This is the first year of summer camp for Curie and she really loved going to martial arts camp at EMA, but after going to Congressional Camp with her pre-school friends, she has quite fallen in love with the place. She likes being in the specialty camps learning different things and loves her counselors (they love her too) She has been to Congo Chemistry, Lego, Junior Architects, Eco Science, and will do Summer Adventures and Chess. The new schedule changed our commute with Erin taking Curie to camp and Albert taking Elia to school in separate cars. It has really allowed for some bonding with each kid, but it also means a bit of disproportionate time with each one.
We haven’t been on our family vacation yet this year, but we have been to a few places: Sesame Place was a delight for the girls as documented earlier, with Curie loving the spinning balloons and the water slide, but did get fussy waiting in line. In Toronto, we got into the Olympics last year, and this year we got into Beat Bobby Flay, Curie’s new favorite show. She loves it so much that she has us act it out and make creations at dinner like Dorritos in chicken tenders or Albert’s Lay’s potato chip encrusted hot dog.
We’ve also made it a point to hang out with Isabella’s family as they have been expecting a new baby this summer (who was born as of this writing). We have enjoyed our time with them because of how spontaneous they are. Susie is willing to do almost anything we want to do on a moment’s notice. So we have had dinners, staycations, and this month, a trip to Huntley Meadows and a trip to Medieval Times, both very fun trips. At Huntley Meadows we went with Isabella’s cousins and saw a ton of animals, from blue and green herons, to a baby beaver, to turtles, and dragon flies and much more. The cousins were very sweet and Curie loved hanging out with them. Medieval Times was crazy, again, a spontaneous venture. Our knight was the first to die so we cheered the other knights instead. Curie liked the blue knight because he was the winner (Elia liked the red one and caught a flower).
We went to Marshfield at the end of the month and spent time there flying kites, going to parks, and returning to Thomasland. Erin’s dad had wanted to go whale watching and Erin wanted to go to the beach, but we were worried the kids were a little too young still for whale watching and worried that Thomasland would be too young for Curie in a year, so we opted for Thomasland. That weekend it was rainy and the seas were choppy so the whale watching thing wouldn’t have worked, and the beaches closed because of bacteria too, so that was also a wash, which was for the better considering we had a really short amount of time to do anything. Sure enough, Curie was resistant to go to Thomasland, but once there had the best time. We rode many rides, but Curie’s favorite was the Winston cars and the fire fighting one. The adults loved the elephant ride, and Elia loved the Thomas train ride and the boat. The other benefit of driving up to Marshfield was that we stayed in hotels on the way there and on the way back letting us go to Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ up and back for lunch.
This summer we have had water balloon fights with the 100 inflatable balloons once with us and once with Isabella and her cousins. We got fidget spinners and raced them with each other. We have watched a lot of new shows with Curie really getting into the Voltron reboot because of the strong princess character, though she wants to be the black lion because it is the head (born leader perhaps).
All in all, it has been a great summer so far. We have a vacation in August and then school starts again, but if this is how summers will be for a while, it is a pretty good thought.