Quick Week 6 Wrap Up

I never shared my weekly summery for last week and now this week is almost over. I don't want to get backed up so let's see we activities we did to keep our summer swinging.

1. Slip N Slide



My niece turned 4 last week and there was a lovely cook out where some of my favorite people got together to celebrate the sweetheart that E is.


I am going to call her E on the blog. That is what SJ calls her, and it sticks with my trend of using initials.

 Besides the usual birthday festivities, the kids also had fun jumping on the trampoline, splashing in the kiddie pool, and slipping and sliding, down the hill!

2. Popcorn on the stove

We don't have a microwave. The one we owned in Texas was a built in with a vent-a-hood over the stove so that stayed with the house when we sold it. I don't miss it though. We started out the first 4 years of our marriage in an apartment without a microwave, so it reminds me of simpler times. One of my favorite things to do with the kids is pop popcorn over the stove. It really takes the whole popping experience to another level. I am not sure if the video will work, but if you haven't tried Jiffy pop then you need to! 

3. New Friends

I met blogger Lauren in real life at the world's longest yard sale last year. After she read how nervous I was about surviving the summer she kindly invited us over to her place for a play date. Z had already left for his trip with the grandparents, but SJ and Ezie are the same ages as Lauren's children so it worked out perfectly! Aren't they adorable?

4. Chores

At this rate I don't know if I will ever do the long overdue blog post about our chore system, but for now I'll share a quick summery of how it works since it is a great boredom buster. I know a lot of people are against allowances and getting paid to do housework and I get that, but this is what we do to help teach skill sets that I think will be important later in life. Starting at age 5 (just Z for now) we have chores and we have responsibilities. A responsibility is making your bed, putting your dirty clothes in the bin, and cleaning up things you got out. For our purposes at this time, a chore is something like setting the table, putting everyones shoes in what we call the shoe cube, helping clean out the car, folding/sorting clothes etc.

We started using Dave Ramsey's financial peace junior kit almost 2 years ago (inconsistently at times) and I have been very happy with how it's worked out. Z does 3 chores a day at the going rate of about 25 cents each. We only do weekdays so ends up being about 4 dollars a week (IF he even earns that) and 1 dollar goes to offering. In other words we are not breaking the bank and it's often spent on things we would have ended up getting anyway like a book from the school book fair, a new app to play on a road trip, or his halloween costume. It's going to be different for everyone, but we can't afford to do much right now which is a valuable lesson in itself.



Here he is counting up money while learning about the value of each coin.

I really, REALLY hope I will expound on this topic more when I have a chance because I have had so many people inquire about it, but that's the gist of what we've been doing for our family so far.

5. Dress up

My kids love to dress up and we have a box full of costumes that I'll pull out for fun year round, but every July we have a special tradition of dressing up like a cow at Chic Fil A. Here are a couple pictures of my herd!





This was my 5th year to participate and one of my favorite parts was seeing my little niece wear the cow dress SJ wore 5 years ago on for her first cow day!



Every year I get more and more excited about this event!

6. Travel

Last Saturday we traveled by plane to Vermont. Well, actually, we took a plane from Cincinnati, then had a quick layover in Detroit, and then Albany New York as a final destination where we rented a car and finally ended up in good ol' VT. SJ gets excited about all aspects of travel from the moving sidewalk, to the indoor train, and the take off and landing of the plane ride. 

She's got her ticket in hand.

Buckled up and ready for take off! 

She loves pulling her suitcase around like all the other passengers on the jet bridge. So cute! 

Granted these photos were of the trip there. The trip back was not so pleasant, but we won't go into that. Believe it or not we are gearing up for a trip to Michigan next week. For that trip we'll be driving, and it's less than half the time that it would take for our normal trek to Texas so I'm not worried. It should be a really great time.