The Boring Week and an Adopted Duckling

This week was not as exciting as last week (phew!), but we had fun. We switched over to our summer schedule this week, since our scheduled school-ish things (nature group and weekly learning logs) ended last week. 

This year, summer schedule involves listening to a early-elementary-school-level audiobook over breakfast (nature stories, stories from history, things like that), then getting ready for the day, then half an hour of review (math, reading, handwriting) before they head out to play. They also need to take a siesta in the hot part of the afternoon if they want to stay up in the evening when it's nice - not that it's hot yet, but we're starting the transition now, because it's always a grumpy week or two until we all adjust. We're listening to less-exciting upper elementary/middle school level audiobook over naps, in hopes that it won't keep people awake.

The kids have gotten to play with their cousins a lot, and they will get to do more now that public school is done for the year. They love having cousins close enough to walk over and see if they can play anytime.

There are baby birds in the canal down the road. There are two families of ducklings, and we've seen some geese too. Rea has counted 16 ducklings. One of the duck families has a baby that's colored like a coot; we wonder if an egg got in their nest by accident or they adopted an orphan baby.

This is the last week of Mike's break between semesters in his master's program. This third semester is supposed to be project-based, so that should be fun. Unfortunately, one of the professors is still the really frustrating one.

Alison's birthday was fun. Mike made all her favorite foods: his specialty breakfast burritos for dinner, and the dessert he invented for her for dessert. (In case you've forgotten, that involves making brownies and then squishing them into a crust, then filling it with chocolate mousse and topping it with whipped cream and mint chocolate chips. Yum!) She got some wonderful presents: Rea made her a clay horse to add to her horse collection, and Sara made a stand for the keyboard so that she can play the piano (she's played almost every day this week). She also got bluetooth earbuds.

Her other presents were some cool sleep stuff: a really good sleep mask that doesn't let any light in at all, and a pair of blue light blocking goggles. Technically they're glasses, but they fit over her regular glasses and block the light on all sides, so they remind her of the safety goggles she wore in high school chemistry. She puts them on after dinner, and two hours later, she's yawning and ready for bed, where she switches them for the sleep mask. She then wakes up all on her own without an alarm about 7-8 hours later, which is incredible! (Alison has always liked about 9 hours of sleep, and she usually only wakes up on her own after 8am no matter when she went to bed.) She's on a new mood-lifting medication that's working great, but interfering with her sleep a bit, so these things are so nice.

This afternoon we checked out a new park (Willow Pond) with Amy and her kids. It had a little man-made river and fishing pond. We wandered around the park; the kids really liked it, but Mike only rates it OK.

The garden is still growing well. All of the plants with the exception of one pepper plant are thriving. We also have discovered an infinite amount of broccoli volunteers that are all over the place. We have been harvesting to encourage them to grow more.

Tomorrow we have a trip to Gardner Village to find the fairies and lunch at the park with the Rodgers and Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig (we are so excited that they are moving to Utah!). Then in the evening the Plastows are coming for a barbecue - Mike is making lots of desserts. Mike is hoping to convince them to play his new one-shot RPG. The game he and Alison played was incredibly fun, but more testing is always good.