How We Spent Our Summer Break

Summer break has been fun, but it is nearing its end.  I return to work on Monday and the kids will return to school the following Monday.  Sigh.  Although we spent a lot of our time working around the house and in the yard, we did manage to squeeze in a few fun activities this summer.  

We put our Wild Adventures/Splash Island passes to good use.  The kids especially liked cooling off in the water park.  Olivia is tall enough that she can go down all of the big water slides.  Her favorite is the Wahee Cyclone (a toilet bowl water slide).  Owen lacks an inch from being able to ride the "big" slides.  His favorite thing to do is the lazy river.  And notice that Owen is NOT wearing his ear-bandit.  He got the "all clear" from his doctor the week after we got back from the beach.

On the last row

 Roller coasters continue to be favorites as well.

 I only ran one race all summer.  It was the Spirit of Liberty 5k.  I finished with a time of 30.11- not my best.  There weren't many participants, so I still won age group.  I will definitely need to step it up a notch when school starts back.

We tried our hand at Geocaching and discovered that we pretty much suck at it.  Our town sponsors a "geocaching challenge".  There are 30 caches hidden as part of the challenge and you get a prize of some sort if you find 25 of these.  We have gone geocaching on two different afternoons and we have found a grand total of 4 caches (and the only reason we found two of these is because they gave the exact location in the description).  Even though we're not that great at it, the kids love going to look for the caches.  So, our caching adventure is probably going to carry over into the fall.

 Spending time with friends is always a summer highlight.

 Owen invited his friend Drew over for a sleep-over.  This is the first time he's had someone to spend the night, so it was a big deal.

We went to see Planes Fire and Rescue and were surprised to see that the local firefighters and forest rangers were at the theater doing a cross-promotion / information presentation.  They had lots of vehicles used to fight forest fires parked in the parking lot for the kids to check out.  Smokey the Bear was also on hand to provide info on how to prevent forest fires.  The coolest thing was that a fire fighting plane was circling over the movie theater.  The kids were able to communicate with the pilot from the parking lot.  

We worked on our bowling skills.  Bowling is always a hit with the kids.

 We participated in the Fizz, Boom, Read summer reading program at the library.  The kids received points for the books that they read.  We also participated in events related to the summer reading program- including a puppet show, a craft session, and the tail end of a magic show (we were only there long enough to see the bunny come out of the hat).  And in related news, Olivia wants a bunny for her birthday (not happening).

 The better hometown program began a summer movie program this year.  Newly released family movies are presented outdoors on a big screen and are free to the public.  We were able to attend a showing of "Free Birds".  It was bad weather on the night we went, so it was moved into the gym.  We brought folding chairs, popcorn, and drinks to the movie with us.  We really enjoyed this.  There has been a good response to the movie program, so I'm hoping that they will continue it through the fall.