Fun With The Grandparents

We are blessed to live near both sets of grandparents, so we are still able to visit them while being socially distant and safe this summer.   Thank you wonderful grandparents!!
The kids had a blast on the diving boards with Lee Lee:

And my Dad built this fort in his backyard for the kids and buried fools gold for them to find.

Virtual Girl Scout Camp

Today would have normally been the first day of Girl Scout camp for the girls and I.  For the last couple of years I have volunteered in the arts & crafts area leading units through crafts daily, and the girls have had a blast getting dirty, singing songs, crafting, hiking and cooking together for two weeks of the summer.  Given our continued SIP situation however, girl scout camp has moved online.   A huge 80% of our troop dropped out of camp when they heard it was going to be online....we had to decided whether to drop out right as school was ending and kids were fed up with zoom.   I stuck with it, as I had no better options for C & A, and I knew that there were a hundred high school girls in our area who were still signed up and ready to lead our girls through these traditional camp activities, while learning leadership skills at the same time.   Boy, am I glad that I kept them signed up.  I couldn't be more impressed with the two leaders of A & C's unit this summer.  The adorable bag of items that they put together for each girl and left on our door steps was super impressively organized, and today's camp went great.  The girls had get-to-know-you unit time (12 third grade girls in their unit), drum/rhythm lessons, a yoga session and then art...I mean, come on!!

 Their unit leader used a laser cutter and burned these incredible name tags/ornaments, as well as cardboard boxes filled with supplies! 

 And while Girl Scout camp is happening, we have guys prepping our house to be painted this week.  Bye bye beige!

This Is 42!

Man oh man- Thursday was my 42nd birthday some how!  It was a fun day despite the circumstances filled with e-mails, texts, phone calls and visits from friends and family.   I feel very lucky to have so much support and lovely friends from childhood to parenthood.   I had a book club get together the night before the big day, so the kids were able to decorate and work on their amazing cards.   I woke up to a beautifully festive kitchen which always makes a birthday feel great.   I got to take a nice morning run to start the day before I had to start the summer camp shuttle madness we have going on these days.   It was a normal camp, music lesson then soccer practice day, but we had a yummy dinner and delicious ice cream cake dessert to end the special day. 

 The girls made pizza dough for their cooking class that day, which was a fun process for them to wake up the yeast, knead the dough, let is rise and then make it into truly delicious pizzas for lunch.

 

 

 This is 42!

A & C's First Stop Motion Movie

Check out Addy and Colbie's first stop motion movie created this week!

Giving Online Camp a Try

I decided to sign Addy & Colbie up for some online camps this week.  The girls are especially motivated to give them a try because they got their brand NEW computers on Sunday (much to Jake's cry of "it's not fair...why do they get things earlier than I do?"). 
The girls are taking both a cooking class and a tech class this week, back to back in the morning while Jake is back at golf lessons.   The cooking class is proving to be really fun and engaging for the girls-small number of kids, interesting teacher who lives on a farm and brings the live animals to the camera while things bake, and of course, all recipes completed have been a delicious hit so far. 
Yesterday the girls baked shortbread jelly sandwich cookies.   They tasted amazing, especially with the apricot jam that our neighbor brought over last weekend.

 Today they baked a "German Pancake" which pretty much is an enormous souffle looking pie, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and MAN was it good. 

 

 Their second class is a stop motion video editing class where they are learning how to build scenes with Legos and then film them with many pictures as they are moved around.   I'm still trying to figure out how to upload their first video, but I have to say it pretty cool.  The only issue is a not so engaging/interesting or good instructor.  But, oh well...the girls are learning something new and I think that with these basic apps and skills they can run with it and create their own movies afterwards.

Painting, Water and Outdoor Movie Night!

We are planning to paint our home in the coming weeks, so I went to grabbed a couple of paint samples we've been considering and let the kids paint the house!  We've checked out sample area throughout the day and are leaning between two choices.   Now to finalize a painter!

 We pulled out the water "blob" for the afternoon for the kiddos

 

 And as an early birthday present for ME, I ordered a projector for some fun movie nights in the backyard.   It worked out great, although we did have to start quite late as it just doesn't get dark enough to nearly 9:00 right now!

More Tie Dye!

Colbie and Addy are starting to get really good at tie dye!   We pulled out the supplies again yesterday and found some boy's undershirts and white dish towels and off they went!   I'm thinking we'll dye all of my dish towels at this point...I think that they turned out great!

 

  (oh, the girl's got haircuts too!)

Pacific Grove Get Away

We had been wavering back and forth about whether it would be safe to get away for a few short days to relax and have a change of scenery.  Ultimately, we decided to just go for it this past weekend, but in as safe a way as possible.  I booked a house instead of a busy hotel, and we brought all of our own utensils and much of our food from home.  We opted to not see any of our close friends while down there, even at a safe distant just in case as well.  We also didn't go to any restaurants.  But even with all of that, we still had a wonderful, relaxing getaway.   We brought the bikes down, so the kids and Josh got out on the bikes (Josh especially got in some good, long distance rides for once).  Josh and Jake also got a great round of golf in too.   The kids and I spent a lot of time at the beach exploring tide pools, climbing on rocks and rolling down dunes.  We also went for a drive down to Big Sur while Josh worked on Monday, and it was just beautiful there- so beautiful that the girls made me promise that we could camp there someday!  Jake still hasn't found his love for hiking and camping yet...but it isn't too late:)

 Our cool PURPLE house!

 The phone above really confused the kids, as did the pull flush toilet!

 Day 1 of beach: rock climbing and tide pools kept these three busy for four hours!

 

 

 

Big Sur:  The kids took my phone to take their own pictures (all three seem to be interested in photography).  Here are some of their shots:

 

 We spent many hours building our first 2000 piece puzzle when we were back at the house!

 Our final day we found a great Dunes Beach where the kids literally ran up and down and up and down those hills forever and ever. 

 

This little dude was the only "problem" of the trip, refusing to be left at the house alone.  Sheltering in Place had kind of made his attachment issues worse, and so we really couldn't go anywhere this trip that wouldn't allow dogs unfortunately.   But he is darn cute :)