Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Birthday and Renaissance Faire

This was a week filled to bursting with activities. We sure have P.E. covered in our homeschool. Before the day is out, Anne will log nine hours and Dean five hours of dance.  They also got to have an hour of swimming with Grandma at the YWCA, which is turning into a weekly tradition. Lastly, I signed Anne up for one hour of tumbling each week. She paid for the semester with her birthday money. I feel much better about her learning aerial cartwheels and other exciting acrobatics from a professional and with a spotter.

Anne celebrated her 12th birthday with her three best friends. She had a tie-dye birthday sleepover --complete with tie-dye t-shirts, 3 foot long sundae, tie-dye cake, movie watching and hours of goofy dancing and squealing. You can read more about it here.

She also had a special birthday breakfast on her official birthday. It is always fun to have cake and presents for your birthday! Anne got the retired American Girl Doll, Kirsten, from us. I won't go into the details of how many auctions I lost on Ebay before I finally won this doll. She also got money for classes, earrings, and some cute America Girl Doll accessories.

We participated in our church's turn with Room In the Inn this week. This is a wonderful program that involves churches opening their doors for one week at a time to 12 emotionally stable, drug free, homeless women while they are working to get their lives back on track. The group of women move from church to church each week. We volunteered to make bag lunches for the women one of the days during our church's week. Anne and Grandma decorated the bags.

We attended our state's Renaissance Faire this week. We went on education day. I have had this on my bucket list to do with the kids for years, so I was glad to get it off the list. However, it wasn't nearly as educational as I thought it would be. Mostly, it was too crowded, very expensive and filled with very rude men (several of them helped their children/students cut lines and then yelled about people who tried to correct them). I was much more shocked by the poor behavior of the adults than the children. The kids had fun and I am glad they are old enough to remember it, because I won't be taking them back next year.

Tim, Dean and Anne ~ my kids are growing up so fast.

The kids never miss a chance for fish and chips.

We went through a coin finding maze. Anne loves to find money, even when it is fake.

Dean liked the axe throwing station.

He even got one in the wall!

We also took Grandma!

I got my picture taken with the Queen and her court.

The kids with their souvenirs. 

The kids were fascinated with the dungeon that taught about Medieval punishment and torture. Tim also got to see the jousting, which he always loves. (He got to go to Renaissance Faires several times when he was younger before Anne and Dean were born.) Dean spent hours this week working on his sword. It came out great. He even wrote some medieval humor on it.

It says, "Stabby Time".

What a full week.

Blessings, Dawn