6 Free Summer Reading Programs

Sometimes it can be a struggle to get our children to read during the summer months.  They either want to play outside with friends, or inside with toys and video games.  This summer we are going to focus on reading.  This year in Kindergarten Lil' E learned to read.  Doble is in the early stages of sounding words out, and Razy loves to look at pictures and be read to.  I am hoping that by the end of the summer their love for reading will have encreased as well as their skill. 

Sometimes we all need a little incentive and the following is a list of Free Reading Programs taking place this summer.  Take a look and have some Fun Reading!

Barnes and Noble Books

Imagination’s Destination FREE Summer Reading program

The Barnes & Noble Summer Reading Program is here to help you on your way, encouraging you to read books of your own choosing and earn a FREE book, simply by following these three easy steps:

1. Read any eight books this summer and record them in this Barnes & Noble Summer Reading Imagination’s Destination Journal. Be sure to let us know to whom you would recommend each book, and why.

2. Bring your completed journal to a Barnes & Noble store between May 24th and September 6th, 2011.

3. Choose your FREE reading adventure from the book list featured on the back of the journal. Click here to get your free journal.

Old Spaghetti Factory Summer Reading Program

 Children who read five books are eligible for a free kid's meal. Click here for more details.

Borders Double Dog Dared Reading Challenge

Kids ages 12 and under are being “Double Dog Dared” to read 10 books this summer and record them on the downloadable form. Then just take the completed form into any store for your free book of select titles.

Local Library Summer Reading Programs

Make sure to visit your local library to see what summer reading programs they have avaliable.  Many libraries not only have a summer reading program but also offer story time, and other activities throughout the summer.

Pottery Barn Kids Summer Reading Challenge

Keep your kids reading all summer long with great books from Pottery Barn Kids. Read together at their weekly Story Times or read independantly at home. Visit a local store to receive a free book when your child complete one of our recomended reading lists. The recomended reading list has some great classic childrens books on it!

Chuck E. Cheeses

You can download a free Reading Rewards Calendar (and other ones too) to incentivize some summer reading. Read a book for 2 weeks and kids earn 10 free tokens as a reward!

Coming Soon:

Fun ways to encourage your children to read during the summer

10 Summer Fun Activites

Summer is just around the corner for us.  Doble and Razy just finished their last day of preschool last week and Lil' E will be done by the end of next week.  I was searching the web for some fun activities and crafts to do with the kids and found some I thought were worthy to pass onto my readers.  Stay tuned throughout the summer and we will share more ideas that we find.

Water Balloon Pinata

 at Ziggity Zoom

My kids are already ready to get wet this summer.  They have already pulled the sprinklers out for some water fun.  We are going to try this fun way to cool off this summer using water balloons and a plastic bat. 

Rainbow Pudding Pops

at Random Thoughts of a Super Mom

Popsicles are a must during hot summer days.  They are even more fun when you the kids can make them themselves.  Look at how colorful and yummy these ones look to make.

Sidewalk Chalk

at Family Fun

My kids are big fans of sidewalk chalk.  But with this fun and easy recipe we can make our own with ingredients we have on hand. 

Scavenger Hunt

at I am Momma Hear Me Roar

What a fun way to keep the kids occupied for a little bit.  The idea of using the egg cartons is genius.  They each get their own carton with the list printed right on top.  I love that this can be changed out for any type of scavenger hunt.

Ice Excavating

at Chasing Cheerios

The kids could spend lots of time searching for small toys and other objects that have been frozen in a block of ice.  If you have room in your freezer you could even do this on a larger scale by filling a large bin.

Stars in Jars

at Brown Chicken Brown Cow

We don't live in an area with fireflies, but this cute idea just using Mason jars and glow in the dark paint would be a hit with Lil' E.

Marshmallow Art

at The Decorated Cookie

I can't wait to try this out with the kids.  We go camping atleast 3 times a year.  This year we are going 4 times that have already been planned for.  I am definately picking up some food writers from the store before our next camping trip so the kids can have fun creating marshmallow art.

