Dance Lessons

I started the girls in dance lessons today.  Jaiden has wanted to take for a long time and was SO excited when I brought home her leotard, tights, and ballet shoes last night.  She is the one that is always listening to music and dancing around the house.  Janelle was never interested, but then this morning, she said that she wanted to take dance too.  So I made another quick trip into town to get her some dance clothes too.  They LOVED their first day and as soon as it was over said, "I can't wait until it is next Wednesday so that we can go again!"

You can tell by some of these next few poses that they could really use some lessons!

Refinished Wood Floor

Well, the one nice thing about getting our kitchen completely torn apart is that we got a new wood floor!  In the area were they tore things up, they put in new wood and in the rest of the kitchen they re-finished the floors so that it all matched.  The part where the floor had a little rise in it is no longer there.  Instead the rise is where the floor meets the tile.  I tripped over it about five times before I finally got used to having it there.  We decided to go several shades darker on the floor than the light wood we had before for a new look.  I chose the darkest one out of the samples they gave us and then said to go a couple of shades darker than that.  It turned out lighter than I was expecting.  But we like it and feels like it makes our house look newer.  Here are some pictures:

Yard Work

Today the whole family pitched in to get the yard whipped into shape.  Our flower beds were covered with weeds and our grass was overgrown, so it was a big job.   But I was amazed at the transformation over just a few hours with everyone helping!  

Jaiden and Josh worked at scraping paint from their previous month's "art-work" (with some non-washable paints they had found.  Oops!) 

Even little Jenna helped in the house.  Janika mopped the floor and then attached wash rags to Jenna's feet with rubber bands so that she could dry the floor as she "skated" around.  So funny!

Jase mowed the lawn and it took him twice as long as usual because it was so over-grown that the lawn-mower kept over-heating and shutting off.

It was so nice to get everything done...now if it would just stay that way for a little while!

Jase's Court of Honor

Jase earned six merit badges and advanced to a "STAR."  Way to go, Jase! 

Josh Starts Pre-School

Josh started pre-school today.  I can't believe he will be in kindergarten next year!  This is his second year at the same pre-school so he had the schedule down pat.  I normally prefer morning but I switched him to afternoon at the last minute when I found out a couple of his little friends had afternoon and wanted him on the same schedule so that we could plan play dates with them in the mornings and then he would have someone he knew in class.  I also thought it might be nice to have him available to play with Jenna in the mornings and gone while she is napping and that way I can take a nap too!  His class has 11 boys and only 4 girls! 

Catching Up

Wow -- I am SO behind with my blogging!  The good news is our kitchen is FINALLY finished!  This means that the process will have taken an entire month!   I think I may have mentioned this before, but after the kitchen floor was torn apart and the pipes were fixed, cement was poured back in and left to dry.  But the plumber was supposed to use quick-dry and he used regular concrete.  He thought it would be dry the next day for the flooring guys to put the floors in.  Unfortunately we found out that cement has to curate for a few weeks before wood floors can be put on top -- otherwise the moisture will warp the floors.  It wouldn't have been too bad living with a cement kitchen floor in a small area but they had already sanded down the rest of the wood floors thinking they would be refinishing them the next day.  When that was put on hold, we had to live with unfinished floors which of course looked absolutely terrible within a couple of days -- filled with grease spots from spilled food and messy kids (and we couldn't mop it or clean it or anything).  That is what really drove me crazy.

After three weeks, however, they were finally ready and we moved into a condo for a week while they had the floors re-finished.   The condo was really nice and we enjoyed our stay there, although it was a pain driving back and forth to bring the kids to and from school and their various activities.  If it had been in the summer (like it was supposed to be) then it would have been more like a vacation and we could have enjoyed it more.  But we did our best to take advantage of the swimming pools and it was still a nice little get-away.   I was home all day with Josh and Jenna and so I brought them swimming several times.  We went as a family a few times too.  There were lots of bunnies hopping around right outside our back door and the kids enjoyed watching them.  Here are some pictures from our stay at the condo:

These are from our back porch:

Some fun at the pools...

My friend, Mari, brought her kids swimming too...

I brought some water-colors to try and keep Jenna and Josh occupied some of the time.  Jenna painted the paper, then her nails, hands, arms, and face.  Right after she painted her nails she held them up and said, "Pity!"

We were grateful for a nice condo to stay in while we got our floors re-finished, but we are especially grateful to get back home!  The floors turned out really pretty.  I will post some pictures later.

Summer Service Youth Volunteers

At the end of the school year we received an e-mail stating that our county had been selected to host a special Summer of Service Project for 60 youth volunteers from 6th to 9th grade.  The letter stated, "Our Summer of Service project will have an environmental emphasis with many fun activities and service opportunities as we try to convince our community of the value of recycling!!"

The goal would be 100 hours of service (100 hours in 100 days).   In exchange, each volunteer would receive a $500 education award which could be used anytime within the next ten years at a college or university of their choosing!

We were really excited about this opportunity and were thrilled when both Janika and Jase were admitted into the program.  Our kids, on the other hand, were not at all excited about "giving up" their summer to do service hours.  But when they learned that there were some other fun kids in the program, they started to come around and I think they enjoyed it for the most part.

Some of the things our kids have done this summer for this program include:

*working as camp counselors at a summer science camp at a nearby elementary school (where the kids learned about recycling through fun projects)
*green-mapping
*working at a store that sells second hand materials for homes (doors, windows, furniture...)  All of the proceeds of the store go to a local non-profit organization.
*working at a local community garden
*visiting the land-fill
*making radio commercials about recycling
*setting up a recycling program in our own home and ordering a recycling garbage can (there is a small monthly fee for this service but I love having our own can and we easily fill it up!)   
*manning a booth about recycling at the Washington County fair
*being in the Washington County Parade

The favorite activities for our kids were working at the summer camp and at the fair.   They aren't quite finished yet -- they still have about twenty hours or service to earn within the next couple of weeks.  It has been a great program and now our whole family is involved with recycling on a daily basis!  

Here are Janika and Jase at the County Fair and Parade: