A New Adventure this Summer

We have a few new plans this summer that will be a little different from the past. Since I will be in my third trimester and we are still waiting for my Placenta Previa to clear up. Things will be a little more relaxed and slower which I'm looking forward to. Will spend more time as a family around our home in our sweet little town, and will be avoiding long trips in the car and of course saving money at the same time.

Last summer we spent a lot of time at the pool which lead to many things I would have liked to avoid. Since the pool was the place to be last year, Two of my kids got sick from drinking pool water, and I most likely added some extra wrinkles from too much sun, no thanks skin cancer I would like to avoid. With 7 children to watch at all times in the water it is not very relaxing and more of a chore so we plan on skipping most of the pool this year.

We have chosen to school are kids year round and not break for a long summer of non learning. It will be more relaxed of course with plenty of fun summer activities just different. The girls love the idea and so do mom and dad.

Here are the plans that my hubby and I have come up with for our summer months.

Read lots and lots of Books, fun reading for our kids with many prizes to keep them going. We will make a weekly trip to the library one evening each week where the girls can pick out what ever books they would like to read. This really is an exciting thing for our girls and it is always great to see them just dive into books and learn. Our library has a great summer reading program with all kinds of prizes at the end of each week if you read your weekly goal.

The first week we got family water park passes which with a family of 9 saved us about $270.00. We have 28 passes since we have 7 girls in the reading program and each girl received 4 passes, so we will most likely go more than once:)

Other weeks it is baseball tickets, Museum tickets and lots of free food coupons for around the area. Our family looks forward to this each year, what a blessed town we have.

Something a little extra were adding which I wish I had started years ago is earning a penny for each page you read in a book this summer, we may even continue this into the fall. This will add up quick since most of my girls love to read but I love to see them again enjoying books and not so much the Wii and T.V.

You are allowed 100 books at a time to be checked out at our library so each week I will allow 5-8 books per child to be checked out. One rule 4-5 books may be for fun reading but 2 books must be a fiction book, something that they can learn from.

I have come up with a Theme for each week of summer as well which will include something fun as a family. Were not just going to read all summer long, we have to much available to do in our town to pass things up.

June 2-June 9th-Gear up for summer week, this week we will be going over our plans and bringing out our summer fun gear, as a surprise we will be buying a pool for the backyard not a big one that's next year but a pool that the kids can splash in. We will be marking down which parks we will be going to as well since we have so many parks in our town they said they would like to go to them all at least once. We also will be starting summer bingo, and the Ticket to summer plans. We have a busy week ahead but loads of family time and planning.

Summer Bingo and Ticket to summer were great ideas I found over at Jessica's blog. I hope to have all our cards done this weekend and I will share what we have come up with next week.

Also new this year was a great idea I found over at The Happy Housewife, something called I'm bored activity cards. These were made for the summer but I think these could be use year round. I would just change some of the activities to fit the season of the year. 85 cards with fun activites and 15 blank cards for you to fill out. Next time your child says that they are bored they can just pick a card out of the jar and do that activity for the next 30 min.

June 11-16th we will go over Dairy since June is national dairy month. We also have a weeklong Butter fest in our town which is always fu.

June 9th we will be going to a Dairy breakfast on a farm

June 11-17 we will enjoy all the events in our town, tractor pulls, art and craft fairs with toy shows and farmer markets, beauty pageants, lots of food, dancing and the best parade I have ever been to.

We will be making a Wisconsin Cheese Garden Lasagna, Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese Curds with Roasted Tomato Coulis, Wisconsin's Favorite Mac & Cheese, Summer Fruit Dip, Corn Cakes with Wisconsin Queso Fresco Salsa, Iced Chocolate Chai Latte, Pork Tenderloin with Blue Cheese Mushroom Sauce, Sweet and Crunchy Cream Cheese Spread, and a Rhubarb Cheese Pie. Visit

Of course this will be throughout the entire week not all in one day that would be crazy.

June 18th - 24 coming soon....