Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime?

 1. Oh, what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?

Do you fish in a stream, or lazily dream on the banks as the clouds go by?

Is that what you do? So do I!

We've had so much fun this summer that I've barely taken time to record it.  So here's a little peek:

The note on the fridge when the girls came home from their last day of school.

 This is the first of MANY activities we've been to at the library.  This one was the last of a series teaching children the basics of reading music.

The city festival starts off at the very beginning of June.  One activity was a city-wide Eye Spy game.  There were close up pictures of things spread through the city.  After a several hours driving around as a family stopping to check out every possible nook or cranny we came up with all but two of the locations.  Of course one of them was on a building we drive by a few times a day, lol.  The other one we had to have looked right at too.  Oh well, we had a lot of fun.

 The girls and I discovered the real joys of the Museum of Art.  We spent hours there going through the outside sculpture gardens and all the inside galleries.  (We didn't know we'd missed the best part for children!  That's coming...)

 One afternoon we got out a huge piece of plastic sheeting, duct taped it into a big envelope, and filled it a few inches deep with water.  Once it was sealed shut it made a wonderfully cool "water bed".  It was great for rolling on, jumping on, and playing on in many ways.  Took forever to put together, but it was a lot of fun.

 We made it back to the Museum of Art and found the Children's Exhibit.  Wow!  There are displays aimed at children with activities, questions, etc.  They had a wonderful time.  

 Naturally we went to the Children's Art Festival.  The girls had a wonderful time, as they have every year.  This year it was just the 4 of us.  I took a camp chair and my fully stocked "sit-and-wait" bag.  It had everything from waxed paper (to cover over not-quite-dry paint or glue) to clothespins (to clip things together or hang them on the back of my chair to dry or avoid being crushed).  Naturally I also had bottles of water, sunblock, and cookies.

 I really love the "binoculars" Sabrina brought to the parade.  They're the wonderfully classic contraption built of toilet paper tubes.  The most amazing thing to me was when a kind woman offered me an empty chair right behind my girls.  It had probably been sitting there for a full day saving a place and she said they didn't need it.  That simple act of kindness helped me enjoy the parade with the girls without being in incredible amounts of pain afterward.  I was hoping to find the woman to thank her, but she was nowhere to be found. Thank you, kind lady!

 That night we went to the concert / activities / fireworks.  We had a lovely time waiting for things to get started.  I crocheted, and the girls rolled down hills and did hand-stands.  

 But then as the sun started to go down it got cold.  REALLY cold.  ARCTIC cold.  Michael went home and grabbed armloads of blankets, jackets, scarves, etc.  and even then we only made it through 30 minutes of the concert.  Then we left and went home to warm up!

Not a bad looking place, if I do say so myself :)

We did run back outside when the fireworks started.

Perhaps this only got us through the first week of June.  I guess I'll have to pay attention to post more often, or we won't get through the summer posts before Christmas!