At the suggestion of Abby’s counselors, we entered her into a county sponsored summer reading program. It was four weeks long and ran Monday through Thursday. Abby passed to the fourth grade by the skin of her teeth and it was our hope that this would help boost her reading skills. My only problem with the program was that I had to get her to a bus by 7:00 in the morning. It was a small price to pay, but this was supposed to be summer. I was wanting my extra 30 minutes of sleep in the morning before going to work. Anyway, it appears that it has helped. We’ve been reading the Magic Tree House series of books and tonight I could tell she was reading a lot better.

Meanwhile, Emily and Izzy have been attending swim lessons for the past three weeks. Izzy has already “graduated” up one class. Although that isn’t saying much, for her age group. I think the different is whether or not they get their head wet. I can tell Emily has gotten a renewed confidence in the water. She used to not go anywhere without hanging onto my back. Now she’ll jump in and swim back to the ledge no problem. She didn’t have near as much confidence at the beginning of the summer when we were hopping down to Disney to go swimming in their pools.