Summer Vacation has Begun!

So I have officially made it back to California and have started my daily summer "routine."  I came to watch Aubrey and Cayden for the month, and possibly a bit into August as well.  I love hanging out with Aubs and Cayd but I didn't want this summer to turn into a long, dragged out, "Im bored" all the time summer.  So I have been doing my best with finding fun and entertaining things for the three of us, without spending much money as well.  Days begin at the kids house, I meet them their rather than her bringing them to me because I hope that they will sleep in a bit.  It works at times  :)  We get dressed and ready for the day and then we start our day somewhere between 10-11.  We go on bike rides and walks and spend lots of time in the pool outside.  Cayden has learned to swim without the life vest which is quite exciting.  I call them my little hoverers though because they are always wanting me to get in the water so they can hang all over me, which frankly, gets a bit tiring.   The highlight of our swimming adventures was one day after swimming and laying outside for a while when Cayden told me "you look like Molly having a bad hair day."  I have since decided that there will be no photos of me while hanging in the backyard, because apparently it does not go well with my appearances.   I am somewhat picky about getting into a dirty pool, and since we have lots of trees in the backyard, each morning there are lots of leaves in the pool as well as a lot of floating bugs, usually bees-- yuck!  So I pull out the net to clean it out before swimming.  But the kids now know the routine and as you can see in the picture below, will often do the cleaning for me now.  

Our city also does free kids movies at the theatre once a week, this week was "A Bee Movie," quite entertaining I will admit.  One thing I have learned about Cayden is that the kid must always be eating.  And I am not kidding when I say always!  So, by the end of the movie he was rolling around on his seat complaining every other minute of being starving.  Since then, I have learned to pack snacks for wherever we go.  We went to story time at Barnes and Noble and have enrolled them in all the city reading programs as well.  Therefore we have started our "educational time" each day when I get a little break, and they have to sit around reading for a while.  "Educational time" is something my parents did with us growing up each night, that we have always kind of mocked, but it was fun to instill it into the next generation of Kellys.  Another little tradition that I wanted to start was the walking to 7-11 "fun."  As kids, one of our favorite past times was getting to walk to 7-11 to buy slurpees and candies and all kinds of fun treats.  So I thought these kids would love it as well.  This is a different generation however, and I did not get the enthusiastic attitude from them that I was hoping for.  I told them to get used to it though- cuz we are doing it weekly!  To wrap up this week, we also hit the library for "Balloon Fest" and Bon even talked us into taking all her empty cans to the recycling place to get a little extra cash. It was a dirtier job than I expected and now realize why Bonnie didnt want to do it herself.  The kids were great helpers though, and I was kind of bummed I didnt have a camera with me while they sorted our plastics and our metals.  Maybe next time.  :)  We have lots of exciting things in store for the rest of the summer though, so who knows what we will be doing next!