nearly as fun listening to the actor on the CD.  He changed his accent for one of the characters halfway through the book.  (Harrison asked, "Why does he sound like Wacko from Animaniacs all of the sudden?")  It was right on Harrison's level, but Chloe's not quite there.  The chapters were really long and there were a lot of characters to keep track of, but we all really enjoyed the story.  Except Jeff, who took offense at any character that was not actually a fairy tale character but was included in the fairy tale world.  The nerve.

Goodbye, summer!