The boys participated in a LARPing camp through our Krav Maga studio at the beginning of the month. They were helpers, but they also just got to play. They really enjoyed it and hope to be able to participate again next year. It was nice to see them take on some leadership roles there.

We celebrated my birthday in early August, too. This meant having Santiago’s breakfast burritos – one of my favorites! Auntie Mel came over to make scotchies with Micah for me. He called her earlier in the week to arrange this, knowing that they are some of my favorite treats!

I had a meeting at church while Mike was out of town and one of our friends offered to take the boys to the Wings over the Rockies museum where they participate in a pretty cool program. She sent lots of pictures of the boys. =)

We enjoyed a super fun night out in Boulder to watch Much Ado About Nothing with Mel and Joel and a friend from church. It was a delightfully hilarious play.

E and I play games most days during the summer. We finally took out our new game from Christmas: Trekking through History. Grandma Cleve had purchased Trekking through National Parks for us years and years ago and we loved it so much. So when I saw that there was another game similar to that one, I jumped at it. It’s pretty fun! E keeps track of our games and is basically killing me in everything except Nertz, when played with the two of us. (And trust me, we’ve never been the sort to just let them win…I’m getting a little annoyed at this tracker that continuously shows me my supreme inferiority at game-playing) The three of us play Nertz most afternoons for a bit, too, but that doesn’t get tracked.

After doing a few months of light therapy with Micah to strengthen his eyes (which will allow him to be able to hold his place while reading better), we were encouraged to do a little reading test. We were to sit and read for as long as he could before his eyes were tired or he was too bored to go on. Ideally he would read a chapter book, rather than multiple shorter books. SO, the three of us decided to do this together. We made some homemade buttered popcorn, grabbed some sparkling ice drinks, and found comfy places to read our piles of books. I wanted everyone to have options that morning and to have good suggestions for future reading times. Micah lasted an hour and ten minutes before wanting to do something else – this is a HUGE improvement as previously he only ever wanted to read for about twenty minutes at a time. He chose to read “Kensuke’s Kingdom” and I’ve since seen him reading more of it in his free time. Ethan chose to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” and I read “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. It was SO much fun and we plan to do this more regularly. One of the main reasons I love homeschooling is the chance to do a lot of reading (together and separately) and to instill in these boys a love of reading.

After four hours of intense workouts and testing (and a lot of work done prior to that day, too), the boys earned their brown belts last Saturday. Pretty intense. They requested burgers from Bad Daddy’s and we spoiled them with milkshakes, too.

As the school year kicked off again, we had our CC kickoff picnic at our park. We enjoyed lots of ice blocking and a game of kickball, besides just chatting and getting to know the new peeps. The following evening (after our first day of school), we hosted a middle school youth group event at our park for some more ice blocking and kickball. This was the last time our newly turned high schoolers would be joining, and it was fun to play with them. I am happy to report that the parents won again! =)

Up next: first weeks of school pictures (I’ll probably wait to do this until after our first day of CC on Monday).