Celebrating Independence

With a title such as the one I used you'd think we had giant plans for Independence Day. Yeah... Not so much. We celebrated our independence all week long and talked about it almost as much.

Monday we relaxed at home. There was no lessons, though we'd planned some, no big plan for the day. We just relaxed and visited with friends. Papa came out and took us to lunch and then visited for a little while as well, that was such a treat! The campers played outside on and of all day long and managed four hours outside. Add that to the 4 hours they had outside on Sunday and our week was off to a great start! The power was out when we woke up Monday morning and this is where I found the Cracker Jacks... discussing new stitches for crochet work!

What the campers did Tuesday afternoon when it was at it's hottest...

Tuesday we did lessons. And not just the lessons for that day. By the end of the day all three campers had done two days worth of lessons so that they could have the rest of the week off and not do anything but have fun. They did all that and still managed to get another 3 hours outside!!




Wednesday we had a blast!! Noni took us up to a park we'd never been to...

We had a picnic in the pavilion while it began to sprinkle lightly...

The campers played for about an hour on the playground as the sprinkles faded away...

And then we hit the beach at the same park for the next several hours!












After 8 (!) hours of being outside the campers politely asked Noni to stop at the store and get them each another new skein of yarn. No, they haven't gone through the last one she bought them yet... but they were close!

Thursday was one heck of a day. Daddy took the campers with him grocery shopping after dropping me off at a doctor's appointment. Bless that man, he did about everything that day. He had the children for 2 1/2 hours SHOPPING while I was at my appointment. And after he'd gotten groceries, picked up some essentials we needed at another store, and entertained them while I was in the doctor's he took care of most everything else for the rest of the day! I was very uncomfortable after my appointment, in pain and grouchy. I didn't have to make supper, he got my prescription, made dinner, and even took a walk with me and some friends of ours who are neighbors later that evening in hopes that walking would help me. Even with all that going on, and at one point it being 53* out in July, the children still got 2.5 hours outside to play and have fun!!

 

So. That brings us to Friday. Independence Day. The 4th of July. Big plans? Nope, not us. We hit a local thrift store in the early afternoon to take advantage of a one day only 50% off nearly everything sale. We didn't need much but we did need a few things. We came home and the campers played outside. We BBQ'd hot dogs, added chips and fruit and called it supper. The campers were impatiently waiting for it to get dark so that they could play with sparklers (well supervised of course), wave their glow wands, and have fun with glow jewelery. Fire works were set off in town but we watched from our side porch because Peanut does not do well close up with fireworks. So, it was a late night and a lot of fun. Sometime that morning they'd even done some patriotic word searches I found at Dollar Tree. Another 7 hours of outside time logged.








And finally we come to Saturday. Daddy had picked up the parts to fix the truck yesterday and would be spending most of the day working on the truck with our friend and down the street neighbor. In the meantime we had library books due back and so we took a walk to return them, pay a small fine for a movie case that had cracked under our watch, and check out a few more items. We saw something super interesting (see bit o' science at the end of this post) on our way home while sipping on slushies and iced coffee (only I had the iced coffee lol). All in all it was another 4 hours outside today. I can say that even though it's just after 3 PM because I have 5 blisters on my feet, 2 of which are popped, and the children want to rest and watch movies for the rest of the day.

Here are some crochet projects done by myself in the children. Some simply finished this week and some done only during this week...

Harley Davidson color inspired blanket made by myself for a customer. Delivered Tuesday. I also made a head kerchief
for a friend of mine which I cannot find the pictures of and a baby cocoon and beanie for another customer.

YCJ made several of these "Tornado Bags" from her own imagination. She's working on making them a bit bigger
and adding a button to the top so that those who live near tornadoes have a bag to stick some important
items into that they can grab on their way to shelter.

A water bottle backpack made from an adapted pencil
case pattern that ECJ made this week.

Bit o' science: We made an interesting discovery while on the walk home from the library on Saturday. I've never personally spotted one of these due to the fact that I seldom look at the sun. The children looked up and saw a "rainbow" around the sun. (I had to stand in the shade of a tree to get the photo below.) Turns out there's a very scientific explanation for this to happen (which you can read some of here ). But, basically when you have sunlight passing through ice crystals in our atmosphere and they hit 22* angles you get a "rainbow" or ring around the sun!! 

Now, the ring did go entirely around the sun. However, I couldn't get a good picture standing below the sun to show the whole ring due to the amount of light entering the lens of my camera. So, our total outside time for this week was 32.5 hours!!   Making our year to date total for the 1000 hours outside challenge  an even 400 hours!!!


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