Ten on Tuesday.

1. Here we are in the second week of summer. The sun is hot, the day is bright. Truly the best days of the year.

2. Our first two weeks are full of swimming lessons in the morning.

3. Kids are busy being kids. Our true summer day is sandwiched between swim in the morning and sports in the evening. The down time is lazy and feels like summer should. A little bit of learning, a little bit of helping out around the house, and a lot of playing outside, Rainbow Looming, and even cross-stitching.

4. Lots of rain. The garden is growing!

5. It's been six summers now that we've done at least one summer (evening) sport, and by now I could have written a book on summer meals, yet every summer I wonder what's for dinner and when we're going to eat it.

6. On today's to-do list: make a 2014 block party flyer!

7. The kids and I finished reading Hoot after lunch today! How amazing is it to finish a book outside under the umbrella!

8. A sports update: Alla is playing soccer again, and Fisher has added baseball to his roster. It is great fun to watch both of them play.

9. This year for summer reading I made each of the kids a list of 20 books and if they read any ten, they can choose their own reward. They still have time to read things they have in mind, but are also being exposed to things they might not pick up otherwise. Case in point: on Fisher's list was Diary of a Wimpy kid, which we'd been suggesting for awhile but he didn't seem interested in. Well, he read that one first and now wants to read the whole series!

10. We have been taking advantage of our drive time to and from swimming by listening to our first audio book of the summer - Escape, which is about the life of Houdini. I would say the kids are interested in his 'tricks,' and Alla wants to find out how he died, but other than that it's reading pretty dry, so I'm looking forward to listening to something a little more energetic next!