Summer Update

A number of years ago, the flow of blog posts tapered off. It was likely a combination of me not finding time to write them and just not having too many exciting things to talk about. The posts drastically picked up at the end of 2010 because of the C word. After Julia finished treatment the tapering started again. I guess it's not a bad thing that there aren't as many cancer-related blog posts anymore. But it also means that our lives are just kinda plugging along and maybe there's not always a lot of excitement to talk about. Although, I could probably always find some funny kid story to share... so maybe it's on me.

School's been out for a while and we're moving right along with summer activities. Finn has soccer - he's been coming home sweaty, tired, and happy. Both kids had a fun summer school class that just finished: Julia took French and Finn took a class about nature in Wisconsin.

Julia has never been much of a swimmer. It didn't help that she missed a whole summer's worth of lessons and playing in the water in 2011 due to cancer treatment. She's been taking individual lessons for a few weeks and has been enjoying herself. The one-on-one attention is really what she needed to help build her confidence and let her figure things out at her own pace. After her lessons Julia has usually been beaming with pride and talking about what she was able to do. She felt good enough that she's now signed up for one of the standard group lessons. We're excited that she found what worked for her!

About a week into summer vacation Finn announced that he wanted to play the violin. We had been thinking about having him take music lessons of some sort so we ran with it. I kind of wondered if it was a fleeting desire, but he's really taken it seriously. He has a few lessons under his belt and really concentrates while he practices at home, as evidenced below.

During the second half of the school year, Finn's reading really took off. I remember Julia's reading ability having a sudden growth spurt like that too. It's pretty cool to witness it. But that doesn't mean they don't still enjoy being read to.

We get outside and go for walks as a family fairly often. Finn was checking out the water at one of the lakes in town made by the Kinni.

Even the dog came along on a tour of the trails at UWRF.

Every once in a while, I would find a ton of pictures on the camera from Julia getting a hold of it and going nuts. Recently, Finn did the same thing. This is his first (of hopefully not many) bathroom selfies.

He had a number of these crazy-eyed close ups. It was a little disturbing.

And of course, a boy and his dog.

And to get a little bit more of Julia, here she is posing near one of our gardens with one of the many puffed dandelions. The dandelions have been gone for weeks already and we have a nice spread of clover instead.

With all the rain we've been getting, it's no surprise we found a spectacular rainbow. This one was the brightest and clearest one I had ever seen.