A day to forget

On Memorial Day we had the traditional Memorial Day barbecue. We had 4 families over and it was super fun. I would call it an amazing success (even if Meowth would have called it a day to forget)

On Tuesday we started to switch over to summer schedule. What this means is the kids can play outside as long as they want in the morning and then when they come inside they have to do a little reading or math. Next they take a siesta and do team clean, then they can have screen time to dinner, then we play outside to dark again.

We haven't really gotten into it fully yet, so perhaps this week will be better.

Tim has finally gotten through his level three book of his reading program, and to celebrate his hard work we got sushi and made tempura for Wednesday night dinner. A lot of the kids complained about the idea of sushi, but we got a coconut tempura shrimp roll from the local sushi place that is practically a dessert, and everyone who actually gave it a decent try liked it. Timmy insisted that he also wanted to try shashimi, but he found out that he doesn't really like it. He's going to get a roll with raw fish next time, when he finishes his next reading book. He's going to learn to read multi-syllable words next. We are really proud of how well he is doing.

Wednesday night we talked about chemicals in activity dudes to prepare the kids for doing a measuring chemicals activity in the near future. We are going to talk more this upcoming week and then do the lab next week. We had to delay to get the permission forms in order.

On Thursday Alison and the kids went to Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig's house for the first time in six weeks. They've been on so many vacations, and we were sick, so it's felt like forever. We were very happy to see them again. Sara convinced all the kids to wear their swimsuits, but the pool isn't open until 4 this week, so we went and played in the creek instead. It was perfect weather and we had fun.

On Friday, the kids invited the Plastow kids to a sleepover. It was wizard themed. They made quesadillas for dinner and the Plastows brought chocolate frogs. Those were gummy frogs coated in chocolate, which was really good. They watched a movie and built forts to sleep in. They also did an activity where they told fortunes with "tea leaves" (shredded dandelion leaves that they cooked in hot water, since all our tea leaves are in bags). Half of them got the fortune that they're going soon, which, since we're all going to Oregon in three weeks, was a surprising level of accuracy. :) In the morning they ate muffins and watched movies and played board games. It was lots of fun.

On Saturday morning Grandpa Mike came over to help Mike start to put in a shed foundation for the shed that Grandpa is giving us for the kids to have as a play room. We figured out which corner was the lowest and we started there, installing the cinder blocks square with each other and level with each other as well. The bricks at that corner were out of the ground, and by the time that we got to the far corner they were level with the ground, so the  backyard has more of a slope than it looks like.

It ended up taking all day long since we started at 10 and the rain stopped up for a bit and we had lunch and dinner in there too. It looks good, and hopefully this week we will start to install the shed on top of it.