Adventures in Swanland

The days are hot, so I live for the cool of the evenings. After the kids go to bed, I step outside and I admire my garden and my grapevines, and then the cornfield waves to me and catches my eye, and back even further the are mountains glowing golden in the setting sun. It's beautiful. I am grateful for this slice of heaven and relief in the evenings.

You better believe I have plans coming out my ears for things I still want to do here, improvements I want to make. We are a long ways off from a finished product. But as I make my rounds these summer evenings, I'm satisfied with the progress so far. I can see our yard taking shape. I can see it growing into the visions I've dreamed up for it. A yard takes so much longer to come together than you ever think it will. But it is coming along.

My hummingbird friend came back, and this time I got a picture of him. :) The kids have been anxiously sitting in front of our front room window in the mornings to see if they could spot him. I'm glad they are as excited about it as I am. The Zinnias have been attracting butterflies too.

We spent a  nice weekend up in Hooper for the Lemmon/Sparks family reunion. It's always really fun to have everyone together. I especially love that the cousins get a long so well. It was great to sit in the shade with my siblings and their spouses and relax and chat and eat.

Aaron and Rue and Ollie in the kiddie pool. The big kids couldn't be bothered to stop jumping off the diving board for a picture. 

She thinks she's big.

Ruby loves swimming. She's not one bit afraid of the water either. 

Jackson and Bri's baby Stratton, modeling the pool floaty and pretzel pose.

Of course Adelia found a dragon fly at the park. No outing would be complete without one bug or another worming it's way into her affections. :) 

Swingers: Imogen, Ruby, Ollie, Isla, Emree, Adelia
Photo Credit: Aaron Swan

When it got late, the swings were the only way to avoid a complete earth shattering melt-down for little miss Rue.

Sliders: Adelia, Abi, Isla, Emree, Ollie, Burke, Nolan
Photo Credit: Kyle Lemmon

We got home late Saturday night. Sunday we went to church and spent the rest of the day trying to recover from our wild weekend. So I didn't get out to check on the garden until this morning. Needless to say, our Monday harvest was about three times the usual size. :) The tomatoes are starting to roll in, and I am loving it! There is nothing on planet earth quite like a fresh garden tomato. I have some beans that need picking, but since I won't be eating them today, I'll leave them on the vines until tomorrow. Also, the rest of my beets are ready for pickling, so I'll probably pull them up tomorrow too. And the cantaloupes should be ready this week or next. Yippee!

Borrowed this pic from Bravewriter.
These are the 2016 Arrow books we'll be reading this year.

I've been trying to gear up for the school year. I usually don't start school until after Labor Day. But this year we'll probably be taking most of September off to have a baby. I'm thinking I might try slowly adding one thing in at a time until we are up to full speed. And since my writing curriculum is the one I love the most, I'm planning to start there. I'm doing the Arrow program from Bravewriter again this year. I'm super excited about the book choices for 2016. In August all the copy work and grammar lessons in the Arrow will be based off of the book The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Today I assigned both Lincoln and Ivan to read the first chapter. I think I'll have them read silently some of the time, and some of the time we'll get together and take turns reading aloud to each other. I also plan on using the Jot It Down writing projects, as well as continuing with Poetry Tea Time and Nature Journaling.

Ivan asked me last week if he could get some books about Egypt at the library. So we made a trip, he picked out just about every book they had in the junior non-fiction section on Egypt and we brought them home. Friday night after scriptures and family prayer, he said he had a presentation he wanted to show the family.  He brought out a clip board with a blue piece of construction paper on it. The construction paper was filled front and back with drawings. He took turns asking each person to pick a drawing. When the person did, he explained what the drawing was of, and what he'd learned about Egypt that related to the drawing. Example: I picked the picture that looked like a scale. And Ivan told me that Egyptians used to weigh a person's heart after they died, if the heart was light they got to go into the after-life, but if a heart was heavy they got eaten by a monster. I was super impressed with how much detailed information he could remember just by looking at his pictures. On Monday, I asked him to do his presentation for me again so I could take a video. The video cuts out early though because I ran out of space on my phone. I thought it was so awesome that he put together a report all on his own, and that he did it in a way that was meaningful to him.

And I do think art is meaningful to Ivan. I think he uses it as a way to express what's on his mind. He got an art easel for his birthday back in March, and he has used it to turn his bedroom into his own private art gallery. But he takes his time with each picture. He thinks about it, and then once he's decided exactly what he's going to do he'll start drawing. And sometimes he'll work on one drawing for a week or more. Making sure he has it just how he wants it. Sometimes he'll stop what he's doing and take a couple more days to think about it, just to be sure, before he starts drawing again. It's actually a really interesting process to watch.

Besides his art, he has also hung up lists of things that he wants to memorize. Days of the week, months of the year, mine and Aaron's phone numbers, his school schedule for the day, etc. And he also has his swimming ribbons hung up as well. :) I love to watch how differently each kid makes a space their own. I remember loving to make my room my own space as a kid too. Also, that stack of books on his bed railing, yeah...I have plans to make him a nightstand/shelf of sorts that will be accessible to him from the top bunk, but I have to finish Ollie and Cal's room first.

Complete change of topic, in case anyone was wondering why I hate cats, I present exhibit A:

I don't predict that our screen door will last very long under the circumstances. *sigh* But, the good news is that we bought a little kitty house, so now the cats sleep outside instead of in our down stairs bathroom. So that's good. They are officially 100% outside animals now.

And to end on a happy note, look at my adorable husband reading bedtime stories to our crew. It's getting to be quite the pile-up. :)