Fun at the beach

We've had a nice week here in Ketchikan. Most of the summer so far has been a bit wet but we get some nice days or weeks here and there and this one was probably one of the best weeks we've had all summer.

Madison started back to her swim lessons this week. Since it is the summer schedule she is doing 2 weeks straight Monday through Friday. I think I prefer her school time schedule of 2 days a week for 5 weeks. It leaves me more time during the week and she doesn't get as tired of it.

Her swim lessons are coming along well though. Before swim lessons she wouldn't even get off the stairs in the smaller pool. She is now in the level 3 swim class and can swim the length of the big pool back and forth. She knows several different strokes (she really likes the back stroke) and this time she is learning how to do the butterfly stroke which she thinks is cool. Also this week she made a big "jump" and actually jumped off the diving board into the deep end which is in 12 feet of water, this was huge for her. She knew she was supposed to do this in the level 3 class so she was really worried about it. The first day she didn't do it but by the 3rd days she was doing it and really proud of herself! Friday she even dove in off of the diving blocks!



On one day after her lessons the kids went swimming at the pool and 2 other days we decided to go to the beach for the afternoon. The kids loved it and had a great time playing in the water. We got together with my friend Johanna and her daughter. Another friend and 4 of her kids came along plus 2 boys that are friends of Izzak and Joshua so we had a pretty good size group of kids going. The loved playing in the water....


And inspecting the tide pools during the low tide while we were there. They always come out to us with little crabs and other things.

Here are several of them checking out a little pool.

Kenzie and her friend getting ready to go back into the water....

Our beaches here mostly consist of small and large rocks. Here Madison is laying in the little rocks. They stick to her wet skin and she thinks it's pretty funny. Then she will go back to the water to wash off. One advantage to the small rock rather then sand is that it comes off a lot easier and we don't get our cars full of sand on the way home!



The weather this weekend changed and it is a bit overcast and cooler but I'm sure we will come up with some other things to do this week!

I've gotten almost all of Izzaks school materials in so far. Still working on getting the finishing touches on the rest of the kids to have them in the same program as he is in but I know what we are ordering so it won't take long once that is finished. We are working out some of the details as my friend and I are going to be teaching some of the subjects together to both her daughter and my kids this year, mostly science and history. One of the things we are studing is called beach explorations so we are trying to spend more time at the beach looking at the tides and tide pools to get the kids noticing what they can find so this has been a great week for getting started on the years lessons!