Some summer fun

The shmuffin kids started school this week, but here's a little about our summer.

The big kids got to do two weeks of vacation bible school this year (out of the four that our church did), since Patrick was helping out.  He played a cowboy in the skits, and he and the kids had a grand time pulling out all the stops dressing up.

The big kids also had three weeks of swimming lessons in July.  They loved it!  Elijah continues to struggle with taking risks and being persistent in things that are not immediately easy for him.  Swimming was a good change to practice those things, and he still had a lot of fun.  Molly jumped into all of it with her usual enthusiastic abandon and even made a friend - who also happens to be in her class at school!  She worked her way up to jumping off the high dive by the second week - brave girl!

We also got to spend a long weekend visiting Rhode Island.  This was our first chance to go back since we moved away almost three years ago!  We had a great time catching up with friends and going to the beach.  It was Finn's first beach experience, and he had a great time!  The big kids loved going out as far as they could stand and jumping in the waves (with one of us, of course).

We also enjoyed plenty of low-key, regular fun.  We played outside and took a few picnics to the parks, went to the library and played inside when it was too hot.  All three kids played really well together most of the time.  We read and listened to some fun chapter books together too, which we don't usually have much time for during the school year.

At the end of the summer, Nana came to visit for a couple of weeks, and the kids packed in pretty much everything they wanted to do before school started.  They did lots of crafts and played and went to see Planes in the movie theater, and had tea parties and special dates with Nana.  It was great.