It's A Wrap!

Camp Tee Tee 2012 has come to a close. It was a really good (but tiring) experience. The best part was having lots of quality time with Carter and Ava!

The kids played at home a lot on Thursday and Friday. They formed a "Bey Blade Club" and watched "The Lorax." We practiced for our performance of "The Three Little Pigs." On Thursday I took them all to get some "cousins" pictures taken. The kids were so good and we got some great pictures. We surprised the parents and grandparents with those on Friday night. On Friday my mom (their "Mamaw") came over and took us all to Wendy's for lunch!

We had lots of fun creating camp t-shirts using a Sharpie "tie-dye" method.
We rubber-banded plastic cups under the shirts,
made simple designs with Sharpies,
and dripped rubbing alcohol over the designs.
It was so cool to watch the colors spread.
Ava and I had the most fun with this!

On Friday afternoon the kids wanted to play with the hose.
They made some beautiful mud.
Carter and Adam had such a good time making such a huge mess!
I had to hose them down and also shower them.
Once upon a time Carter HATED to get dirty. ;)

Our official picture: Camp Tee Tee 2012

How we all felt by the end of the week!

All week --- as we rehearsed our play and prepared the scenery and costumes -- we kept watching the weather forecasts and hoping for better news. It hasn't rained here all summer.... but the meteorologists said that Friday would definitely be rainy. And of course they were right. It was tricky though. Rain was supposed to end in the morning. It did. Yeah! We set up the yard.



However, right as our guests were arriving, it began to rain again! Ugghhh!!!

Here's Jon protecting the popcorn machine!

 Well, God is good... and we have great friends and family! The rain turned to drizzle and everybody headed outside for the show.

Here are the actors preparing for the show.

"Once upon a time there were three little pigs.
They decided it was time to leave their mother and set out on their own."

"The first little pig built a house out of straw."

"The second little pig built a house out of sticks."

"The third little pig built a house out of bricks."

"The three little pigs lived happy lives in their new homes...."

"... UNTIL... one day... along came a BIG BAD WOLF!"

"That big bad wolf was hungry.
He was hungry for some BACON!
He knocked on the door of the first little pig and said,
'Little pig, little pig, let me come in!'
The pig said, 'Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.'
So the wolf said, 'I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!'"

 

"So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down!"

 

"The first little pig ran to the house of the second little pig... but the big bad wolf wasn't far behind! He knocked on the door of the house made of sticks. 'Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in!' 'Not by the hairs of our chinny-chin-chins.' 'Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!'"

"That wolf huffed and he puffed and he huffed and he puffed....
and he blew the house down!"
(This is the only picture where you can see any of the pigs tails!)

At that point we had an awesome, un-planned mini-intermission!

It was a huge, brilliant double rainbow perfectly displayed over our neighbor's house! Thank you God for that great reminder that you are faithful always.... rain or shine, no matter how our plans turn out... you are with us and you love us!

And with renewed fervor the show went on....

"The first little pig and the second little pig ran to the house of the third little pig. The big bad wolf was really hungry now! He knocked and threatened and huffed and puffed..... but that brick house was very well built and it would not fall down."

"The pigs were quite confident that their house was impenetrable."

"The wolf had a brilliant idea! He climbed up to the roof so he could go down the chimney and catch those little pork chops. However, the pigs had a good idea too! They were hungry for 'wolf cake.' They decided to cook that wolf in a big pot of boiling water when he came down the chimney. 'Yowww!!!' The wolf hollered when he hit that boiling water. He ran out with his tail between his legs. The little pigs ran out singing (their original song), 'Wolf cake! Wolf cake! Ice cream on the side! We're not afraid of that big bad wolf!'"

THE END.

I was so very proud of all of the kids. They did a great job! The audience roared with applause and cheers as we took our bows. :)  So sorry I did not get a good audience picture. Trust me, they were awesome! It's true love for people to come out in the rain on a Friday night to see our three minute performance.

The show did not end there, though! I had told the kids that they could put on their own funny version of the show IF they did a great job with the "real" version. (Complete bribery.) For this version I let them be whatever characters they wanted to be and make up the dialogue themselves. So, this of course led to elaborate costume changes with face paint.

Fortunately, our audience was entertained during the intermission by our extremely talented kittens...

...who desperately wanted in on this backyard action. They put on an incredibly acrobatic show, climbing up to the top of the screen in our school room.

The second play began with the characters introducing themselves.
We had:"The Evil Hot Dog Salesman"
"The Spider"
"The Comic Book Cat Character"
and "The Not-Very-Smart-Hamster-From-My-Comic-Book"
Yes, you read that right.

So, to get the gist of that play, just re-read the original story and insert the crazy characters with some silly lines about watching "the Wiggles."

A bit redundant, but hilariously funny to this part of our audience ---

 Jon did an AWESOME job running the snack table! We served popcorn, lemonade, iced tea, and popsicles. (Many thanks to Mr. Ed Babcock for lending us his awesome popcorn machine!)

In the backyard theater entertainment industry ;) .... you know you're a success when your audience sticks around in the muddy, chilly backyard even after your 6.5 minutes of show are over!

