July has been a month of camps - girl scout and cub scout camps and board game camps!
We started the month by going to Wonderscope on the rainiest morning ever. Every other parent in Kansas City made the same decision and we only lasted an hour and a half before we had to leave due to the sea of humanity. Well, and because Patrick wandered off with Juliet and then lost her almost instantly and I was not about to lose my 2 year old in the insanely packed museum so once she wandered back over to the other kids I said it was time to make our exit.
Eleanor has been asking for dresses like this pioneer child one she found at the museum and I don't understand the youth of today.
Meanwhile, she came home and put on this.
I interviewed her about being 8 years old just about a week after her birthday.
Patrick has complained about how often I tell him to go outside these days but look at this kid and tell me I'm wrong. The other day we went over to my folks' house for our weekly family dinner with them and Patrick started bouncing wildly around the living room the second we walked in the door so I said "go outside!" and my dad told me he thought about telling Patrick that it was a waste of his time to take his shoes off when walking inside but he decided against saying it to his sweet and wild grandchild.
This kid is ridiculous when it comes to sports. He practiced his long shot one morning and then kept sinking shots.
Finally I stopped taking videos of all the shots he was making.
We went to Valley View Park over in Grandview with our friends, the Rutherfords, and no one fell from any of the giant play equipment despite Juliet's efforts to keep up with the big kids.
Honestly, stuff like this is where people are more likely to be injured.
Grandma Colleen and Kerry came to visit and Juliet reinstated herself as #1 in the Grandma Colleen fan club.
We went down to Linn Valley for the 4th of July celebrations they held down there on the 3rd because it was a Saturday. Lake time was a little sad because they discovered blue/green algae in the lakes and we couldn't go swimming and we had no idea when it would be okay to swim again. Fortunately we got the notice this past weekend that the lakes were all opened back up so it went away far faster than we had hoped it might!
Patrick participated in a fishing derby and caught 3 fish!
He won a fishing lure and had a great time.
And then we all gathered for the parade. The kids loved collecting candy and Nathan and I have plans of decorating our golf kart next year and throwing tootsie rolls to everyone while blasting the song of the same name. The fact that he is fully onboard with plans like this is part of why we are married.
Cute girls enjoying their candy spoils
We discovered that both of the boys really like ladderball so they played a bunch while Colleen and Kerry were visiting.
We finally got out the wading pool.
Patrick always loves doing crafts with Grandma Colleen and was eager to show her what he could make out of the tiny jewelry beads we got for Eleanor's Girl Scout crafts.
Kerry being instructed in the ways of Pancake Pile-Up.
Juliet was generally pretty adamant about following her grandma around though, it was very cute.
More wading pool time.
More ladderball.
Playing school together.
Patrick taught Colleen and Kerry one of his new favorite games, My First Castle Panic
Our 4th of July plans were somewhat hampered by the discovery the morning of that Eleanor was covered in poison ivy. It was primarily all over her face, which isn't great. Fortunately, I knew exactly the medicine she needed, just needed to go to urgent care to get the prescription. 3 and a half hours later the one doctor on call finally saw us and it took two minutes to get said prescription. A printed version, I had to drive to a pharmacy in Lenexa and get it filled there. It would be great if our kids could get sick at times that were neither a holiday or a weekend, and preferably not both of those at once. Sunday 4th of July was not great for staffing at urgent care it seems.
It was worth it though. Eleanor didn't seem too uncomfortable and was able to enjoy driveway sparklers and some tiny fireworks and we got the medicine started for her soon enough to ensure that she would be allowed to attend Girl Scout camp which started on Tuesday. Juliet hated the fireworks and made me go cuddle her indoors until it was all over.
A sweet moment of Bradley reading to Patrick. I need to capture all the sweet moments between these two because they have been rather inseparable this summer, which sounds good, but it also means a lot of fighting. I keep sending kids outside. Hence the poison ivy.
It's been nice having cousins visit my folks so much, the kids have gotten a lot more used to each other and Bradley and Emmett are a pretty great duo.
Everyone hiding under the rock sculpture. Why, you ask? Why not?
Meg wishes there was more cuddling and reading during the summer, but she does okay for herself.
Here is Eleanor covered in Calamine lotion. And an example of the classy cooler we often use as a wading pool for Juliet.
Extra classy times. Juliet ran around naked for a bit.
I was so glad I got to go to Eleanor's first day of Girl Scout camp for many reasons. I knew it would be fun, I wanted to show off my fancy job cutting up Eleanor's shirt for fashion/warm weather purposes, and I wanted to keep an eye on how she was doing with the poison ivy over the course of the day.
