Deer Lake

 The smoke rolled into Spokane from the fires burning close by... so, we went up to Deer Lake to join my brother and his family for some tubing and kayaking.  They have a year round camp site at Deer Lake. My nephew, Ryan and Kaiden went tubing. They both loved it! Kaiden had been too scared to try tubing until Ryan went. Once he tried it though he loved it and him and Ryan kept rotating for turns.  My brother John, sister-in-law Laura and Connor all went kayaking. Connor had no interest at all in tubing.  Afterwards we went back to their campsite for some dinner. The boys spent the night at their campsite with them.  Fun day on the water with their cousin!

Porcupine Bay

 We went camping at Porcupine Bay campground on Lake Roosevelt from Sunday-Friday. The boys went up Sunday. I met them there Monday (I had to work Sunday night). No fireworks this year since its been so dry and hot. We did lots of swimming. Kaiden and Jason snorkeled. Kaiden and I both kayaked. I even kayaked from our camp site at Porcupine bay half way to Frog Hollow and back (1.71 miles) and then a few hours later from our camp site all the way over to Frog Hollow (2 miles)! Jason went tubing. Kaiden practiced driving the boat. We found tons of tadpoles at Frog Hollow. Every night we went toad hunting around our campsite. The toads were big like Jabba too. There were hissing cockroaches too.  Connor collected a bunch to bring home with us to see if Jabba would eat them. We had yellow watermelon. Piper even got some, although she didn't really care for it. We had white chocolate fondue for desert one night. Jason and I played some Corn Hole. We all played some card games. Wednesday night the boys all went swimming in the middle of the lake at 9:30pm. They said the water was so warm it felt like bath water. I joined them for a swim Thursday night after 9:00pm, but it wasn't as warm. We found a cute little store right off the water that pumps gas right into your boat on the water. We stopped to gas up and grab some gatorades. Kaiden and Jason went fishing. They didn't catch anything, but they had fun trying. Connor read about 150 pages in his Dragon Watch book. Kaiden and I read a little bit too. We made bacon for breakfast one morning. Jason put the grease in a can and set it under the RV to harden. I guess he didn't put it far enough out of Piper's reach because she tipped it over and licked up some of the grease. She didn't feel good for an entire day and vomited later. We had a few mosquito bites, but it wasn't too bad. Jason's sandals rubbed a raw spot on his foot and even though I wore kayak gloves I still had a sore spot on both hands between my thumb and first finger from kayaking. I love kayaking so its still worth it. Another fun family camping trip!

CDA

 We decided to have Kaiden work with the same tutor for reading that Connor worked with. Kaiden was actually reading really good at the beginning of the year, but that's when we were doing on-line schooling and I was basically home schooling and working with him every day. I stopped doing all that when he went back to school full time. He's at school 6 hours a day and I assumed they would be working on reading skills some during that time?!? At the end of the school year he was reading worse than when he started going to school. Ugh! Today was his assessment with Kristin at her new office in Coeur d'alene, Idaho. Connor came with me and we checked out 2 book stores while we waited. Kaiden tested at the beginning of 1st grade, so he has a little catching up to do. Afterwards we checked out 2 more book stores- both boys came home with 4-5 books. Connor found 3 new book series that he's interested in reading. We also stopped at down town CDA for some ice cream- Connor got water melon, Kaiden got chocolate caramel. Then we let Kaiden play at their amazing park/splash pad. Connor and I sat in the grass and talked about his book he's writing. We also made a quick stop at a pet store to see about getting more critter food for Connor's toad.