The adults enjoyed visiting and the kids had a great time eating snacks and running around.

I had the dress up bin on hand so that all of the kids could take a turn putting on their own shows.

It was a very fun evening capping off a great week! My sisters brought me beautiful flowers and yummy wine coolers to celebrate. Everybody helped clean up. The main set is still in place, though, if anybody would like to come over and put on a show! ;)

I've wanted to do backyard theater for a long time and I'm so glad we did. Perhaps it will become a tradition. Sadly, when I looked for ideas online 99% of the results I got were about movie projectors and other high-tech entertainment. There's something sweet and special about this old-fashioned kind of entertainment. (AND... it fulfilled some of our homeschool objectives!)

Today was a lazy day for recovering and re-grouping. Now we're turning toward getting the school year started!

Hip hip hooray!
We put on a play!

Camp TeeTee Update

Three days down... two to go. Camp Tee Tee is moving along quickly. We're still having fun!

This morning started with ......

DONUTS!

Jon picked up Carter this morning and brought home these yummy treats.

That got us moving.

We spent the morning downtown at the Scioto Mile fountains. The kids had a great time running in the fountains. (And I promised I'd report here that there are 27 rows of fountains there!) Today was a special day down there... with field games and several activity stations for the kids. They even got free popsicles. We had lots of fun!

Next we stopped by a machinery shop owned by some family friends. We had to borrow some equipment for our upcoming show! ;) The kids had a great time running and "rolling" around Murray's!

When we got home we worked more on the scenery for our backyard theater production.

 We've also enjoyed playing in the yard with the hose, lots of BeyBlade battles, Play Doh, and just spending lots of time together.

And now the rest of our week is hinging on the weather. Our performance is scheduled for Friday evening.... but rain and storms are predicted all day tomorrow and Friday. Sigh. We haven't had rain all summer. Working on Plan B. ;)

Camp Tee Tee - Day One

The boys and I have the privilege of sharing this week with their cousins, Carter and Ava! They are spending the week with us rather than attending the day camps they normally attend while their parents work during the summer. This week has been in the works for a while and somehow got dubbed "Camp Tee Tee." (Carter and Ava call me "Aunt Tee Tee.")

We have lots of fun things planned for the week and today we got off to a good start!

The day began extra early (thanks to my always-early sister Reenie!). I hadn't even showered when she arrived, but I forgave her because she brought me a giant bag of awesome treats! I wish I had taken a picture of all the loot it held... but here's the bag ---

My sisters went together to make me this great camp kit! It had sunscreen, matching t-shirts for me and the kids, tons of snacks and drinks, Bath and Body Works stuff for me... a grocery gift card. What a great way to start the day!

When I sat the kids down to talk about the week's activities, Carter and Ava cracked us all up by explaining how camps run. Ava declared herself to be a Camp Counselor and Carter quickly promoted himself to Counselor in Training. Then they explained their roles to us. Their enthusiasm and leadership has actually been really helpful to me and a good example to Ray and Adam.

Our main project for the week is preparing a backyard theater production of "The Three Little Pigs." I sneakily wove this into the plans to fulfill some homeschool objectives for the boys. ;) Fortunately, the kids are on board and excited.

Today's task was painting the scenery. We all worked hard, had a lot of fun, and made lots of messes in the yard and on ourselves.

The lunch menu choices were discussed at length and an agreement was reached.

Today's lunch choice: pigs in a blanket... supplemented with lots of fruits and veggies of course.

 After lunch we headed to the pool.

Although I THOUGHT I had sufficiently tired them out with 2+ hours of swimming and diving.... they were ready to plunge into some of our craft projects for the week.

Apparently they had not had enough painting. They chose to paint birdhouses this afternoon.

 And then they headed out to add some details to the scenery.

 We even had a fun visitor at the end of the day ---

Ava's dad brought their dog Poppy when he came to pick Ava up for the day!

Carter is spending the night with us tonight. Everybody's sleeping and I need to get to bed too so I can be ready for day two of this great adventure!

Olympic Fever

Like most everyone else, we've really been enjoying following the Olympics. It's been a great way to sneak some learning into our summer. :) We'll start the year with a study of Ancient Greece, so the Olympics are a perfect prelude! We've done a few of the zillions of Olympic activities from Pinterest. And Jon and I have been staying up way too late watching various events on television. It's a good thing this only happens once every four years!

An Olympic Ring Banner

Our cable package (ATT) has a great feature where we can check stats and see highlights.
We've been following the medal count here.
Don't you love our high-tech tv? ;)

Ray enjoyed playing "Opening Ceremony Bingo"



We made our own medals.

Our future Olympian!
Notice the bandaged hand --- too much training on the monkey bars!

This was a great library find!
It was a really fun way to teach the kids a bit about London.

We've been working through these books from Enchanted Learning.

I ordered this book from Amazon.
We're going to read it this week.

This poster of the Olympic events has been a big hit.
I printed it from a link on Pinterest.

A fun Olympic ring art project.

 I hope you're enjoying the Olympics as much as we are! Go Team USA!