fun week

This summer is the first summer I've had both kids home with me everyday.  Violet graduated preschool and has been enjoying her very first summer break.  Blue is old enough to entertain himself and I was hoping he'd also be able to help me look out for Violet so I could get some creative work done.  They've both done well and each morning they have their chores and summer school work to do before goofing off the rest of the day.  I've been lucky enough to spend many of my days doing creative work.  After the open studio sale I was in need of a vacation from art so I told the kids we'd spend the week doing fun things.

 Monday I needed to pick up some things from school so after lunch at Cookout I took them to explore the Lake Greenwood State Park.

 It was hot but it was pretty and it had a playground so they were thrilled.

 On Tuesday I took them to Gravitopia and they jumped and jumped until they were completely exhausted.

 Blue even took a few jumps off the high dive this time.

Wednesday was hiking day.  

   The weather turned much cooler and we drove north to Jones Gap State Park.  We walked a mile or so and had a picnic lunch by the river.

 Then we played in the river for a while.  Blue took a bit of a swim and with the cooler air and the chilly water, we were all downright cold by the time we made it back to the car.

 We dried our feet as we drove on up to Caesar's Head State Park.  We walked through the Devil's Kitchen and Violet asked of the man walking past us was the Devil.

 Blue at the overlook with Table rock behind him.

Table Rock

 Blue and Violet on a big rock.  

 The kids still said they were cold when we got home so we loaded up "Elf" and watched a Christmas movie while they drank hot chocolate.

 Thursday we headed to the library for some new books and stopped by the playground.

 This is not the playground exactly, but it's near the playground.

 After a few photos they watched Netflix and read their books.

 Friday G was off so we all went to The Childrens Museum of The Upstate.  The kids love this place.

 And since it's next door to the Greenville County Museum of Art, I forced everyone to walk with me through the museum.

The kids were tired and miserable at this point but we got to see some great Jasper Johns works, William H. Johnson's stuff and a bunch of Andrew Wyeth.  And, the museum staff was great.  There was even a security guard who gave us a mini dissertation on the more recent work of Jasper Johns and his use of imagery.  

Now Fun Week is over and it's back to breaking rocks in the hot sun.