Summer is here!!

Looks like it's full speed ahead. The weekend before school ended, we held a ceremony for the girls as they "bridged" from Juniors to Cadettes.  They are getting much more mature and they all did great with the formalities of the afternoon. The next day, we celebrated Father's Day with a road trip to Frenchtown for a little ice cream and the possibility of a geocache.  We scored the ice cream, but no geocache in sight.  Midweek, Yasmeen received her new belt...RED STRIPE.  Just one more belt level before she moves into the next training group and gets ready to work towards her black belt!! The girls officially had their last day of school exactly 1 week ago today, and we've been pretty busy ever since.  First, we "celebrated" the end of school with a deep cleaning of the upstairs playroom and managed to get rid of EIGHT bags for the donation bins.  This included clothing and toys, so it's not as crazy as it sounds, but it definitely made a dent!  Next, I had my last layout class EVER.  I have been telling my regulars that I will be scaling back to just holding SCRAMP nights for now, and all other classes have got to go.  It's good that I was able to finish off the last class before the usual lull in class attendance common of the summer, but it's bittersweet that it's the last one for good.  With getting back to working, something had to give! The first full day off of school, Yasmeen enjoyed watching "Mr. Popper's Penguins" with her old Battle of the Books club members (they were chaperoned by the teachers for the afternoon), and then by Friday, it was off to Coco Key Water Resort with my GS troop as a reward for their hard work this year.  Turns out that Adam also came along for the 1st day since Mohammed and I had a mix up about who was going to have Adam for the day, but it worked out since he absolutely had a blast!  The girls enjoyed themselves a ton, too.  They played hard and despite my idea that they might be too tired to stay up late, they got a second wind and were able to stay up late playing games with their GS sisters in the hotel room.  The next morning, it was time for breakfast and back to the water park.  Check out was at 11am, so they really only had an hour or so of playtime before we packed it up and headed back to Hillsborough.  After arriving home, we paid a visit to Elena before she left for Spain for the next few months.  We'll miss her!!  We had a busy Sunday, too.  Gido and Shoo arrived from Florida on their way to Egypt.  They came in for Mohammed's 40th birthday on Monday, and we even had a visit from Mohammed's cousin for the day. We spent 2 fun days together with Gido and Shoo-Shoo and when we took them to the airport yesterday, the girls immediately missed them.  The girls made me promise them that they would stay longer when they came back to the USA, so if you're reading this Gido and Shoo-Shoo, you'd better stay a while when you get back to NJ!  After dropping them off, we headed to Coney Island.  The last time we were there was back in 2007 and those pictures were one of the first blog entries I wrote after hopping on the blog bandwagon!! Today was back to work for Mohammed, and the start of the summer craziness that is characterized by endless activity, no schedule whatsoever, and going, going, going all day long.  Poor Adam didn't have a chance to nap until after 4pm today, and by then, I only let him sleep for about 45 minutes so as not to regret it later tonight.  We started the day with a visit to Colonial Park for my Spanish for Children Meetup group, then to Toys R Us to buy a gift for a birthday party in the early afternoon, afterwards off to the library for the summer reading program and to drop off some (overdue) books and videos. Then off to Tae Kwon Do with Yasmeen in the early evening.  We literally didn't come home until about 5:30pm from the time we left at 9am! I will need to take an "off day" soon so as not to burn out in the first week of summer vacation.  Tomorrow, I'll be sure to lay low once we get back from the Splashground in Colt's Neck.  Yep, another outing to keep everyone entertained.  In a couple of weeks, the girls will start their summer recreation/enrichment programs.  Yasmeen received her schedule for Band Camp today and Leena is on the hunt for a digital camera for her photography class.  Good times ahead!