Camps, camps and more camps

The month of July started out with Nicolas at Scout Camp and Alex and Junior Bible Camp during the same week.  The next week, Alex went to scout camp.  Here are pictures:

And now this week, the boys are at Cub Scout Day camp.  I had to help out there yesterday, but the rest of this week, I am by myself yet again.  Friday is Splash House day (the local waterpark.)  While I was there yesterday, I took just a few pictures.

On top of day camp, this week is our church family camp.  We are trying to get over to Fairmount every night for camp meeting.  The boys did okay yesterday, but I think as the week moves along, the getting up early and being active outside all day is going to get to them and we may have to miss some services.

Alex at church camp

Junior Bible Camp at Fairmount Campground

This is Alex's second year attending, and he enjoys it.  He was in a 6 person room this year, including his cousin (which was his first year.)  The theme was Alien Kids and Rod and Wanda Snow were the speakers.  Rod is a skilled chalk artist and drew a picture after each lesson for the week.  I got to watch him create his last masterpiece of the week and took a few pictures.  Alex took a disposable camera, so I may be able to scan more pictures in later, but these are the ones I took today when I picked him up.

Look what we've been doing....

Some home improvement projects we have been working on:

The old well house - it was functional, but last winter we had some problems with water freezing.  It was hard to work on, so we decided this year to tear it out and build something more functional.

This is every boys' dream - young and old.   And we ended up with this:

The well is in the back right corner now and will be well protected and insulated.  Now we have room for other storage (bikes, kids' toys, etc).

My father - in - law took out the bushes from the front and side of the house.  We're not sure what we'll do with this area yet, but it looks so much better without the bushes.

(You can see the old bushes in the background of the shed picture.)

And an ongoing project - cleaning and organizing the barn.  Still some work to be done, but now you can see much of the floor and can walk all the way through it.

After all the work is done, I sat down today to do some painting (something I have been wanting to do for a while now.)  Here are the results:

Tomorrow - organizing the school room and getting it ready for the start of school next month.

 

Nicolas cub scout camp

Nicolas spent the last couple of days with Daddy at Cub Scout camp.  He had a lot of fun, but is tired tonight.  He got to shoot his first BB gun, shot a bow and arrow and got 2 bullseyes, and made a stool in woodworking.

 

Summer vacation

We just completed our first official week of summer break.  It was perfect weather today - perfect for getting some gardening done!  I was able to run several errands today WITHOUT the boys (thanks Sam).  If you would like to know what the boys did :  http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/alexsblog/693992/

They don't know it, but it was technically a school day for them.  (Ssshhh...)  they learned much about farming today.  So, tomorrow...baseball game, graduation open house, more mowing, finish laundry.  Back to the same old, same old.

Summer Busy-ness

Here is what will be keeping me busy this summer:

If you can see, around the left and top edges there is some darker dirt.  That is the field.  But it is a LARGE garden.  About 1/2 of it we are sharing with the in-laws.  We planted all our corn together and will share the crop.

Here are my peas.  They are doing AWESOME (so far.)  I was able to plant more this year than usual since we have a larger garden now.

Green Bell Peppers

Red potatoes

Tomatoes

Italian Bush Beans

And, corn (what's up.)

Yes, you see weeds in some of these pictures. 

Here is my perennial vegetable/fruit garden:  (It sits next to my other garden somewhat away from the field so the herbicide doesn't kill my strawberries.)

In the raised garden (with the good dirt) are my carrots and lettuce.  It makes it so easy to pull the carrots if they are in good dirt.  (Obviously the dream would be to plant everything in good dirt - I can dream!)

We have Rhubarb, the boys' gardens (flowers and their peas and beans), and on the end are the strawberries.  I will have to make it larger this fall or next year to give the strawberries room to spread.

These are ever-bearing, so they will give crop in June and September.  We had these at our other house (actually, they will produce this year, so since we haven't sold the house, I should be able to get some from those plants also.)

And finally, here is our bird and butterfly garden that we started this past week.  The birds love the large bushes at either side, so we put the bird feeders and bath there.  Then it became hard to mow around, so we had it tilled so we could plant flowers and other plants that attract birds and butterflies.  The peonies were already here, but we put in a butterfly bush, red-hot poker plants, purple ornamental grass and daylilies, so far.  We also dug up some milkweed since monarch butterflies will only lay eggs on milkweed (since that's what the caterpillar eats.)  We are hoping they live, but we broke the roots.

This is where we have seen the birds that I have listed in a previous entry.  We can now add Eastern Bluebirds and Hummingbirds to that list.

So, now you know what I will be doing all summer besides playing referree between the boys.  And, I will enjoy it!!

Our last month of school

Since I haven't posted much, I decided to put our last month of school into one post.  Sorry if it's long.

We read Angelo for co-op the first part of May.  The story takes place in Italy.  Angelo is a stucco worker so we made concrete stepping stones using shells and glass rocks.  Since Angelo took place in Italy, we studied Ancient Rome - a unit I wrote for the Blast (at Homeschool Share.)  (Those of you on HSS, here is a preview of what's to come.  I hope this is legal .)  Some of the things in the boys' books came from Evan-Moor's History Pockets - Ancient Civilizations.

Then, a couple of weeks later, we read Nico's Octopus for co-op which took place in Greece.  The focus was the octopus (which is why we went to the zoo, except there weren't octopus there.)  So, I wrote a unit on Ancient Greece for HSS.  Again, here is a preview.

(Ancient Rome was Nicolas's book and Greece was Alex's.  They are both pretty much the same except the information put inside the books.  This was our first lapbook that we put into a Bare Book - a blank spiral bound book , instead of a file folder.)

Mom and boys learned much.  This summer we are going to work on an Ancient Egypt unit (also one I wrote for the Blast at HSS.)  Then we will visit the Indy Children's Museum to see the King Tut exhibit.  We'll just work at our leisure (rainy days, etc.)