The Accidental Boilermaker

Kids camp ended today. It was a good 4 days. My group of preschoolers were all great kids and Evelyn and Jameson seemed to have lots of fun. It was a much better experience than last year, so I’m glad I volunteered. Tonight was the big church/community picnic. There were bouncy houses, games, hot dogs, sno-cones, and free auntie Anne’s pretzels.

Yesterday was the Indiana state time trial championships which this year was held in Fort Wayne and hosted by the Fort Wayne Outfitters cycling team.  Time trials are not the best spectator sports and as such, we rarely get to watch Nate compete.  But yesterday provided a perfect opportunity to cheer on Nate and his teammates. We picked up some donuts (because everyone knows cheering is hard work) and headed to the race course.  It was an out and back race, so from our spot we watched everyone start and then saw most everyone come back toward the finish.  Here's Nate at the start, heading out. Here's Nate nearing the finish line. Nate finished first in the men's category 5 group! Here's everyone from the team who raced Sunday morning. Today marked the start of kids camp (VBS).  Jameson, although not old enough for kids camp is too big for the nursery, and since I was given the choice, decided just to keep him with Evelyn and th...

I had kind of thought today we would go to build-a-bear workshop’s pay your age event and let Jameson build a Bear for $2.  But the more I thought about it the more I decided it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. And it’s a good thing we didn’t try. I have no idea what the store was like at our mall, but if it was anything like the news stories I read, I’m glad we didn’t try.  I would not have waited in line for hours, but regardless our activity for the day would have been a bust. Instead of the mall, we went to a new park. We had a picnic lunch. Evelyn and Jameson made friends with some other kids and ran around and played with them.  The park is well shaded so I didn’t need to worry about sunscreen.  No one fell asleep on the way home so we stopped by the store and picked up supplies to make our own water blob. It turned out pretty good and Evelyn and Jameson seemed to enjoy jumping and sliding on it. Hopefully they’ll be excited about it tomorrow to...

I had really wanted to go to the zoo on Friday, but Thursday afternoon I came down with a fever and a lingering sore throat got lots worst.  Friday morning I felt sick enough that Nate went in to work for a few hours just to tidy stuff up and then came home, so no zoo.  Thankfully today, everything felt much better, so the four us went to the zoo first thing in the morning. We packed a lunch and visited Africa, Australia, and the farm animals. The giraffes were out enjoying the beautiful weather. Surf's up!  The sting ray tank wasn't busy which is the best time to try and touch one of the rays.  With a little bit of patience, all 4 of us got to touch one today.  The kids took Nate on his first log ride through the Australia exhibit.  The rest of the day was spent napping or working on projects around the house.

Happy 4th of July!  We had a busy busy day.  I'm helping out a friend by watching her girls a couple days a week this summer.  Five kids is a lot of work!  This was yesterday at snack time outside. Today since Nate had off of work, we were able to leave the house and walk to the park.  Two kids in the double jogger, two in the wagon, and the baby in the carrier. Back at home we did some 4th of July crafts.  The girls made red, white, and blue jewelry.   We also painted some fireworks. And for snack we had special build-your-own fruit pizzas. The idea of fruit pizzas seemed more exciting than actually eating them.  But I really enjoyed mine.