It's Summer Time!

Summer officially began for all of us today. Yesterday was my last day of work. I only stayed until about noon or so since my room was clean and packed up. We had an extra day of post planning this year since we had to use our workday in March as a snow make up day. Three days of working after school gets out is too long. One teacher said it was like sitting around watching paint dry. Someone needs to tell the county that was not the best use of their money.

The last day of school for the boys was last Wednesday. The school always has an end of the year picnic, and I was actually able to get some pictures of both Matthew and Nathan with their teacher.

Here's Matthew with Ms. Acton. He really enjoyed having her. Jeremy came to the picnic, but Matthew wanted to stay at school for the rest of the day because he wanted to stay with Ms. Acton. He also wrote her a really sweet note a couple of weeks before school let out which surprised both her and I since that is so NOT him. He likes to play things very cool, but I think that she really clicked with him. First grade was a great year for him.

Nathan's teacher was Mrs. McPheeters, and she was wonderful with him! She was so patient and understanding of all of his little quirks. He loved kindergarten even though he would have been much happier just staying home. I joke that Nathan would be perfectly happy if all five of us spent all of our time sitting together on the couch. :-) He is very much a homebody.

I started something a little different today. I set up a schedule of playtime, TV time, outside time, and computer time for the boys. If you've read any of the Babywise books, you'll know where I've gotten it from. I've never done a schedule before with the older two, but this summer I knew we really needed one. Otherwise, they would have spent the whole summer either watching TV, playing on the computer, or fighting with each other. I also set up daily chores for them to do as well. It was so funny because after we had been working for about 40 minutes or so picking up and cleaning Matthew looks at me and says, "Daily chores are hard work!" I laughed and told him it's hard work keeping a house up. We didn't stick to the schedule 100% today, but it gave us a good place to start. Plus, Nathan was checking it every five minutes, so I could tell it was giving him the structure he really needs. And there was no fighting over the computer! For that alone, I'm happy I took the time to put one together.