Weekly Wrap-up August 27

I'm seriously baffled as to where this month WENT! Didn't it just start? Sigh . . .

The weather has been amazing, so we've spent as much time outside as possible. Biking and swinging and just having fun :)

This week we wrapped up our summer Waldorf preschool unit AND the fruit of the spirit lapbook we've been doing for Bible. There's always some bittersweetness with transitions . . . the kids were sad to say goodbye to our frog unit, and the seasons leaves, but they were ok with it when I pointed out that we'd be learning about NEW things starting next week (that would be today) :)

The big girls have discovered the fun of Nancy Drew Mysteries. I was looking for something else on the library website and was reminded of how much I enjoyed Nancy Drew at their age, and even better, since we have other books we're reading for bedtime, and I kinda wanted an excuse to re-read them, the library has at least some of them as audiobooks, so I got the first one and we've been listening to it in the car this week.  They are HOOKED! :)

On Wednesday evening, we got to dog sit, Rodney's co-worker's dog, Queenie. The girls had a BLAST!! and while I'm sure Queenie slept VERY WELL that night, she seemed to have fun too.

Thursday, we FINALLY had music lessons again! We had missed a full month between our trip to Boston, and their music teacher's vacation, and then me being sick last week.  Their teacher said they are still doing well, despite the break and they were THRILLED to be back to lessons.

We did manage to have abit more "free time" this week then we often do, and the big girls took advantage of that to revisit weaving.  Visiting the Lowell textile mills (national park) while we were in the Boston area, had whetted their appetite, so they dug out some looms Lexie had when she was younger, and both spent all afternoon one day weaving.  Ashlyn's other current passion is spinning. When we were in Boston she saw the drop spindles in the gift shops and was desperate to try one, and shockingly, I managed to find the ones that my dad helped me make, but then I could never figure out how to get them to work, when I did the Waldorf preschool curriculum with the big girls. I handed one to her and told her I didn't know how it works. She googled it on her iPod, and figured it out, so she's been spinning as much of my wool stash as I'll share, and loving every minute of it :)

In the summertime, our Friday night tradition, weather permitting, is to build a fire and roast hotdogs and marshmallows, with corn on the cob from a nearby farmer's stand to go with it all. This week the weather was gorgeous, AND the big girls built the fire all by themselves, and did a good job of it too.  We ended up sitting outside later than usual because the weather was so perfect, and I suppose it doesn't hurt that it is getting dark earlier too, so that made it FEEL later than it probably was. But as we sat there, we got to watch several bats swooping around our yard.  The girls had seen them one other evening when they were outside a dusk, but this time they were right up near the house and really active. We could hear their little squeaks too, so that was pretty cool.  Now the girls think we need to build a bat house :)