Mister Recycle Head Man

at Delia Creates

We just finished planting our garden a few weeks ago and the kids had fun helping.  They would get a kick out of growing hair for their very own Recycle Man.

Silly Citrus

at Crazy Domestic

We don't do jello very often.  Sometimes it is a hit and miss as to whether the kids are going to want it.  This cute idea is simple enough to take the chance to see if they would have fun eating silly citrus jello shots.

A Backyard Obstacle Course

at Imagination Soup 

My kids love to go out and play outside.  They love to play on the playset and pull out their bats and gloves or run through the sprinkler.  However, there are days that they just don't know what to do.  Creating an obstacle course would be perfect for those days.

30 Days of Fun Activity Board

at Sew Dang Cute Crafts

When you figure out all that you want to do this summer why not make this cute activity board and place it where everyone can see?

Do you have fun things planned this summer to do with the kids?  I would love to hear what they are.

Happy 7th Birthday Lil' E

LIL' E's  FAVORITES

Favorite Food: Hamburgers

Favorite Color: Blue and Red

Best Friend: Kai and Donny

Favorite Toy: Star Wars

Favorite Movie: Bolt

Favorite Song: I Love to See the Temple

Thing to Do: Play Baseball

Favorite Place to Go: The Mariners Game

Favorite kind of Icecream: Chocolate and Vanilla

Favorite Candy: Starbursts

Happy Birthday Lil' E

This is posted late, but Happy Birthday to my grown up little boy.  My oldest is 7.  Man, 7 seems so old.  I mean 6 to me is still little, but when your kids start saying they are 7, the are full out big kids.  Wow! As I was looking through pictures of Lil' E I couldn't help but smile at the memories of this cute, chubby, little boy.  He has was an easy baby who loved to eat and sleep and eat. By 4 months he weighed a whopping 24 pounds.  He has since then slimmed down, but I miss that little buddah baby. I love you Lil' E! Happy 7th Birthday!

Lil' E is really into Star Wars, well he says he is, but I don't know how much he really knows about Star Wars.  However, by request we are doing an R2D2 cake for his birthday.  We made Star Wars Cupcakes for his kindergarten class.  And because of his love of baseball, we made Baseball Cupcakes for his Baseball team.

Huggable Teddy Bears {Product Review}

Can you believe that my little Razy doesn't didn't have a teddy bear?  She got one when she was first born, but it wasn't one that she wanted to cuddle with.  Recently I was asked asked to review a product from Huggable Teddy Bears.  Razy was so excited for her teddy bear to come.  It did take her forever to choose "the" one, but once she found Buckwheat she knew he was the one. 

I was so pleased with Buckwheat when he arrived.  The website said that he was one soft plush bear, so I knew he would be soft and huggable.  However, I didn't think he would be as soft as he was.  He is so plush and his fur is so soft.  He has a little bit of extra padding in his tooshy to help him sit up, but the rest of him is huggable all around.  No wonder Razy loves to sleep with him. 

Look at this sweet and loveable face. 

Do you know someone that needs a hug and would benefit from a huggable teddy bear?  Huggable Teddy Bears has bears for all occasions. 

Is there a special someone in your life?  Maybe you are celebrating an anniversary, wedding, or any other romantic occasion.  The selection of romantic gifts will throw your loved one head over heals.

Or what about your soon to be graduate?  Send them off to college with a hug and a memory of their special day.  Brody may be just the bear.  Look at that cute face...

and he would look so sharp in his graduation cap in gown. 

Or maybe you know someone about to start in the adventure of children.  Look how adorable these Baby Gifts are.  They have baby gift baskets, diaper cakes, and baby bears. 

What better way to say "Get Well" than with a huggable bear.

So whether you are looking for a Romantic Gift, a Graduation Gift, a Baby Gift, A Get Well Gift, or just a Huggable Teddy Bear, Go check them out today!