Trading swaps with her friend Stella. Swaps are just little artsy items the girls make a bunch of and then exchanging them is a fun way to have camp memories and have an excuse to talk to other girls while at camp.
Climbing wall!
I was so proud of brave Eleanor. She volunteered to be one of the first to do the zipline.
Honestly the scariest part of the zipline experience was climbing the shaky ladder up the very high tree.
Zipline ride!
After the zipline - time for bandana fashion with some other girls.
Her entire troop at the pool. Fun fact - Eleanor hates wearing her swim rash guard. I told her to do it on the first day but then they swam again on the 3rd day and I wasn't there to make her wear it so she didn't. I told her in the morning before she left that she wouldn't get in trouble as long as she didn't get a sunburn and she didn't so I guess it worked out okay for all involved.
Cool climbing wall at the swimming pool that the girls weren't allow to climb. Super lame. But the girls still had fun.
Official camp photo of her troop.
Meanwhile, Patrick got to have his buddy Neil over for a Lego Robotics play date.
They did pretty well building all on their own.
I seriously can't say enough good things about Lego robotics. Neil went home asking his mom for the set.
This is what girl play time looks like these days. It's been a summer of love.
Juliet does this thing now where she decides to stop eating her meals and tells me it's because she's saving it for later.
Reading to Juliet with the assistance of love starved Meg. Juliet really liked that the kitty sat down on her, not that Juliet had much choice in the matter.
Bradley and Nathan took off for Cub Scout camp for three days.
Bradley's buddy Alex was there.
And don't worry, they took along some board games. Apparently Colt Super Express was a hit.
Bradley is lucky that Nathan took care of the sleep gear for him. He brought a full sheet set and nice blankets and apparently Bradley's first words on the first morning he woke up at camp were "I'm so cozy!"
They let the boys try out bb guns. All the boys loved it.
Bradley's troop with their targets.
Archery!
Making a bird house. They certainly packed in the activities for the scouts.
Bradley's finished product includes a mouth around the opening for the bird to enter its house. Terrifying and cute and a very Bradley touch.
Yet more games.
Knot practice.
Iguana time.
And then back to home to his loving mother! He made a very cool walking stick for which I'm trying to encourage an outdoor residence.
Camping dudes together!
And smoothie buddies!
We've had a ton of tiny blue tailed lizards running around this summer and the kids love chasing after them.
Laura visited with her three boys and we had a fun time hosting Riley's 5th birthday party.
So many cousins! And yes, this was the best picture we could get of all of them together.
Sister pic!
And then we went to Patrick's final baseball game. It was mercifully cool. Patrick did really well.
Getting a hit!
Coach pic with the team.
We also love getting to explore a lot of parks during the summer months. We went up to Franklin Park in Prairie Village, which is always a bit bittersweet to go to because it's the one I took Bradley and Eleanor to when they were little.
Girls cramming onto play equipment together.
Juliet's friend Caroline was less sure about squeezing in with Juliet.
Brave climbing girl.
Swings to end our time together. So fun!
I also haven't neglected our library trips. It's pretty glorious around here for everyone when it's a library day.
And time doing whatever this is. Bradley and Patrick are still all about Bruce Lee.
Spending a cool afternoon at the school playground. Eleanor teaching Juliet all the tricks.
We biked back and found our neighbors had a big chair in the back of a truck and this is what happens when we find this. Oh Patrick.
Pool time with cousins. Patrick and Finn are also quite the duo.
Then we went home and found a giant toad behind our house.
Everyone wanted to hold it and it passed around quite a bit without managing to escape.
Finally Patrick ran up to me without the toad shouting something about being peed on so the toad did ultimately find a way to win its freedom back.
We had a boy sleepover that night.
And a girl sleepover. The girl sleepover resulted in a Juliet coming into my room at 6AM. She fell back asleep for about 10 minutes but it definitely wasn't enough rest and she was hugely crabby that morning so we aren't doing a sleepover again anytime soon.
Juliet likes to try to squirt her siblings with a squirt gun and she's very lucky that they're all pretty good sports about it.
Juliet has gotten pretty brave about being near the water guns. One has to with the crowd she runs with.
Lucky Layla being loved.
Lately Juliet has been demanding to carry the cats around but then she gets upset because they're so heavy and it's a whole thing.
Juliet is good at figuring out who the true members of her fan club are and then she chases them around and demands attention. Emmett was a very good member of the fan club.
She knows that Patrick is available whenever she needs a good battle.
We played an exciting round of Buggaloop with the cousins.
I love how excited Juliet is in this video even though she isn't playing the game.
And I got to host my first ladies' board game night that evening! We only played two short games, everyone got to talk a lot, and we had so much fun. Our current group is me, Susan Krenn, Allison Smith, & Mary Odegaard and we're hoping to do this once a month.
