Monday, June 13, 2011

Summer Vacation Schedule

No blogging or crafting this weekend! AAAHHH! But we had a great weekend.

Saturday we went to Bill's cousin Dave's house and hung with his family. Had a great time and even got to see Bill's Grandpa play the Kinect. Dave had a swimming pool at his house and I didn't bring the boys' bathing suits - MISTAKE. They ended up in the pool anyway stripped down to their underwear. After they soaked their clothes. But yeah, oh well, thank goodness for dryers. Sunday we had a late breakfast with the fam and then they headed back to Arizona. Short weekend but was really great spending good quality time with everyone.

Now that family is gone and it's kind of our actual first day of summer vacation it feels like, I started thinking last night that I needed some kind of schedule for the boys. I don't want them sitting around playing video games or watching TV all day. They really do better when there is some kind of plan for the day. They like to follow the schedule and look forward to each thing on the list. I'm not super anal about it so we kept things flexible but it really seemed to work out well... so far. I'm hoping too that with this schedule they'll know how to keep themselves occupied so I can work easier and not have to hire a babysitter. I'd rather spend that money on summer activities for them. We'll see how it goes this week.

First thing in the morning I have to get most of my work done so I give them FREE TIME until 10:00. Limited all video game and computer time to 30 minutes at a time. And then...
10:00 CLEANING - I figure we clean the playroom first thing so they have room to play during the day.
10:30 DRAWING
11:00 BROTHER TIME - I wanted to designate a time for the boys to play together because Lucas will bug Holden all day to play with him and then arguments start. If Holden knows he gets his own time away from his brother he enjoys his brother time more. Ash doesn't care.
1:00 READING - alone, to each other and with me
1:30 FREE TIME
3:00 WRITING - letters, journals, comics, stories
3:30 FREE TIME
5:00 CREATING - legos, computer/video game level creators, paper projects
5:30 FREE TIME
6:00 FAMILY TIME - This is usually when Bill wakes up on his work days after his night shift so we do stuff all together as a family.

For Day 13 of creativity...-ish, Lucas and I worked on his Nanoblock giraffe. Have you seen these things? The blocks are TINY!!!

My Dad said, "He looks exhausted."

I also signed them up for Taekwondo today which will be twice a week. And Lucas is going to start Teeball at the end of the month with one practice and one game a week for 8 weeks. Going to look into science camp for Holden too.


Looking forward to a fun summer with LOTS to do. And hopefully some relaxing good family time too.

Also, THANKS to my friend Vann who surprised me with some of her hand-made goodies. YAY!!!


4 comments:

  1. You're welcome!!! :)

    I love the schedule you have for our boys. I'd love to do that someday if I can stay home with our kids. I remember our summers growing up were so boring. We lived in the middle of no where, we werent allowed to cross the street, there was nothing to do outside but yard work, and then inside we only had VHS tapes that my brothers watched over and over again and half the time our A/C didnt work. GROSS!

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  2. I think the rules of summer dictate that you should always keep swim gear in the car, right? I think having a plan in place is a great thing. We have a loose daily rhythm that we follow here and it's essential to my mental health, lol.

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  3. I love your schedule!! Mine is a little more loose, but I may steal some aspects of yours. We do the "free time til 10" thing, and I have a list of jobs that the kids have to complete before running off and finding friends. Really mean things like "brush teeth" and "make bed." I'm so mean. Ben is reading a chapter a day of a book I picked, for now. The girls spend about an hour drawing. And "keeping an eye on Jonah for Mom" is a requirement for each older kid (F and D have to do this inside; Ben can take him out back.).

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  4. Whoa Holden is growing so fast! He definitely looks taller

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