Summer: Bring It On!

Our Summer calendar is up. The weather is hot-hot-hot. And Summer is in full swing now with three boisterous Musketeers and one completely irresistible princess. Being queen of the castle with four at home is exhausting.
But a good exhausting. Our days are so full. I love Summer.
So here's a bit of what we've been up to. This should really be like ten posts. I'm cramming it all into one. Lazy, I know.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Science Club is now adjourned for the Summer. We completed our last two meetings on "Sound" (the kids made tin-can telephones, performed "Twinkle Twinkle" with railroad spikes, and designed their own rubber-band instruments.) and "Bugs" (they built bug traps - yogurt proved to be the best bait, classified and categorized a collection of dead insects and spiders - courtesy of Brigham, and hatched their own butterflies.)
These started out as teeny caterpillars that ate and ate (all that yucky brown stuff) and got really fat and turned into chrysalises. We moved them into this butterfly cage and then waited and waited for them to metamorphose.Finally they turned into beautiful butterflies and we let them go in our backyard. I love Brigham's face. . .All five butterflies survived (amazingly) and flew away faster than I could take a picture.One landed briefly on Isaac's shirt. And then magically flitted away. Free.
Some Light Reading

Ha! This picture was NOT staged. I was putting Eliza to bed and I could hear the "play fighting" downstairs escalate into very loud real fighting. So I yelled even more loudish, "I want three boys on the couch reading when I come down! And I'm coming down right. . .NOW!" I had to contain my laughter long enough to snap this picture. Isaac is reading the Duden Oxford Bildworterbuch. Brigham is reading. . . well. . . that explains it all, doesn't it.

Swimming

I love all my friends.
Especially the ones with swimming pools.

Piano Recital

Clayton preformed "Little Playmates" and wowed everyone with his composition, "Space Adventure".
Flawless performance - as always, kiddo. . . Hi Isaac.Clayton was also one of two students to receive a perfect score on the state music theory test. They gave him a gold medal which his teacher presented to him at the recital. Which he cherishes.

Our Favorite Park





This is a great picture of Brigham. But I love Clayton and Isaac in the background. . .

Backyard Insanity








It's hat season.




Nate treated (rescued) me last week to an elegant dinner downtown and a grand tour of his new office. I don't know how he gets any work done, now that I know he can see our house from his view on the 35th floor. I'm sure it's a constant distracting reminder of all the crazy-summer-fun he's missing and the adoring faces (frazzled wife and utter mess) waiting for him at home.

Hooray for Summer!
(may we all survive)

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