Mini Camp

My dear friend Carrie is amazing.  She does so much and right now she is quite pregnant and still doing it all.  One of the things she has done and is doing this summer is "mini camp."  Now it's cousin camp, but when she lived here it was friend camp.  Each week Carrie with another family picked a theme then rotated weeks who did the mini camp in the afternoon.  They would also take a field trip during the week related to the theme.  I decided to try it with some friends in our neighborhood.  We all have kids around the same age.  Last week was my turn and I chose the theme Pioneer Day.  I thought with Pioneer Day in Utah being July 24th that it would be an appropriate theme.  There were so many things I could have done.  It was very hard to narrow down the activities I wanted to do.  I found some children's pioneer stories at the library which we attempted to read.  Unfortunately making butter distracted them.  We put cream in jars and had the kids shake them to make butter.  I had the kids shaking the jars during the story.  I remember doing this in girl scouts and it worked, but for some reason it didn't work for pioneer mini camp.  Neither did the ice cream in a bag we tried to make.  I think the horrid heat we've been having might be part of the problem.

The ice cream bags were leaking so they had to be shaken outside.

This was the best activity.  We made candy covered wagons.  Thanks Shelley for the idea.  It was delicious.  So of the kids actually made covered wagons while other enjoyed eating the materials.

Seth's, well...his turned into the alien space wagon from some other planet.

Mason was a fan of the frosting.

This is the pimped out wagon.

Washington DC Tour Via Water

It's always fun to show the coaches DC while they are staying with us.  While they were with us I got a Living Social email for a DC Harbor Cruise.  It was a mini monument cruise along the Potomac River and it was perfect for the coaches who had never seen DC.  They were so excited.  We only saw things from the river, but it was actually kind of fun that way and Johnathan and Mark loved it.  I loved it too because I'd never seen the monuments and memorials from that angle.

We started at the DC harbor down from Georgetown right by the Kennedy Center where we had seen Wicked three days earlier.  You like that boat there?  Yeah I wish that's the one we were touring on, but it wasn't.

Our group with the Watergate Hotel in the background.

Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument

Jefferson Memorial

The Pentagon

After the tour Johnathan said he would like to see the Washington Cathedral.  He had heard it was modeled after Westminster Abbey and it turned out it was.  I don't remember ever seeing it before so I was quite impressed too.  Later my mom told me I had been before when I was little.

Some lady was sun bathing on the lawn of the cathedral.  We all thought that was very poor taste.

You see that little light circle in the middle of the darker big circle?

Well in the middle of that light small circle is a dark spot you can kind of see.

That dark spot is a moon rock from the first moon landing that they put in the stained glass.  Tade was so excited about this and couldn't stop talking about it.

These are some view from one of the towers.  You can see the Washington Monument and the Capital off in the distance.

Soccer Camp

Tade has done soccer camp each summer for several years.  the first time he did one it was with a UK soccer camp with British coaches.  We hosted his coaches his first year and it was absolutely delightful.  This year he was once again signed up with UKelite and we signed up to host coaches again.  We got two coaches, but they weren't the ones coach Tade and Seth's camp.  The boys still had a good time at camp and we enjoyed having Johnathan and Mark stay with us.

Seth was with the UK petite group.  They mostly played games that incorporated kicking the ball.  He had a good time when he wasn't getting distracted by the bugs in the grass.  Seth seriously has a thing for bugs.

 They play a game where the coach lays down and pretends to sleep.  While he is sleeping the kids quietly kick their ball towards him to try and get the pinnies he has.  When he wakes up they have to quickly hide behind their ball so he can't see them.

Taking a break in the heat and humidity.

Here they had to kick the ball at their coach.  If they hit him he dropped a pinnie for them to get.

Tade was one of the youngest kids in the oldest group at camp.  He held his own and had a good week.  The last day of camp they had a world cup.  Tade was team Brazil.

They each got a report card at the end.