Summer Break: Week Three

I truly enjoy summer vacation with my boys. Our days are full but our pace is generally more relaxed and we get to do all the fun things we don't always get to during the school year.

Summer vacation is 12 weeks long this year and the first two were spent in Portugal or re-adjusting to U.S. time, so I'm picking up with our activities from last week (week three). After lugging my big camera all around Portugal, I happily placed it in the cupboard at home and only took it out a couple of times. Phone pictures are not half as good but they sure are easier! (I didn't even break out my camera on Father's Day, which we enjoyed with all of Gene's family.)

Right after we got home from Portugal, Gene treated us to a complete Portuguese meal! We had soup of the day, broa (a dense cornbread), linguica, olives, Portuguese wine and even salt from Aveiro on the table. It was delicious and we all joked about how excited we were to eat Portuguese food before 7 pm!

The clean-plate club.

Monday was our first day to really get out of the house and the boys requested a trip to the zoo. They both had some specific animals they wanted to see, so we visited the komodo dragon, primates, elephants and sea lions. It wasn't insanely hot and we even ran into some good friends!

We love Tuesdays because they are full of cheap entertainment: dollar movies and kids-eat-free-at-Ikea. We saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (despite the fact that the boys watched it four times on the airplane!) and then ate meatballs at Ikea. 

On Wednesday, the boys tagged along to my monthly breakfast with friends and then they started their first swim lessons of the summer! We're at a new swim school this year with hopes that we can continue swim into the fall.  

On Thursdays in the summer, the MFAH has activities for kids, so we got our passports and did some sketching in the galleries.

It wouldn't be summer without bike rides. On the way to the park, we first heard and then saw a hawk in a tree that was being attacked by blue jays! Of course it reminded us of our hawk from last summer.

Friday morning was our first visit to the neighborhood pool. We met up with some friends there and ran into more unexpectedly -- the best part of our little neighborhood!

Our weeks are falling into a predictable pattern of planned activities in the morning followed by a quiet afternoon at home with piano lessons, library visits, bike rides and swim lessons sprinkled in in the late afternoon or evening. Summer is always a much-needed break from the busy-ness of the rest of the year and it's off to a great start so far!