Juliet and Eleanor with their idea of the best board game.
Nathan was gone on a work trip and I had promised Eleanor a trip to the Cardboard Cafe so we could eat yummy food and get board games as birthday gifts for some of her friends.
We came, we ate, we had a lovely time. We also got two cat themed games as presents.
The next day was spent at the Berry Patch. We found a giant container of bees in their store!
Picking berries was nice, although I do have a few complaints about the work ethic of my fellow berry pickers.
Eleanor tried her best but she came over in a huff after a little while and informed me that Juliet was eating every single berry she picked.
All the kids got tired of picking berries after about 15 minutes so they ran over to a nearby playground. The boys had mostly been throwing berries at each other, Juliet ate everything Eleanor picked, so it was pretty much just me doing the picking. I ended up with about half a bucket at the end because Juliet came back over after a while and wanted to eat more.
Lucky they're cute. Blueberry cookies are amazing.
We go with my friend Laurel and her kids. We've been going together ever since Patrick was an infant.
The kids saw they were doing the tractor ride so they all just ran and hopped in. Good thing I was okay with it, I waved goodbye to them as they drove off and then I went in and paid for all their tickets.
These two shared the ride. Soooo adorable.
Then we came home and cooled off in the only wading pool we should ever use. It's the only one the kids actually play with after it's filled with water.
And then she went inside and busted up some Legos. Did I punish her? No, I laughed and told her she was naughty naughty which she took as the compliment it was.
Meanwhile, Nathan had an adorable lunch date with Brian Rutherford.
Bradley was over at my folks' house to spend the night so the rest of us watched a Disney movie we knew he wouldn't like - The Princess and the Frog. Here's the bit where Juliet decided her smooches could turn me into a frog.
And then the girls spoke French for me. Juliet is a fabulous student.
Eleanor painted Juliet's fingers and toes for her.
And Eleanor's cowgirl outfit showed up just in time for a dress-up birthday party she was invited to. Phew! Juliet was so jealous of Eleanor's new shoes and was quite joyful when she was given Eleanor's old cowgirl boots to wear. They're at least two sized too big for her but Juliet has never let little details like that hold her back.
Here she is at the birthday party. They were supposed to dress up as their favorite literary character and we just decided cowgirl was a literary character of some sort and went with that.
It was a very cute party. Eleanor has such nice friends.
Meanwhile, I got her a ride home from her party and Nathan and I went out on a date! A real date to the Plaza and everything! A friend wanted to go out for fancy dessert for her birthday at McCormick and Schmidt's so we decided to go out do dinner beforehand. Should have asked the server to take a picture of the two of us but at least I looked pretty cute!
Then - the next day. Kantcon! My first board game convention! I got to go for free because I ran four hours of games at a table. I loved it and can't wait to go to another convention.
This is John from a local board game group I'm a member of. He won my mini Unmatched tournament. I made a little prize for the winner which I think was pretty darn cool.
I met some folks who were trying to sell the game Oopsie Poopsie, the guy at the convention was the dad of the girl who invented the game when she was five. It was very cute.
Then I went home and took a break for a kindergarten birthday party.
And geared back up and ready to head back to the convention. My badge says Game Master on it, which is pretty fancy cool.
I took Bradley with me and we mostly just checked out games from the game library to test out.
But then we ran into Darryl, who was at one of my game tables earlier in the day. He makes his own games and we probably had the most fun of the evening when we were trying them out with him.
Neurons, Battle for the Brain was really great - it was basically Tsuro plus some actual strategy.
And if the convention wasn't enough, there was time for more board games when we got home and Bradley found out the new versions of Unmatched had arrived.
My voice was pretty shot after the convention so we had a take it easy park day on Sunday.
The next week were my board game camps! I was relieved that three of the four camps went forward despite me signing up just past the publishing date for the newsletter so it was rather tricky for people to find out about my classes.
The ages 4-6 class was fun but a bit hectic. It turns out playing games with a group of kids at this age is very different than playing one on one at home.
But we still had a very fun time! We just had to go through a lot more games than I had originally anticipated.
Thank goodness for The Floor is Lava. Everyone loved that.
And party games like Orangutwang and Loopin' Chewie. It's good we have 200+ games in our collection, we needed to have a wide variety for the kiddos.
Having Eleanor and Elise Odegaard as my co-teachers was also really helpful.
Eleanor's reaction when she asked which kid wanted to go first and they both eagerly raised their hands.
Teaching the older kids was probably a little easier, although I still had to make some adjustments. It needed to be more fun-time games than family games or straight strategy games.
Again, The Floor is Lava is beloved by all.
