Park Hop Play has started! Inspired by a Facebook friend in another city it's a summer long Park Hop. I decided to start a local 'chapter' if you will. The idea is to name a new park each week in the city where parents and kids will meet. A lot of people know other people who may want to play also so I left it as a nonhomeschooling idea. Last week we kicked it off with a picnic in the largest park in the city. We will likely finish our summer hop there again. It was a lot of fun to hang out with other Moms and let the kids play. It is also an excellent way of seeing some of long forgotten city parks.

Spring has been keeping me away from the blog and hopping from this job to the next. My gardens are extensive and require regular weeding. It is the first year in a long time that I can devote to the gardens as the kids have finally reached an age to be both helpful and nonintrusive.

Our backyard has a sizeable fish pond. This year we had to completely restock it as the goldfish did not overwinter at all. The heater froze mid winter allowing it to freeze solid, lesson learned. This fall I am going to be giving the fish away to winter homes. First come, first serve.

The kids have had an easy spring in the schooling dept as I have been catching up on this and that. We celebrated our 15th anniversary this month. And had a new babysitter, a homeschool girl who passed the babysitting course this spring. She was so much fun the kids want her to babysit again really soon. I shall have to come up with something for us to do to get out.

We are having a year end fun carnival in a couple of weeks for the homeschool association. My husband and I get a real kick out of kids parties and have even discussed having a retirement business around that very idea. So this party is practice as I haven't had to organize something on this scale before. I have made it a potluck although we will be providing drinks and popcorn. Going off the orginial idea of a lollipop tree we are crafting a large version with a grand prize, which I won't give away (no pun intended) just yet. There will be several of the standard games as well and a prize table.  We also came up with the idea of having an 'outdoor' prize draw. I am hoping to have a facepainter but have to double check as I accidently deleted her last email to me. And a homeschool father has kindly stepped up to make balloon animals which he does as well as being a magician as a side business. Its looking like it will be a grand time had by all.  I will post pics after the main event.

I am still deciding what curriculum to use for Ds next year in math. And I need to find a decent yet not overly expensive french curriculum. Do you know of any? please leave a comment with info on.

And yes people, you can officially start to get excited over our blog giveaway as part of the Great Canadian Blog Bash. Please note we have links on the top of our page. I know they don't stand out as clearly as I would like them to but I haven't had time to fix that yet. That's a mid summer job for me to revamp the blog and get organized for fall schooling. I am pretty pleased with where the kids are so far. I will continue to school the kids throughout the summer as needed, possible or able. And of course you can always drop in to read about what we are up to. Or just to check out the links. I hope to work on those some more this summer to clean things up a bit.