Summertime Tot School

I'm not really sure I should label this Tot School as we didn't do any formal activities this week, however I want to stay in the habit of Tot School.  This might be what Summer Tot School looks like around here.

And boy, is summer in full swing!  I co-own a seasonal organic produce delivery service so summer is busy with bin-packing, trips to pick up boxes of beautiful ripe peaches or bags of just-picked baby carrots.  I also write the newsletter and share some of the weekly ordering duties. These things pretty much take up all of Wednesday and part of Thursday, as well as a lot of evenings and the odd Tuesday too.  I find this takes away a lot of time that I could be using for preparing activities (especially as I am fairly new at this and don't have a big stockpile), as well as a lot of my spare mental energy - there probably wasn't a lot to begin with!

But other than that, this is what we've been up to over the past two weeks:

My sister and her two children and a friend showed up for a spur-of-the-moment visit, so me and the boys spent most of our time at my mom's visiting and swimming in the pool.

Silas is pretty timid around the water - at least in this pool, where he can't touch.  It saves me worrying about him some, but I wish he was more comfortable in it at least when he's in my arms.  Oliver, too, has some issues with the water as he cries every time my mom or I go for a swim.  Yeah, not so fun.

There were some pine beetle killed trees in one of our corrals and the kids were all fascinated with the process.  It was quite a show!  We watched them for about an hour before moving on (reluctantly!).

The Saskatoon berries are ripe!  We've been enjoying these little beauties right off the bush for about two weeks.  In the above picture my sister, Silas and a friend are climbing on the feeder to reach the higher branches.  My sister is feeding a demanding little baby bird who squawks as soon as his mouth is empty again - what a little prince!  In the foreground is my neice and somewhere in the branches of this good sized bush you'll find my nephew.  This season has  been wet enough that these berries are absolutely divine!  In dry years, the berries are also dry and somewhat bland.  In the past, I've frozen these berries, but I find they're just not as good as fresh - too many seeds - and we don't use them.  So this year I didn't save any, and it felt really luxurious just to eat, eat, eat!

Oliver too has been enjoying the delights of the season.  Now that he's walking I'm much more likely to let him roam the ranch as it's usually just his feet getting dirty (occasionally his bum!) rather than his whole darn body!  While he was perfectly content in the stroller, he's certainly liking these new opportunities to explore!

Here he is at my mom and dad's place.  He adores his swing!  He cries until someone lifts him up and gives him a few pushes, and grins the whole time he's in it.

I got new toys - ah, ahem, I mean, Silas and Oliver received some new possessions.  We went to my most favorite baby store in Kelowna, Baby and Me, as well as one of my most favorite stores in the world, Chapters, and my (Oliver's!) order of diapers arrived by mail from Nicki's Diapers.  All in the same week!  I was so stoked!  Another post to follow on the diapers and shoes in the picture above, but here's the skinny on the books and toys:

 I've said before that Silas is a little weak in the area of fine motor control, so I thought I would focus a little more on that.  Having said that, I'm not sure a pencil and work book approach is going to work best with him, however he did enjoy the Kumon Let's Cut and Paste activities we did a few weeks ago, so this might work as a supplement to other more "real life" fine motor activities.

 Same idea with this one. Silas is really into letters right now, so I bought this with more of an identification idea than an actually getting him to write each and every letter.  Of course, I'm also pretty sure he'll like the idea of writing in a book ( a big No No in our house lol!) and being able to wipe it right off again.

Last but not least, I also bought Melissa's and Doug's Beginner Pattern Blocks.  I love almost anything that Melissa and Doug make, and although Silas may be a bit past these, I know Ollie will be able to use them for a long time!

I'm looking forward to using all of these in the near future, but it won't be in the next few weeks - let me tell you why!  We're going on a real, live holiday!  This doesn't happen often when you live on a ranch (just trying to find someone to care for our six dogs and one cat, never mind the real livestock is a challenge!) so I'm really excited about this.  Another challenge for our family is the fact that we consist of two adults, one teenager, a preschooler and a just-barely-a-toddler, so finding a destination that will please us all, within our budget, is quite a task! But I did it - I hope - time will tell!

We leave on the train bright and early on Monday morning, arrive in Edmonton late that night, transfer to Fantasyland Hotel in West Edmonton Mall, spend two fun-filled days there (and back to school shopping for Tawny!), visit with some friends for a few days, then fly home.  I think we have all the elements for everyone. Trains, shopping, roller coasters, hotel on-site (that's for my sanity so it's easy to 'nap' the boys), relaxing with friends (Scott's really looking forward to seeing this and it will be nice for the boys to have some time to run around outside with other kids), and of course the plane.  Which might totally freak Oliver out as he's scared of them when they fly overhead, but it's better than having him strapped into a car for an entire day!  I'll give a full report when I get back, with lots of pictures, but, as I'm sure you can imagine, I'll not be posting Tot School this coming week.  Sheesh, I barley got it done this week!

To learn more about Tot school  please see here.

Thanks for stopping by!