It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Summer Vacation

Last Friday, we filled up Cate's baby pool (which incidentally started as a pool for our dog) and put it at the bottom of her slide. The slide is actually at just the perfect height to line up evenly with the pool. After stripping Cate down to her diaper-- because really, no two year old needs a bathing suit in the privacy of her own backyard-- she was ready to head in.

Cate was a little unsure about the waterslide at first, but she climbed to the top anyway.
And away...
...she...
...went!
She loved it so much, we spent considerable time out there again on Saturday. It was the perfect reminder that summer is almost here and I will probably spend many a day in our backyard with my sweet girl. I have two days left with students and then a 3-hour teacher work day. Then. I. Am. Done. For this school year anyway. I will say that the past couple of weeks have been really fun. My students have been doing a new project this year making movie trailers for books they read. Today we had our premiere party with a rented popcorn machine and everything. I can't take any of the credit though. The other language arts teacher on my team totally came up with the idea and made all of the handouts. I wish I could show you some here, but it would violate my students' privacy. Seriously though-- many of them were outstanding!

And speaking of books-- summer reading has officially started at our library. I'm kicking off my summer reading with this book. Which will be followed by this book (one of my book club's summer reading picks). And my favorite go-to-chick-lit author, Jane Green, has a book due out this summer too. Cate and I have already made a couple of trips to the library and she already earned this stylish pair of sunglasses for reading 5 books.
To be fair (because we easily read a dozen books a day around here), I only count books we check out from the library and I only record enough for her to move up a prize level every 7-10 days (otherwise she'd have moved up through every prize level already-- there are only 4 and you only need to read 5 books for each). And that outfit she's got on in the above picture? It was mine. I love that she can wear all of my old handmade by my grandmother goodness. My mom cross-stitched the ducks on that outfit. There are some on the bottom of the diaper cover too.
Yes, it is definitely beginning to look a lot like summer around here!

~Melody :-)