Summer 2008 Part 1

Well, it’s been almost a year since I’ve posted to this blog. I had really good intentions of at least posting weekly updates, but it has been more difficult that I had imagined. I’ve written periodic notes to myself so I have at least some idea of the highlights of the year, still I am very disappointed as I know that I have forgotten many things we have done over the year. My goal is to keep a pretty detailed record of my children’s (and I guess you could say me and my husband’s as well) learning journey while they still live with us.
Anyway, I will attempt to at least write posts covering some of the things we did this past year.

Camp – One of the bigger things we did this summer was go to a camp in Wisconsin called Silver Birch Ranch. While I’m not a big camp person, and we wouldn’t have gone if Steve was not playing guitar during the week for the worship services, still it was fun to see the kids experience a lot of new things.

We had our own little cabin with three rooms and a bathroom. Jared wound up getting a cold sore so he couldn’t suck on his pacifier at night, which made for some pretty sleepless nights. Actually, he has only slept entirely through the night only a handful of times each year since he was 6 months old, but only waking up one or two times is a real treat for us! We finally got him off the pacifier a few months after we came back from camp. I had misplaced the only one he had left and by the next night when we had found it, we just said it wasn’t coming back. I was expecting his usual tantrum, but surprisingly he took it in stride.

So back to camp. When we first go to the cabin, the kids ran around the small space shrieking and dancing with year other. They were so excited to be sleeping in a cabin. We’d wake up around seven thirty and walk to breakfast. Then they’d have a place to drop off the kids while we had a morning service. We were only away from them for about two hours, but I hated being away from them during our vacation. Most people left their kids there the entire morning. In fact, the first day we went to pick them up after the service, we didn’t find them there. They would take the kids on little outings like on a pontoon ride or pony ride, and we wouldn’t know where they’d be. I guess they aren’t used to people picking up their kids so early, so we had to remind them to let us know where they’d be.

After lunch we would all take a little nap, and then afternoons were we could have fun. Steve took the kids out on a kayak and we all took several rowboat rides together across the lake. There was a little beach area the kids had fun at scooping up sand and wading in the water.

One afternoon after our nap, we raced over to the go-kart track and barely made it there before they closed down. Jared had so much fun riding with Steve, and Alexa and I drove together. She cried halfway through the ride because her helmet keep falling down over her eyes (they didn’t have one small enough to perfectly fit a 26 ½ month old!).

Another fun thing was going to the mini-golf course at the camp. I wish I could figure how to post pictures to this blog (a big goal for this next year) because they looked so cute with their little golf clubs. Alexa met a little boy about six months older than she and he loved to say no and mine when he was around her. Little did I know that she would soon start that up (actually Jared, too) within a few months. There was a playground there we would go too everyday as well.

Another big trip was Missouri. We went to Kansas City last year, too, but this year was even more fun as the kids were talking more, played more with their cousin and basically got into more stuff. One fun night was when we went next door for a barbeque at Steve’s aunt’s next-door-neighbors. They are originally from an island in Greece. We had some pretty great food, and the kids loved running through a sprinkler. Jerry (the husband) gave Jared a kid’s orange smock from Home Depot to put on, and helped him make a little birdfeeder which we took home with us. They had a small fountain in their front yard, so the kids walked around that and dipped their feet inside.

We went to a huge sports store when we were there. Some highlights were watching the coy in the pond, looking at a huge aquarium tank filled with exotic fish, riding up and down the elevator and buying some great fudge.

We celebrated Steve’s grandmother’s birthday when we were there. We drove about a half hour a way to a Mexican restaurant. As usual, the kids barely sat still. Steve and I had to take brief bites while they ran around the restaurant. They are definitely on the very active end of the spectrum.

There is a pond across the street from LeeAnn’s house that we like to go to when we visit. The kids loved throwing rocks into the pond (an all time favorite activity this summer and still seems to be pretty high up on their list), watching the ducks and running along the road.

One afternoon we also rode on a Carousel at the Mall. They had been on one at the zoo once before and really enjoyed this one too. One nice thing about kids this age is they are easy to please. The mall has these toys where if you put money in them they would either vibrate or rock back and forth. The kids just loved crawling in and out of the play vehicles without us putting any money inside.

There were a lot of other things we did around the house and such when we were there, but I didn’t write everything down, and I’m trying desperately to catch up before their third birthday, so I’m just gonna end this post and move on to another part of the summer.