Lilies, Roses, and 10 years

This past Thursday, JBody and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. Each year our anniversary falls on the same weekend that we go camping with our family.  We usually wait to do anything for our anniversary until we get home from our trip.  This year JBody surprised me with this beautiful bouquet.  It looks just a bit wilty in some areas and that is due to the fact that I didn't want this beauty to go to waste.  I wanted to enjoy it for as long as I could so I rode the hour and a half to our campground with the arrangement inbetween my feet.  It was worth it.  It was fun to see the vibrant colors inside our cabin each day.  This picture was taken after returning from our trip, but you can still see the beauty. 

I love Lilies and JBody knows this.  The florist did a wonderful job.  The added touch of the twigs coming out the top and the rocks in the vase were perfect and really went along with our camping trip. 

So did you know that when your lily blooms you need to remove the pollen pods.  They stain the flower, your hands, and everything they touch.  Not to mention you SNEEZE, SNEEZE, SNEEZE.

Once removed they make the flower even more gorgeous.

Just another picture to remind you how pretty this bouquet was and also to toot my horn that I really do have a Wonderful Husband.

Camping in the Land of Zion

Every year during memorial weekend we head out camping.  This year was no different than all the rest.  However, the place was.  In March we got a phone call telling us that our reservations had to be cancelled because the trees in the park had root rot and were falling down.  We had to quickly find another place to camp.  Well let me tell you it was anything but quick when deciding on a new place to go.  First we looked into a renting a cabin or vacation home.  Well when you are working with about 16 people staying together, it gets pretty expensive.  $1300 expensive.  This didn't include the renting of boats, tackle, bait, food, ect.  So we had to throw that out of the window.  I will be honest, I was sad.  I thought it would be so fun to stay in a cabin.  By April we were getting nervous.  Where the heck were we going to stay. 

Sometime in April we took our kids to some church property (Zion's Camp) to do some service in the campground.  We were put in charge of cleaning the cabins.  We fell in love with the area and decided that this is where we would be spending our Memorial Day camping trip.  And get this it only cost us $35 a night to stay in the cabin.  Yes we still had food, bait, and tackle, but the boats, paddle boats, canoes, achery, ropes coarse, frisbee golf, ect. were all FREE! We loved it so much that we are going to be taking the kids back in July.

Enjoy the following pictures of our trip.

We quickly set up camp and headed to the dock.  JBody had barely finished baiting Lil' E's and Dobles poles when BAM!  FISH ON BABY!!

  

This fish spoiled Lil' E.  The rest of the fish that night and most of the weekend had nothing on this 18 inch beast.

oops he was a bit slippery

The park was a favorite place to visit.  They had some pretty sweet swings.  This blue one was a favorite.  I wish pictures could give it justice, but it just can't.  The kids were crazy as they flew and spun through the air.  They all loved it, including Razy and Doble.

Another fun swing that the kids would get major air on.  I still can't believe how crazy confident the kids were on these things. 

Look at this cute little face.  Our little baby Carson is no longer a baby.  He is now the big brother to a brand new baby.  Congrats Austin and Linsey!

Lil' E learning archery

Doble's first fish.  His last fish of the weekend was alot bigger than this one.

Noah and his first fish

Carson actually pulled this one in with a little help from Aunti Peaches

Brave Jenna and her boat full of cousins.  She had 4 kids in the paddle boat all alone.  Not to mention she is also 8 months pregnant. 

Pure joy.  I love some these pictures of the three of these kids.

Jordan and her fish.  She didn't want to touch it. 

Preparing for the ropes coarse.  They were practicing their trust fall

We had to get the whole gang over the top of this wall with the rules that once you were over you could only help lift twice and then you were done.  Harder than it looks.

The trust fall.  Freaked me out, but awesome. We stood on a log that was about 4 feet off the air and then had to fall backwards into the arms of the people below.  It took alot of trust.  Here we are catching Papa.

Lil' E getting some MAJOR air.

The last big fish of the weekend.  

What a weekend.  Fun times with family and new friends.