Summer time

We are now more than three weeks into Summer vacation, and I am just starting to feel like we are settling into a routine again. The better part of June was spent at recitals, sporting events, end of year/season parties, field trips, and so on. And since school has been out we have been working on de-cluttering the house and purchasing a new minivan. But I didn't want to neglect to post at least once in July.

 

Toby had his viola recital in June.  He wore his baseball uniform as we had to rush directly from the recital to a game.  He loves playing the viola and I am so glad that we were able to find him a wonderful teacher.  Looks like he'll be getting a bigger viola for his birthday this year, as he has already outgrown this one!

 

 

He also completed his first grade German immersion.  His class put on a play, the 

"Town Musicians of Bremen" or "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten," (auf Deutsch of course) in coordination with their Music teacher.  Toby was one of the narrators, and the entire class sang a couple of songs in German as part of this as well. His German might be better than mine already, and he gets to continue in the German immersion program through second and third grade with many of the same classmates which is so great!

 

Amelie has been trying very hard to keep up with her three older siblings and resents being asked to take a nap.  So most days she falls asleep to a "quiet time" movie between 1-3 pm.

I am a firm believer in unstructured play time, so that has been the major focus of our Summer so far. (It has also been undocumented.)  With the yard, garden, trampoline, and sand box they have plenty of activities to occupy them outside.  And indoors they play school (Charlotte LOVES making worksheets and crafts,) Legos, video games, and board games.  (Toby has recently beat Rob at Monopoly and thinks he is hot stuff now.)  

But we have also been doing weekly Library visits and participating in the Summer reading program.  We went to Kaiserslautern one day to have lunch out at Chili's (Charlotte sighed that eating in a chain restaurant made her homesick for Georgia) and see Finding Dory (on the US Air Base there.) And we have had a few pool days, bike rides, German Fest days, berry pickings, jam makings, picnics, playground playdates, and so on.  Summer is flying by!   About six more weeks and I'll be sending them back to school.  So the blog may be a bit quiet as I put away the camera and soak up the sunshine with my babies, but we have BIG plans for August and I will have loads of photos to share then.

Happy Summer!