Another busy week! Gosh, whatever made me think that we'd be able to take it easy over the summer?
 
The kids have been loving the pool! Emily is really swimming well, and Sam's on the verge. Julia is still a bit spooked by the water, but she's having fun. I've been doing some more writing for my webpage, which has felt good. I've been able to get a bunch of work done on my webpage this week. I taught myself how to code internal links to make the individual pages easier to read now that they're getting big. So, I went back in and put index tables on some of the larger pages, and I cleaned up my file manager, which was totally unorganized.
 
The kids and I have played cards and made cookies and watched movies together. We watched X-Men one several times--the kids' new favorite. Sam's very put out that he is not, in fact, a "mudant." We've been talking about evolution and mutation a lot. Emily was asking if there were any such thing as mutants, so dh and I were telling her about a piece we heard on NPR a couple weeks ago about a little boy born with two mutated genes that gave him greater muscle strength. She thought that was very cool! You can listen to the piece NPR June 24th.
 
The kids have had lots of fun playing with the other neighborhood kids--one of the best parts about summer and longer days. There's a new little boy in the neighborhood who's 9, and the kids have enjoyed playing with him. He was chasing Sam around saying pretty mean monster kind of things, which was really upsetting Sam. Once he saw how upset Sam was getting, he stopped and tried to explain that he was just playing. It's nice for Sam to have to have some playtime with another boy--he doesn't get nearly enough of that.  Wednesday, the kids had a nice playdate with our next door neighbor.
 
Yesterday was our first 4-H Rock Hounds club, and I think the kids had a good time. We have about 30+ kids participating, however, so I'm trying to figure out a good way to organize the group.  I'm thinking about trying to split the group into 4 and cycle them through different stations throughout the meeting. If that doesn't work, we may have to divide the group and meet on different days. That's my big dilemma now.
 
We went to the water park for the first time yesterday afternoon, and the kids had so much fun! Jim took off from work early to join us, and we had a really great time. Jim and Emily went down the huge waterslide together, and we all took the tubes down the lazy river. Julia was pretty spooked at the beginning, but got braver as the evening went along. The kids were so exhausted by the time we got home last night. After dinner, we all curled up in bed and watched the cartoon movie The Mummy--one of the kids' favorites.