May & June Happenings

 May and June have been full of fun activities.

We celebrated some birthdays and now have 3 teenagers in the family!  

We wrapped up the bulk of our school work.  During the summer, we are keeping up with math, playing games to review history, grammar, and math, and continuing with reading and spelling for the younger ones so we don't lose any of the progress we worked so hard to make this year.

That has left the kids with time to work on their experiments and projects.  Such as the homemade wooden bowling pin and bowling ball that my oldest made...

And a helium trash bag balloon with a camera attached...lost the balloon (but not the camera) and ran out of helium before they got all the bugs worked out.

My oldest daughter got a drawing published in Young Rider magazine (the one in the green frame on the left side of the 2 page spread).

Several of the kids are learning to make bread and pizza.  The loaves below were made by my 11 year old son -- completely independently.

We went out to the beach at the Texas City Dike, where the kids played in the water and the sand...

Public service announcement: Make sure you put sunscreen on your feet too!  I didn't even think about it.  And paid for it dearly!

And we took a trip out to Conroe to pick blueberries.  We've gone a number of times since the kids were little.  I have NEVER seen so many blueberries before.  They were coming off in handfuls!  Big, juicy, sweet!  We collected 58 pounds (~11 gallons) in just 2 hours.

I used some of my birthday money to revamp my flowerbeds, putting in some zinnias to give us color during the summer and fall, but make room for the bluebonnets in winter and spring.

Before:

During:

After:

Three weeks later: