Horseback riding camp!

One of the things I really missed when we moved from Texas to Maryland when I was nine years old was horseback riding. We were often able to go horseback riding on Sunday afternoons as many of the people in the church where my Dad pastored owned horses. The church wasn't close to our home so we usually spent Sunday afternoon (in between the morning and evening church services) at someone's home. The summer camp I attended while we lived there also included a lot of time on a horse. All three of my kids enjoy riding horses (a pony when it comes to Oliver). Two years ago Nadia and Ian did a week of horseback riding camp. Last year to save money I signed each of them up for four lessons. Since we had a double income this year, we could afford to send all three to

horseback riding camp. When we showed up this morning, I noticed that a girl from Oliver's Sunday School class is also in the camp this week. This morning I also paid for our driveway to be resealed. The price had gone up unfortunately. Owning a house can be expensive at times! The camp lasts from 9-3 today through Friday. I've decided to hang out down near the camp today and go home tomorrow. Then I'll decide which I want to do Wednesday through Friday. It's more relaxing to be at home, but it involves more driving, and I am not a fan of driving plus gasoline isn't cheap (although it's $1 cheaper per gallon here in PA than it was in CA a few weeks ago). I'm hoping the kids will have a blast this week!

I brought my laptop and the science textbook I'm going to use with the

kids the second half of the school year. Between editing photos, homeschool plans, and preparing for the fall semester at the university, I have many hours worth of projects I could complete on my laptop. Up until this weekend I had only placed one order with Shutterfly thus far this year. In February I made a photobook and ordered 3 copies of it (one for us, one for Paul's parents, and one for my dad). For many years I had been ordering 20 page photo books. Now Shutterfly periodically gives a coupon for 91 free extra pages so lately I've been making 111 page photobooks. Although I have forced myself to spend less time per page than I used to, it still takes a good chunk of time to upload 400+ photos and design a 111 page photobook. I ordered two copies of it this weekend, and today I worked on birthday gifts for my Aunt on Shutterfly.

Today we'll be at home from 4pm onward, which will be great. Tomorrow will be more hectic as the kids have tennis lessons from 5-6pm and then our church has it's annual Freedom Fest event tomorrow

night which doesn't wrap up until about 10pm when the fireworks are done. That event was originally scheduled for Sunday evening, but they postponed it due to the rain. Nadia was thrilled because we thought we'd be missing it due to our weekend getaway to Rochester. It rained in Rochester this weekend as well. Saturday we were mostly in museums, but yesterday we definitely needed our umbrellas. The place is large and had more than we could see in the 6 hours it was open, but we saw most of it. We weren't able to do many of the special programs like there was a hunt for salamanders at 1:30 and a Jane Austen fashion show at 1:00, etc. We watched some 1812 military drills while eating our lunches. I'm thankful my children enjoy visiting places like this. We plan to go to Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown with Paul's parents in September. This year in social studies we are studying from the age of exploration through 1860. We'll start with the Civil War the following school year. Paul is very excited that we plan to go to Revolutionary War battlefields this year!