Summer school

Bruce certainly misses the busy-ness and structure of school, so we've been having our own "school" at home. We do things he's familiar with from kindergarten - choice time, writer's workshop, math workshop, art class - but we've been having lots of field trips and special events too. Pictured above is our trip to the Children's Museum this week.
We also headed to the pool so Bruce could show us his new skills he learned at the YMCA. I'm glad he learned to swim because I had my hands full with Baby J and Phoebe, who was taking every opportunity to try and jump in the pool. She has absolutely no fear. I have enough for the both of us.
We went to the Museum of Fine Arts on Friday. The MFA is huge and the kids have a short attention span, so we saw about 10% of it on this trip. We did get to see a special exhibit of glass-blown art (shown above). Most people had to wait in line for 20 minutes to get into the gallery, but since my kids were so whiny, a museum docent escorted us around the long line. That was awesome - but that was the only advantage of having whiny kids. We sat in an immaculate room of Renaissance art where there were colored pencils and paper for kids to sketch on; Bruce was inspired to draw some Angry Birds. I'm glad we got our cultural experience. On Saturday, we drove to a campground in New Hampshire for our church's youth group "trek." The youth pulled handcarts over 17 miles in three days, sleeping on the ground at night and cooking their own meals. The experience simulates what Mormon pioneers did for months and months to travel west to Utah during the 1840s/50s/60s. I didn't pull a handcart, but I showed up to celebrate the end of their journey, eat a big feast, and swim in a lake at the campground (that's Phoebe thoroughly enjoying throwing sand). After all the hullabaloo, this is what the kids looked like.