Welcome August

These past few days have been a whirlwind of travel-- Thursday we traveled up to Wilmington (1.5 hours from our house) where the girls are taking music lessons for the summer.  Yes, it's a long way to travel for music lessons, but we have met some really great teachers and the girls are making good progress and loving it, so we make the trip!  Yes, I used to teach them their instruments myself... but with so much on my plate we were letting lessons slide and I'm really happy that they now have some good teachers who are giving them more consistency.

Anyway, from Wilmington we drove out to Lancaster, PA to meet some dear friends and camp for a few days.  We stayed at Old Millstream Campground which is right nextdoor to Dutch Wonderland... we had a roller coaster right in the backyard of our campsite!

Our first day with our friends we headed over to the amusement park and much fun was had by all!

The next day we went to the Bird-in-Hand Market where we procured lots of food treats

and shopped 'till we dropped (literally-- we all took naps after!).

(I almost went for one of these beautiful country Amish paintings, but I ended up just taking pictures of my favorites and hoping one of my girls could copy this with oil paint on a canvas for me one day!)

Yesterday (Sunday) we traveled back to Wilmington and got checked in to our campsite here, about 30 minutes away from the music school, so N and L can attend orchestra camp this coming week.

M helped us get the campsite set up and then took off in the second car we brought with C and J in tow.  He will work at home this week and C and J are planning to spend some time with Grandma and Grandpa during his work hours.  We are calling it "Grandma and Grandpa Camp"!

N auditioned and was accepted for a counselor position, so not only is she a section leader but she will have some extra responsibilities throughout the week.  She has been diligently preparing her music and practicing these last few days in the camper.  She's such a good egg!

My plan this week is to get our homeschool year planned out while the girls are at camp.  I'm actually really looking forward to some quiet, focused time after all of our busy. But tonight after M left and the girls were practicing I had a few hours of total relaxation in which I binge watched my favorite YouTube channels, ate Amish butter cheese, AND wrote this blog post! All my favorite things! It was absolutely marvelous.  As my good friend pointed out while we were together these past few days, rest is as important as the planning, before we all jump into another school year.  So I'm taking the opportunity to be lazy, when I can!

Hoping to check in with you all for at least a few minutes every day this week, according to my challenge for myself!  So...... see you soon!