Freedom Knights Academy: Summer Bucket List: Update

All summer long we have been working on a summer bucket list that we created at the beginning of summer. The list included quite a few items, some of them were pretty lofty on my part, but I wanted my kids to have a good summer filled with things we hadn't done before. Since last summer was kind of a bust for our kids, I felt a bit guilty and wanted to make it up to them.

As a reminder here is a link to the post I wrote on what was on our bucket list. Unfortunately we only accomplished about 8 of the items. The weather was a huge factor for us, it rained most of June and half of July. When I say rained, I mean RAINED!!! There was about 5-6 out of 7 days a week that it rained. Then when it stopped raining, the yard was so muddy and soggy we couldn't even play in it. So that crossed off about 30% of the items on our list, including hiking and an obstacle course!

Another factor that contributed to us not getting things checked off, is that it just didn't get that hot. Here in the midwest you can almost always count on at least getting to 100*+ in July. This year, we barely made it to 90*! I love the hot weather! I do not love the cool weather! I was really looking forward to doing some great water games and such with the kids. We did have quite a few super soaker fights and water balloon fights, and some slip n' slide fun as well, just not as much as I would have liked.

This is the the greatest invention ever!!! Although it's a cheap version
that I found at Wal-Mart, it worked ok.

This is our attempt at a water slide. The hose is draped through
the wooden beam and pouring onto the slide.

I love this one because I caught him mid fall!

Although our summer is officially over with us beginning school, we will still try to do a few more items on this list before the true end of summer comes in September. I am hoping to get at least 2 more things accomplished. Elijah has been asking to make ice cream in a bag, so we will try that one. I would also like to still get in that hike/nature scavenger hunt.

We actually were able to accomplish some things that were not on our list! I took the boys mini golfing on the last Friday before we began school. They had so much fun! Zach was hilarious because he would hit the ball and then pick it up and take it to the hole, set it down a few inches from the hole and then putt it in! This mini golf course had water traps and a fun cave! They boys had so much fun! It's these things that I look forward to getting to do more often now that we are out of the toddler/baby stage.

We also made a fun marble track using pool noodles cut in half. We taped the ends together and the kids had so much fun trying to make the marbles go farther and farther each time. You can see here that they are standing on the piano bench and he would put the noodle all the way at the ceiling and then drop it!