Weekly Wrap- Up: Celebrating the 4th Of July

We had such a nice long weekend celebrating the 4th of July.  We spent most of the time with friends and family enjoying the lake, the fireworks people set off around the lake, and all those fun lake activities like boating and jet skiing.

We hadn't planned on that though; my kids had been warned since Memorial Day weekend that they would NOT be boating, tubing and jet skiing on 4th of July.  After last years near death experience out on the lake I warned the boys that we'd be staying on shore for the weekend.  Holiday weekends tend to increase lake traffic dramatically and I reminded the boys that no matter how much fun tubing around the lake or cruising on the jet ski might be it was not worth dying for.... we spent two long months educating them and instilling that lesson in their heads.  Turns out this 4th of July weekend was pretty quiet on the lake and the boys DID end up tubing, boating and jet skiing.  They claim it was the best weekend ever!

We also enjoyed having my husband home for the nice long weekend and it was so hard to say goodbye Tuesday morning knowing we would not see him again until Friday night.  We were so thankful to know that this road job should be ending real soon!

Luckily we had plans to meet up with family Tuesday morning to hike so it was a nice distraction for us.  It had just rained before we headed out hiking and we saw salamanders!  My boys were excited and helped move them off the trail and back into the woods.

The younger two boys had Lego camp this week.  I had found this Minecraft Lego camp being offered by Play- Well Technologies and signed the boys up a month or so ago.  They were thrilled that it was finally time for camp and could not wait to go.  They have spent every afternoon this week making creepers that creep, building Minecraft biomes, making moving mine carts, and so much more.

Mesa Biome 

Evan's cart 

Thursday we had some friends over to play and the boys enjoyed a morning swim in the lake.  Then while the younger boys were at camp the older boys went swimming and had me kayak over with them to the rope swing.  Someone set up a rope swing on a tiny wooded island of the lake and my boys just love jumping into the water off of it and challenging each other to climb up it.

We spent a lot of time exploring nature this week.  We found a fledgling on our playground and after assuring ourselves that he was not hurt and reading up about fledglings on the Audubon website we decided that short of moving the baby bird to the side of our playground under a bush that there was nothing we could do for the bird that would not cause harm.  They were thrilled when 30 minutes later he was gone... so he did have help from adult birds and must have flown a bit.

We've enjoyed watching all the birds at the feeder and caught another glimpse of a hummingbird at our feeder.  It's so neat to watch their bodies vibrate and we can actually see them swallowing the nectar!

We've had an abundance of dragonflies and moths around our house this year and have delighted in watching the dragonflies dip and swirl.  I just love this pretty blue one!

We did some actual schoolwork too; the boys each worked in their math workbooks, completed a few more pages in their spelling journals and did quite a bit of reading too... but I didn't bother to keep track this week.  I finally decided it's summer and our focus does not have to be on our books.  I'll go back to keeping tabs when we head back to school.  For now we're mainly focusing on unschooling our summer and making the most of our days.