Last Day of Summer Break

I moved the Disneyland recaps to the days they actually happened back in April 27-May 3.

I don't know what Phineas and Ferb mean with "104 days of Summer Vacation".  This year, my boys had 66.  That's it. We've got 2 hours till Back to School night tonight where we find out each boy's teacher and classmates. 

We've had a full summer.  After last summer I said we weren't going to do that again but alas, we didn't have a lot of "free" time for things like play dates and trips to the zoo or museum.  We took in a few movies: Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, Turbo, and Planes plus second run movies like Charlotte's Web, Ice Age 4 and Megamind.  We made it to Gramoo's pool several times.  We met up with friends at the library a few times (mostly mine, Dalton's and Autumn's friends--poor Easton).  We made it to one amusement park and one water park with passes the kids earned from summer reading programs.  They did read quite a bit and with our long drives to swimming, diving, and Gramoo's we discovered the joy of audio books.  It was a half an hour each way to swimming lessons and one of the diving locations is an hour's drive each way!  We listened to quite a few Roald Dahl books on CD.  They are all narrated by British actors so that proves a bit challenging at times. :)  As Easton will continue with diving, we'll have to find more audio books to check out.  Two hours in the car every Tuesday is a lot!!!

For scheduled activities, Autumn took a hip hop class with her best friend MJ.  Easton continued with diving lessons twice a week and he did a video game programming camp with a friend from school.  He still had drum lessons once a week at the beginning of the summer as well.  Dalton and Autumn both did two sessions of swimming lessons.  The kids did two different Vacation Bible Schools. 

Given that our Disneyland trip was in early May we didn't go anywhere at all this summer.  Well, the kids spent one night at Gramoo's in June.  At least we had a visit from G-ma and July!  Plus, the boys have a one night camping trip planned in a couple of weekends. 

I can't believe they're about to start 3rd grade and 1st grade on Monday.  I can't believe Dalton will be in school all day now and I'll have to pack 2 lunches every morning.  Autumn starts Pre-K the following Monday.  She'll be gone 3 mornings a week and before you wonder what all I'm going to do with myself, most likely two of those mornings will be spent volunteering in the boys' literacy classes (like I did last year) and the other kidless morning will be probably spent at the grocery store.

Easton will continue with diving and drums, Dalton will be starting piano (preparing to move to his instrument of choice: guitar) and he actually is interested in doing a hip hop class, and Autumn will be continuing with dance.  Even though we'll stay quite busy, it'll be nice to get back into more of a routine. 

And before I go, Easton's teacher and I worked together once again on individual montages for each of her students (meaning she gives me all the pictures and the song idea).  Chances are good she'll put Dalton in her class for the next two years as well and I'll be making them yet again!  But, anyway, here's Easton's 2nd grade year if you want to see....

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