June Days

This June has been the best June I have ever had - weather wise. It has been mild with lots of rain. I LOVE rain in the summer time.

My 5yo has been playing kickball. His personality is such that if he gets his feelings hurt (which happens easily) by a teacher/authority figure then he will NEVER return to where it happened, church, sports, a friends, you name it. He is also shy in new situations - to the point that he refuses to emerge from hiding behind my legs - unfortunately I give him better coverage than I'd like. :) Anyway, I talked one of his friends to sign-up for kickball with him, Korbin Anderson in hopes that Porter would actually participate. (He wouldn't participate when we put him in soccer.) Anyway, the first day of kickball my hubby took him. P. said, "I'm not going to play." But before he could hide his bubbly, happy coach says, "Who is this!?" She acted so excited to see him and from there on out he has loved to play. His coach made all the difference. He is intense on the coach and since he is tall, he is about a head taller than everyone else. He runs and almost gets every ball. His new trick, since he figured out that most times he has a lot of time as he runs from base to base is to run in pretend slow motion. If the ball gets close though, he hustles to safety. It has been so nice to see him so excited to participate in something. We will request his same coach for soccer. She was super surprised to learn that he is often hesitant and shy in situations like this. She brought out the best in him. Who knew that a kickball coach could do so much for her players at such a young age.

My 8yo has been playing baseball. He loves to participate in most things and be in the middle of the show. He has already moved on mentally to football. He loves to practice throwing the football with his dad. Football is his dad's sport. His twice a week games will be over tomorow and we will have almost two months break from sports.

We have had a huge crop of cherries. Something that has kept my boys busy these last few days is selling cherries on the corner. They made $21. They also had lots of adventures including being caught out in a downpour and having to hide under a tree for safety. I happened to be with them at that moment. Ahh, the adventures of childhood.

Our neighbor doesn't have kids and has allowed my kids to have free reign on his tramp. We have never had one so they spend a lot of time bouncing, playing games and trying new tricks. Sometimes our neighbor is dog watching and brings out the little dog, Marley, and the boys spend lots of time running with the dog.

Another adventure we had one day this month was finding dogs. Early one morning a little gray dog showed up. The boys spent the morning with the neighbor, Brooklyn Day, playing with the little dog. They fed it in hopes that it would stay around longer. Then they took off in search of it's home and found the owners. Then after lunch a large golden dog showed up. They played with that dog too when they realized it had a collar. They called the owner. He said it would come home on his own. I should have told him, "Not if it's tied up in my backyard." smile. They sadly snet that dog on his way too. They love dogs and my 3yo still misses Suey, the little gray dog.

It has been a full month. We have also been going to karate at a neighbor's house. 5yo and 3yo love to go to that. 5yo also made better friends with a neighbor named, Tate Gifford.

8yo still waits for the time he can play with his best friend and fellow homeschooled child, Dylan Jones. He also has a new love for Harry Potter. He watched his first one this week and that is all he thinks about. I'm hoping it will get him to want to read more. I let him watch 3 of them and told him he needs to read the books now before he watches them. We'll see.