Summertime!!!!

I can't believe summer is here. Well, not officially, of course, but according to the school calendar it is here in full force! Ethan actually had to miss the last day of school. It was almost a dejavu of last year. The week prior he had started having some coughing and asthma issues, but no other symptoms. Things just never really got better. And then the night before the last day of school, Ethan started running a fever of 103 and coughing. I was worried that things had progressed into pneumonia by that point, but his oxygen levels were still good. Regardless, he was not going to school on the last day. He was devastated! He ended up writing a note to his teacher that I took to the school and delivered to her. It said something like "Dear Ms. L, I am going to miss you. I hope you have a good summer. I had fun in your class this year." And he signed it by drawing a heart and then signing his name. When I gave it to his teacher, she almost started crying. And then I almost started crying because I knew how much Ethan was wanting to be there on the last day of school. It was tough! When I took him to the doctor that day, the pediatrician went ahead and treated him for pneumonia because of his symptoms. He said there wasn't really a need to do the chest x-ray because he was going to treat him the same way no matter what. Plus, we were supposed to be leaving for camp in just a few days and we really needed Ethan to get well. Ethan was put on Prednisone plus a heavy duty antibiotic. Luckily, the meds did the trick and by the time we left for camp, his coughing was better and he was feeling like Superman because of the steroids.

We ended up having a wonderful time at Magic Moments Family Camp despite a few rain showers here and there. Ethan and Rob went tubing. Emily swam in the lake and played in the sand while they were tubing. The kids loved swimming in the pool. We played in the most awesome pirate tree house ever! We went boat riding. There were fun carnival games where the kids won little prizes. We had quite a competitive round of bingo. They did some arts and crafts. We rocked out and got our groove on during the evening dance. The parents got to enjoy a quiet meal without the kids during Parents Night Out / Kids Night Out. We had an amazing fireworks show! And some of the best times were when we weren't really doing much of anything at all except catching lightening bugs in the evening or eating Pop Rocks on the deck of our cabin. We are so blessed to be able to go to such an amazing camp each year. Magic Moments is truly one of the best children's charities that I've ever seen. Ethan and Emily feel like they keep getting wishes each and every year because of this wonderful camp. For those of you that may not know, Magic Moments hosts a camp each year for the wish children and their families. It is held at Children's Harbor on Lake Martin. Once you've been granted a wish, you are eligible to go to this camp each year until you turn 18. We still have many years left. And the one thing that amazes me about Ethan and Emily is that they are totally blind to children's disabilities that attend this camp. No matter the severity of the other children's issues, it made no difference to my kids. They were all just kids in their eyes! And that's the way it should be! In fact, Emily played in the sand with a little girl who had Spina Bifida and the little girl could only communicate by sign language. Even though Emily couldn't sign with her, they still managed to play together and have fun. But ever since we got home, Emily has been determined to learn to sign. She knows that they used to sign when they were infants and toddlers, but she doesn't remember the signs. She pulled out the signing DVDs I had and she has been watching them and teaching herself to sign. I also pulled out an old sign language book that I had from when I was little and gave it to her.

Also, now that school is out, I have signed the kids up for swimming lessons. They desperately need them. Their P.E. coach from school teaches the lessons and I am praying that they work for the kids. Emily is scared to death about it, too, because I won't be staying for the lesson. Ethan is more excited because he really WANTS to learn to swim. I'm hoping that these are successful because they will end just before our cousins from Colorado come for a visit. I know that we'll be swimming while they are here.

Since the kids have been out of school, they have been doing a lot of reading. Emily was reading a book that was 282 pages. She can't wait until the school library opens next week so she can go in and test on it. They can test on books all summer and they will count towards next year's AR points. I was telling Emily about some of the Beverly Cleary books. I thought that she would really enjoy reading some of those. So we went to the public library yesterday and she got two of the Ramona books. While we were there, Ethan spotted the Harry Potter books. He is such a huge HP fan and really wanted to check out one of the books. I told him he could, but I showed him how thick they were. I just didn't want him to get discouraged. It has only been very recently that he has even gotten into reading. I'd hate for him to give up on it because he got something too hard. I told him to take the book and sit down on one of the couches and read the first two pages for me. I just wanted to make sure that he didn't have any problems with the words, punctuation, comprehension, etc. He sat down and within just a minute or two he was done and said that he wanted to check it out. Well, that was yesterday, and Ethan is already on page 32 of the Harry Potter book! He got the second book in the series because the first one was checked out. He has seen all of the movies so he isn't missing the plot. He has spent so much of the day just reading. He LOVES this book. So, I sat him down this afternoon and worked out a plan with him. I first asked him how it was going and if he was having any trouble at all with any part of the book. He said he wasn't. I told him that when you read really big books like this, you have to do it in baby steps. I told him that if he can read an average of just 10 pages per day, then he can finish the book in just 34 days. I said that that would be a very good goal for him at his age. I really doubt there are many 1st graders who are reading Harry Potter. I told him how proud I was of him to be reading that book. He asked me how many AR points he would get for it and so we looked it up together. He about freaked when I told him. This book is ranked on a 6th grade level and is worth 14 AR points!!! And the really funny part about this is that when Emily heard this she FREAKED! The competition is ON!!!!

And I can't close without asking for some prayers for my dad. He started his radiation this week for his cancer. They are trying to shrink the tumor in his lung before they can do surgery to remove it. Removing it right now is just too risky and they need to try to get it to reduce in size as much as they can before doing any surgery. Please say a prayer for Lenord Roberson if you could.