St. Simon's with Gigi and Papa

 Most of the teachers in our area had to go back to work for pre-planning last week.  My mom and dad agreed to watch the kids all week while us teachers went back to work. We are very grateful that Mama and Daddy agree to do this for us.  On Wednesday, they took all of the grandkids over to St. Simon's Island for a day of fun.  They went to the top of the lighthouse, visited the little waterpark (which you can see in the background of this first picture), played a round of putt-putt, had lunch with Aunt Quincy (who now works on St. Simon's), and got some ice cream.  Basically, they just had a really fun day.  What a great way to wrap up summer break.

Summer Vacation Highlights

 Summer vacation is officially over.  We will miss those long, lazy summer days but at the same time we are glad to be getting back to our normal routine.  We did have some good times this summer and I would like to take a moment to highlight five of the things that made this summer awesome.
#1- movie time.  The kids have gotten to the age where we can take them to the movies to see something other than cartoons.  We saw a couple of movies this summer including Inside Out, Jurassic Park, Minions, and Ant Man.  We are already eyeballing a couple of movies that we want to see later on this year (Star Wars).

#2- summer reading program.  Olivia and Owen participated in the library's summer reading program again this year.  They read books on a weekly basis and received little prizes for their efforts.  We also attended two programs at the library.  Their favorite was the guy who made balloon animals.

 #3- kittens.  The kids have been enamored with the kittens ever since they were born back in the spring.  We were able to find a home for the two female kittens, but we are still in possession of the males. These kittens offered hours of entertainment for Olivia and Owen this summer.

 #4- playdates.  Olivia had several playdates with her friend Hannah this summer.  Those girls get along very well together.  The two of them choreographed a dance to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off"- a dance which I have seen a trillion times this summer.

#6- fort building.  The kids have perfected their fort-building skills.  Toward the end of the summer we had a fort going up in the living room on a daily basis.  I made them disassemble it every night, but the kids were not deterred.  Each day the fort got bigger and more elaborate than the day before.  The final version had its own flag and various rooms.

We will definitely miss summer, but we are looking forward to football and cooler weather.

Ichetucknee Springs

I have to report back to work next week, so we decided to go tubing on the Ichetucknee as our "last hurrah" of summer.  The kids have never been before, so we decided to only do half of the river.  We started at the midpoint and floated for an hour and a half to the final take-out point.  They loved it.  I think next time we will do the full distance.  

The Ichetucknee is a spring-fed river in north-central Florida.  The water is clear and a bit cold- which makes it perfect for a hot day.  Owen stayed in his tube the whole distance, but Olivia liked to get out and swim.  She used her goggles to see the fish in the water.    

 After our float trip we returned our tubes and drove to the north entrance to the park.  There are a couple of natural springs at this end of the park.  We tried to swim in the very deep Blue Hole Spring, but it was crowded and the kids were reluctant to get in because it was so deep.  We ended up going to the Ichetucknee Head Spring instead.  It was a shallower and less crowded- there was even an area where Owen could stand, so he stayed there. We could easily see the opening of the spring.  Since the water flows from an aquifer, the spring maintains a super cold year-round temperature of 72 degrees.  We swam around the spring for a bit and then we headed home.  We all enjoyed our trip to the Ichetucknee very much and look forward to a return trip.

State Swim Meet

 Our last swim meet of the GPRA season was the district meet.  Swimmers who finished top three in each event qualified for state.  Olivia swam the 25 free and the 25 breast, but she did not qualify to move on so we thought our summer swim season was over.  About two days before the state meet we learned that one of the girls who had qualified to swim the freestyle relay at state would not be able to attend.  Olivia was asked to fill in as an alternate.

The state meet was a lot of fun.  The day began with a parade of participants. It kind of reminded me of the Olympic opening ceremony.  Each swim organization was called and the members walked in with a sign. The teams "dressed up" in different costumes for this- we were superheros.

The preliminaries were held in the morning and the top eight teams in preliminaries advanced to the finals in the afternoon.  Olivia's team almost made the cut but ended up finishing ninth by about 4 hundredths of a second.  It was so close.  Still we were happy to have had the opportunity to participate.

 I also want to give a shout out to this little man.  Owen has attended swim meets all summer.  He has sat for hours out in the heat so that his sister could compete.  I know it has not been fun for him, but he has not complained.  He was front and center to cheer for his sissy at the state meet.

Learning to Swim

We have some big news from the pool- Owen can swim.  We still have a long way to go before he is proficient at swimming, but he can now stay afloat on his on.  Brian and I spent quite a bit of time in the pool working with him while we were at the beach.  Swim lessons were a job because Owen wasn't really enthusiastic about learning.  We hope to continue working with him so that he'll get better.

In other pool news, Olivia is a little fish and also spent tons of time in the pool while we were on vacation.

Fishing

 It is known that if you want to find Brian during our week at the beach then the first place you should check is the pier.  He is there pretty much all the time.  There were several nights this year where he stayed out so late that he saw the sun rise the next day.  The kids took an unprecedented interest in fishing this year and stayed out late (like 12 or 1 a.m.-ish) with their daddy.  Brian said that if they were going to be out there then they had to do all of the work themselves (baiting the hook, casting, dealing with the fish once it was caught, etc...).  This was not a problem for them.  They were practically begging to go out to the pier every night.  I think Brian enjoyed their company and they enjoyed spending time with their daddy.

On the Beach

We were fortunate to have really good weather during our vacation, so we spent a lot of time on the beach. Boogie boarding continued to be a favorite activity for the kids.  The adults enjoyed reading and playing beach games (like cornhole).