Summer Sillies

Every summer my two nieces come to visit their grandparents (my parents) for an extended stay. My parents live only 30 minutes away from me so I spend the majority of this time at their house with the girls. They are 10 and 8 years old and this year they are staying for FOUR WEEKS while their parents are in Spain. Hmm. Tough break. Four weeks in Spain....

Anyways, these girls are obsessed with board games, Rita's Italian Ice, love to make assembly lines to help me with my school projects, and are obsessed with hearing old family stories (particularly ones from when my brothers and I were young children). Now that my dad is retired, my parents and I have a system. Dad gets them up and fed in the morning and started on their math and reading work while my mom is practicing piano and organ at our church (she is the organist). I take over around lunchtime and keep them entertained for the rest of the day while mom is teaching piano lessons and dad is doing yard work or golfing.  We do dinner and games together as a family, and then mom handles bedtime. They've been here for about a week and it's working out nicely. Here's a bit of what we've been up to:

We went to the Kennedy Center to see "Memphis." The story line was a tad over their heads but they really enjoyed the music and dancing. They were really interested in seeing the President's box seats and excited that it was only two boxes over from ours. Unfortunately no one interested was using them that day. At least I didn't recognize anyone.

 View from the top of the Kennedy Center

 Upon seeing the Washington Monument, my niece said "Oooooh that's where Grandaddy used to work!" I couldn't help but laugh. We pointed out the Pentagon to them on the ride home.

Friday we had crazy weird storms. If you live on the East coast I'm sure you got a piece of it too. But Saturday the power was out at my parents and 85% of the DC Metro Area. We were going to visit relatives in Arlington and thankfully they had power so we hung out there a little longer than expected. Here's Olivia and Grandaddy :)

Here's the assembly line I mentioned. I copied these background images to use as story telling mats for math problems. I had 25 copies of ten different backgrounds and I wanted to have some color on them before I laminated them. I was sure the girls would get sick of it after about 10 minutes but they made a little sweatshop and finished about half in just one afternoon. If you're curious how I'm going to use these stay tuned for a post in late August.

The public library system in our area does an excellent job with summer programs for children so we've also been spending a lot of time at the library. So far, they've made a 4th of July craft, and All-i-day project, entered a brain teasers contest, seen a reptile show, and I've got Alex signed up to read to a therapy dog named Ritz next week. Hopefully I will be able to snap some photos of that one. Olivia says she not sure if she wants to read to a dog yet, she wants to watch Alex first and then maybe I can sign her up next time.

And finally I'll leave you with one of my favorite conversations the girls have had since arriving. Since they are sisters and only two years apart they are inseparable best friends. Not having sisters I don't really understand it much but they are extremely close. So one day while riding in the car I listened in as they discussed which colleges they were interested in:

Olivia: "I think I want to go to Michigan State or Duke."
Alex: "Olivia, you only said Duke because I said I wanted to go there."
Olivia: "Yeah, but then we could be roommates."
Alex: "Olivia, that's MY dream. You need to follow your own dream!"
Olivia: "But MY dream is to be your roommate!"

I died. Love them.