Start to Summer

Blueberry Picking--Some new homeschool friends invited us to go to a farm about 40 minutes away to pick berries at the beginning of the month.

This was a new experience for us, and we are huge fans because fresh picked blueberries are AMAZING. They're kind of fun to pick, too. We ended up with about 4 pounds and ate 1/2 of them before we got home.

Farmer's Market--Thursday night is Farmer's Market night in Livermore--food booths, live music, and fresh produce. We've been getting amazing berries for several weeks (and thanks to CA weather, the strawberries will be in season until November!) We've gotten dinner down there a couple times, too, which is fun.

The Alameda County Fair--June means fair time. I think it's kind of a requirement that if you homeschool, you do fair stuff ;) Not really, but a lot of the homeschoolers we know here do 4-H, and they do enter things in the fair, so we decided to send a few things in, too.

Peanut made Chocolate Date Ball Cookies.

Bean made Chocolate Chip cookies.

And all 3 kids entered the egg carton creation competition.

Bean's Alien Planet

Peanut's frog and turtle pond.

And Bug's gnome garden. (We will not talk about how Bug didn't get an award for this, even though a couple of the much simpler creations did. He was pretty disappointed, but I think he still had a lot of fun making this.)

Bug also made cookies for a special recipe completion--we still have to go back to find out how he did.

Even Daddy-o got in on the action and made his toffee pecan bars. They came in 3rd behind some absolutely amazing looking macaroons and chocolate crinkle cookie. I didn't get a picture of my bread or photo, neither one of which won, but it's fun having my picture on display this month.

The day we dropped off our baked goods, we also got to see a litter of hours old piglets. All part of the fair fun.

Lego Challenges--I found a fun calendar with a Lego idea for each day of June. The kids only did a few of the days, but they had fun coming up with things to fulfill the challenges.

Finishing up school--We've been trying to tie up the end of the school year. The kids made gold miner journals that they've been working on this month, as well as the last chapters of their math books. Once those are done, we're calling it a year. We'll still be reading, dabbling in science, and doing some fun field trips this summer, but nothing really formal. It's a little hard to distinguish the difference between school and life, but I think just saying this is summer vacation makes it feel different. We're still learning, without the pressure to accomplish a certain amount of work each day. We all need a break.

And that's all the random stuff from June that doesn't get it's own post.

Officially a Teenager

We have a 13 year old in the house! It's actually not that hard to believe. Along with some of the typical negative teen "stuff", Bean is seeming really grown up lately, and in a lot of ways, it is fantastic (as long as I don't think too hard about the fact that the next 5 years are going to fly by). She works hard at improving herself, whatever she is going--swimming, writing, keeping her room organized--and she is so helpful with Peanut. Having a built-in babysitter has been awesome and we can see her accepting more responsibility all the time. 

This year, her birthday celebration was a multi-day event. On Monday, Daddy-o took Bug, Bean, and her friend to Great America for a day of roller coasters.

From all reports, they had a great time and were able to ride things multiple times,

A came home with them and spent the night, which meant the girls got to spend Tuesday morning working on their Warriors stories and hanging out.

While they were gone, Peanut and I made and mint cookies'n'cream ice cream cake with a brownie base. We did her birthday dinner and the cake and ice cream celebration Tuesday night because she had other plans the next night.

Wednesday was the big day. Bean had requested her favorite rice pudding for breakfast and then we did gifts. And while she was really happy about all her presents, I think we really scored some parent points with tickets to see Imagine Dragons in October. We're pretty excited to take her to her first concert.

And then, in case Great America wasn't enough, Bean spent Wednesday evening at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk with the youth group from church. She had a lot of fun hanging out with friends and got to eat funnel cake, dippin' dots, curly fries, a dole whip, cotton candy, a churro, popcorn, and a doughnut. They pretty much got one of everything and then shared them.

I think she was pretty happy with 3 days of birthday celebrations. We felt like we got a glimpse into these upcoming years when she spent her birthday night with friends and we had to wait up past our bedtime for her to come home.

We love this Bean of ours and are so proud of who she is.

Father's Day Pirate

What better way to celebrate the pirate father in our lives than a pirate festival?

Daddy-o had recently added new boots and a coat to his pirate costume, so he was ready.

 (Except it was crazy hot that day, so the coat didn't make it to the actual festival.)

These two were able to come up with something to dress up in, as well.

And then we joined all the other pirates who descended on Vallejo for the weekend.  

The kids had fun participating in pirate activities and each earned the rank of captain. 

Attacking the enemy. 

(Getting a little help.) 

Swabbing the deck. 

They had the biggest turkey legs we'd ever seen.

Never mind that you could probably buy a whole flock of turkeys for what they cost.

A little ship-to-shore battle.

Polly

And someone who didn't want to swab the deck when it was their turn.

It was a fun afternoon with our favorite pirate.

Back in the Pool

Summer time means pool time

and summer swim team for these two fish.

We may have moved across the country, and have had to start over with a new swim team, new friends, new traditions, but at least summer swim teams are still a thing on this coast, too. We really miss our swim team family back in Charlotte and it isn't quite the same, but we're hoping eventually this will feel like our team.

These kids have actually been swimming since January, doing the conditioning league (homeschool P.E. :) ), so they were more than ready for the season.

Two meets in, they are both doing really well. We, once again, didn't join the biggest, or fastest team in the league, but the kids are having fun making new friends and trying to improve their times.

I missed the first meet of the season, which was the first time in 6 years that I wasn't there for a meet, and the first time Daddy-o had to handle it all on his own. And it was a LONG meet--6.5 hours long. They do some things differently here--meets are on Saturday morning, instead of in the evenings, the events are in a different order, they have a "half-time" break, and I think things were just pretty disorganized at that first meet.

Luckily, things went much faster the next week.

And I got to watch my kids fly.

Watching them do their thing is one of the best parts of being a parent. All the hard work (theirs in the pool, ours behind the scenes, and helping them through all the emotional and mental stuff) pays off when they are focused and giving something their all. I have talked to so many parents who don't enjoy swim meets, but I love going to them.

(I love this because she looks young in this picture, just like the 8 year old version of herself, when she first started doing swimming. She was so incredibly nervous before her first meet, and I was so worried we'd made a mistake making her do this because she still hadn't actually made it across the pool at that point, but looking at her now, I'm glad we all went out of our comfort zones that year and tried something hard.)

Celebrating in Syle

It's not every day that you get to celebrate a big birthday with an old roommate while hanging out at a spa in Vegas.

Chris' husband really went all out planning this weekend for her (and all of us!).

  Amazing suite in the Four Seasons, massages and pedicures at their spa,

and the J-Lo concert that night! 

We squeezed in plenty of pool time and good food and hanging out, too. It was so fun to catch up with old friends, make a couple new ones, and have a weekend of pampering.