Summer Camp Begins

On Tuesday, after a long 4th of July weekend, Tyler started Medford Lakes summer camp. He was so excited to go, and thanks to his new-found swimming confidence, wasn't even nervous about the swimming lesson portion. I'll be honest, after Jason's speech session, I went and spied on Tyler a bit during his first swimming session. He wasn't the best swimmer by any means, but he got right in the water without hesitation...so proud and thankful that he's come so far with his water safety.

After he got home we had to have a hermit crab burial. I was convinced the thing was dead the day before, but we left it overnight just to be sure. Sadly he won't be missed too tremendously. We were often uncertain, for days at a time, if he was alive cause he so rarely moved. Odd little guy.

Evening karate to round out our new summer routine.

I am still amazed that Jason is still sleeping with his lights on at night. At least he's sleeping!

On Wednesday I tried to make a new routine of getting back to the gym (after an embarrassingly long break) while Tyler was off at camp. That afternoon I was busy trying to help Jim & Cara with an errand up in Marlton, and ended up late for the first time ever for Tyler's counseling appointment. Consequently ended up arriving late for my dinner date with Jen and Tracy at Izzie's. The boys were fairly well behaved, but restaurants that are more kid-friendly would be my pick for next time for sure! After dinner we had planned a small party for my mom's birthday over at Jim & Cara's. My mom arrived straight from the airport from Chicago to attend her party. The boys were so happy to see her!

On Thursday morning, after sending Tyler off to camp, my mom and I went with Jason to his school meeting to determine his eligibility for the preschool program. The meeting went well and he absolutely qualified for the program and will start preschool as soon as he turns 3. He ended up with speech, OT, and PT services as well as a 1:2 assistant. Not bad.

That afternoon, after Tyler got done camp and Jason had OT, we decided to pick up Chris to go blueberry picking and eat some dinner. The forecast looked decent (10% chance of rain as I recall) so we drove the 40 minutes to his place. As we drove we noticed the sky darkening and we no sooner pulled in his driveway when we heard a loud rumble of thunder and it started to rain. We decided to go run and get dinner first and wait out the storm but it was raining so severely that we couldn't even get out of the car. Meanwhile Jason screamed the entire time and eventually we just had to go through the drive-thru and get food and go back to Chris's, driving through large puddles from the flash flooding that was created. Good times. After we ate we decided to give blueberry picking a try. It was VERY wet (note the huge puddles/lakes in the pictures) but we got maybe 45 minutes of picking in before it started to thunder and lightening again so we called it quits and head home.






Friday had some yucky weather but somehow they still managed to fit in a day at camp. We were scheduled to have "scout night" at the riversharks that night, which included sleeping out on the field. We were originally told it would be held rain or shine, but due to the "dangerous" storms predicted they decided to reschedule for August, thankfully. At least I hadn't fully packed yet when they made the call to reschedule.

That evening we braved the horrible storms to go to "Cow Appreciation Day" at Chick-fil-A where you get a free meal if you dress like a cow. Obviously a must-do. Happy to report that myself, my parents, and the boys all ate entire meals for free (and then bought milkshakes). It was very amusing to see the young teen/college kids coming in in groups, as well as the poor dads who looked mortified to be dressed like a cow. All in good fun.




On Saturday Tyler decided he was going to learn to do Sudoku puzzles. I find it fascinating that the can do these!

After Tyler's karate, we picked up Bob and went over the the Merchantville Car Show. I'm not a big car person, and it was pretty darned hot, but we had a nice time. The boys seemed to enjoy the cars, Jason announcing "I ike is un" (I like this one) at almost every car...including a verizon truck! Tyler was more interested in the paint details on cars. They also had a bounce house and a little petting zoo...and the highlight for me was the fried oreos. Yum!









After the car show we went back to Bob's house to try to cool off and relax. The boys had fun with the splash pad and baby pool, followed by some BBQing and ice cream! Afterwards Tyler wanted to try horseshoes, but eventually decided that washers was more suited to him!