Summer

The first week of summer has come and gone and it was great! I had a lot of fun with all my girls home and I think they had fun, too! I always go back and forth about what our routines will be and how I'll approach our summer. Here is what I decided: each morning, just like during the school year, the three oldest girls will have a "chore chart" that has their chores they have for that day. Every day they do their "daily 5" (make bed, tidy room, say prayers, eat breakfast, get dressed (put PJs away) along with two to three other chores. Sometimes one of them is to do a workbook page or just typical household chores--it all just varies. Those are just things they have to do. On top of that, they have the chance to earn "Daddy Dollars" which they can redeem for bigger things--like a date with mom or dad, a new t-shirt, etc. I have it set so it'll take them at least three weeks to earn one of those things. They have to do bigger things to earn those dollars. I was going to have all their littler chores be worth Daddy Dollars and they had to use them for TV time or computer time, but I didn't want to start something that would be too hard to keep up or keep track of. And with my girls they don't typically abuse TV time or they aren't on the computer too much, so I figured unless it became a problem I would not do that. So far so good. Each day I try to have some sort of activity. This week it's been easy because Ellie and Hattie have had swimming lessons, so everyone got to swim. one day was the library and on Friday, we got to meet my cousin Emali who is visiting from Oregon. We met her and her three girls at Desert Ridge so the girls could play in the water and Em and I could visit. So fun!

Random pictures:

For a while, Ruby would make this really funny face. I am glad I got a picture of it because she doesn't do it anymore.
Hattie training another princess-to-be...
One afternoon we made bread into animal shapes.
We got a couple of zucchini from our garden!