Eleanor and Kalina Odegaard helped teach for the older kids.
Rhino Hero Super Battle was the other standout game from camp.
All of these kids went nuts over it and I had a mom emailing me about how much her daughter loved it. So sweet! I'll be teaching more board game classes during winter break, here's hoping I learned a few things.
And then Bradley had his final basketball game of the summer season.
His buddy Xavier!
Eleanor had yet another birthday party, this time at a roller skating rink. She had never skated before. She did so well. I got her the little walker to hold on to while she skated but she ditched it almost instantly and kept practicing on her own despite falling a bunch. Finally I got some skates on even though I hadn't planned on roller skating and went around the rink with her a bunch. Apparently the walker was baby business but going around with your mom was fine and dandy and I was more than fine with that.
The next day I decided we needed to get in a park outing before it got too hot and the kids had a blast checking out the dried creek bed.
Patrick discovered he could successfully fish in the creek if he had a net.
So that's what he did - for much of the day. I had Eleanor sit by the creek with a book for much of Juliet's nap time so Patrick wouldn't be entirely alone out there.
Then we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner and Juliet created fine art.
This is the next day when Juliet is begging her daddy to go to the "Tarvee."
On the way to the "Tarvee." We had woken her up from her nap in order to go and she was making silly, crabby faces at me in the car. And if you want to know why our 2 and a half year old is already in a booster seat, it's because she would scream and pull her arms out of the 5 point harness seat and she'll actually sit properly in a booster seat so we're going with booster seat.
Watching Labyrinth at bedtime in the kids' bunk room.
Patrick caught a monster catfish.
He caught it all by himself and was very very proud.
This was our car ride home. Eleanor likes to play DJ and play Baby Shark for Juliet.
And then I sent Patrick back out to the creek. He was by himself for 15 minutes while I went on a walk with Eleanor and when I came back he had a skull on a stick.
We took it to The Museum of Prairiefire to have it officially identified. It was a red fox!
And the next day we had our small group dinner at the Darnalls' house and Juliet and Dax discovered they were best buds.
Patrick and I are really into badminton now. It got slightly terrifying when Juliet invited herself into our game.
There had been a lot of talk of having Patrick and Eleanor ride a sheep at the county fair and Juliet thought she should be involved.
And we made it to the Johnson County Fair last night with half the crew! Nathan was sick and I didn't think I could manage all four kids in 90 degree heat on my own, so he stayed home and played video games and watched shows with Bradley and Juliet. It was probably for the best that one member of our party had a little rest on our drive to the fair.
But then he quickly geared up and was ready to go!
We got there really early because on the website it said the carnival started at 4:00, which proved to be less than accurate. Luckily, the food trucks were open so we passed the time with the most ridiculous icees we had ever seen.
I asked for the prices and a small was $5 and a large was $7 so I said "a large it is!"
It took the kids about an hour to eat them. Worth every penny.
We waited in line to sign up for mutton bustin' and discovered that Eleanor was .4 lbs over the weight limit (it wasn't the icee's fault, she went to the bathroom immediately before being weighed) so we ran over to do the tractor pull because we were told she could definitely sign up for that. Well, her age group was full but Patrick's wasn't so once again he got signed up for an event.
He won 2nd prize in his age group (out of 15 kids) and was incredibly proud of himself, as he deserved to be.
It was hard work, he tied with another kid a few times and had to pull the tractor three times and they kept on adding more weight.
It was so fun to watch.
You might think that Eleanor would be a bit dejected after not getting to do multiple events. Nope! The icee was a pretty awesome treat and we discovered a face paint booth. I told her to run over and ask how much it was to get her face painted and she reported it was $8 for something little and $12 for something big. I handed her $12 and told her to go crazy. She was SO happy.
Then she and her friend Stella sat down to watch the mutton bustin' in action. Stella's sister Carly was also competing.
Me with my guy right before he rode a sheep.
It turns out there's a reason most of the kids wore jeans to compete. Patrick's shorts were very slippery and he was falling off the sheep while he was still in the pen. Oops. It's okay though, he didn't get hurt from competing and he was proud of himself.
Picking up the pieces.
Then we hit up a couple rides before going home.
The kids did a mellow obstacle course activity and followed it up with this terrifying ride.
Patrick kept his eyes closed for the entire ride and they kept talking about how scary it was after they got off the ride. Oops. Maybe I should have steered them away from this one. But they were tall enough and they don't mind roller coasters! I guess fair rides have their own categories.
Still, they were all smiles when the ride ended.
Nathan is feeling better today, which is good. And the kids had an absolute blast at the fair and we had fancy ice cream with Bradley when we got home. I love summer. There are few things better than summers with kids.
