The Bunch Enjoy the Last Week Before School Starts Back!

The Bunch 2020 Olympics

This has been pretty good week. We finished drawing last of the fun jar items and everyone was able to do 5 things they wanted to do this summer. The weather was nice (for Texas anyways). We had a good summer. We did not camp as much as we did last summer since a significant portion of it was spent either ill or in quarantine. However, I expect us to have more frequent little get-aways as fall arrives. It will be weird that A probably won't make all the trips with us, but that's life.

The boys have felt a lot better and other than a couple of sneezes the girls and I have been doing very well, though I did lower my activity level just in case. However, it seems that we were lucky and missed this latest round of illness. Since T was feeling better and the girls had a church function that they were attending, T and I decided to head to the lake by ourselves and have a little fun of our own with a picnic and a swim. I even participated in his handstands and water flips. This time the water actually felt uniformly cool and refreshing. We had a great mom and son day.

We set up in a nice shady spot.

That is T way out there! We had a nice day.

One of the fun jar items was to make a craft. We decided to do sand art with some leftover colored sand and put them in some salt shakers. I think they turned out cute.

I think they turned out cute.

We also drew make homemade ice cream and I must confess I hadn't done that in a couple of years so first we had to track down the ice cream maker and then remember how to actually use it! I finally did end up with some super yummy vanilla ice cream, but it took a couple of runs! Our last fun jar items are to watch a movie on the projector and go get ice cream at Beth Marie's. We will be able to do that this week before school starts.

We are a super competitive family and have been very into this year's Olympics. Because of this, we kind of started our own Olympics with categories like archery, gymnastics (which was just the toe spin they do), shooting, holding plank position, basketball free throws, and a few other things. As we know things unexplainably get harder as you get older. While I use to be able to do gymnastics (and did for 3 years) I could not do the toe spin, though L was actually the only one who could do it so I didn't feel too bad. I tried to put things in the Olympics that everyone could do. The basketball was for T and he won gold, and yes L did in fact make gold, silver, and bronze medals to award the winners of each event.

Here are the standings so far, we are finishing the events this weekend:

Event: Gold Silver Bronze

Archery: T D L

Basketball: T D L

Broad Jump: D T A

Plank: C L A

Gymnastics: L A T

Hay Roll: TBA

Shooting: TBA

Frisbee: TBA

Knowledge Test (of 3rd grade):TBA

The more athletic competetions were hard for me thanks to my leg and hip issues so I only did well in the plank, but the events this weekend should be more in my favor, especially rolling our 850 lbs hay roll. D and I do this every month so I should get silver. T might surprise me though. On second thought, he might NOT want to show me how well he can move hay or he might get a new job! Even though I didn't do well in most of the events, I smoked everyone in the plank challenge. I lasted for 3 minutes and 29 secs. D made it to one and a half minutes, which for him is super good so I was really happy. We are having a lot of fun so that is what counts.