Second Half Of July

 

Weather: mostly hot, humid, and unpleasant.

Work: let's not talk about that.

Camps: our youngest, C, had 2 weeks of camps.

• Colonial Homestead 18th Century STEM - mostly outdoors, lots of hands-on activities, playing in the stream, farm animals, friends from last year. Rated excellent.
• School District Camp: Tennis in the morning and "Cupcake Wars" in the afternoon (they make and decorate cupcakes). She loved it. 

No camps for the older 2 kids but they stayed pretty busy:

• H has painted and re-arranged her room. She is doing some school work, and practicing piano.
• H and C have been going to the pool after C's camp.
• E has been working a few days a week (lifeguard at the pool). He has daily cross country training. He is working on his war ship model and is learning a new (and super difficult) violin piece.

Fun stuff: 

• Celebrating H's 14th birthday with a lemon cake and a tea/popover party with grandparents. We'll celebrate more with the other part of the family when we are at the beach (probably will take her and all the cousins to a water park). She is planning to have friends over for a sleepover sometime in August.
• Kayaking/tubing down the Brandywine river.
• Playing Hero's Quest (I have to admit that I am not really enjoying this one... too stressful and too much strategy - but the kids love it).
• Pool - very refreshing to go for a swim at the end of the day.
• J started ripping out shelves in the laundry room (as a first step in the remodel process) - I think he was having fun doing it!
• H and C both had friends over (on different days).
• Farmers Market - love getting fresh produce there

Dreadful stuff: work-related stress; oppressive heat and humidity; running out of glasses (how do kids use up so many glasses in a day?); complaining from kids (mostly about chores or about having to turn off the TV).

Screen Time:

• Some evenings, kids play Harry Potter Legacy 
• H is watching Reign, E is watching Reacher, and C is watching H2O (they take turns).
• Family TV show: we are trying "Northern Exposure" - only a few episodes in, not sure if we'll stick with it.
• Family movie night: Dial M for Murder - everyone loved it!
• We try to limit screen time...  Currently, we ask H to limit herself to 3 episodes a day (about 2.5 h?). This is less of an issue with C and E because they are home less.
• We have minimal screen time on the weekend - this is time for family adventures and games.

Garden: a complete disaster. All the local wildlife stops by and eats whatever they can.

Dear Reader: What were your July highlights? What was fun? What was dreadful?