“Day at the Beach”

  

Fireworks

The emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave!

O beautiful for spacious skies!

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

O’er the ramparts we watched, was so gallantly streaming!

Of thee I sing!

With liberty and justice for all. 

I’ve a Yankee Doodle sweetheart. 

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there!

A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the 4th of Julyyyy!

Where there’s never a boast or bragggg!

For purple mountains majesty above the fruited plains!

And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining seaaaaaaaaaaa!

(A peek into the soundtrack in my head: all patriotic songs are recordings of my dad singing at camp flag raisings, with the exception of ‘O Beautiful’, which has an additional recording by Pollyanna.)

Soccer Camp

The week before Tween Week, Caleb got to go to soccer camp at the high school. While I must admit he would rarely leave home without some encouragement, I believe he had a great time. 

It was a very, very rainy week, but they played outside every day anyways. 

These pictures were all posted on Facebook by Thea County Magazine, hence the blurriness. 



They got to eat their lunches in the cafeteria of the new high school. 

Caleb’s cleats blew apart with two days to go and Chris tried fixing them with shoe glue and clamps, but it was red duct tape for the win that held them together. You should have seen them when he came home, all muddy with all my lovely black sharpie-ing washed off, but he threw them straight in the trash can. Caleb always wears white socks and he says it’s because the mud shows up better that way, and he was very proud of how terrible his soggy tennies and cleats smelled by the end of this wet week. 

Solar Cookers

For the Art Track for Junior Week and Tween Week we have made solar cookers. 

I did this with my ESL students at the end of the year as well. 

Pizza boxes are ideal, but we had to improvise for a few campers this week when we ran out. 

The boys are both campers this week, as this week is for 11-13 year olds. Caleb is also going to a Day Camp (6-12) and Josiah is going to Teen Week (13 and up). Eleonora doesn’t get to go until Day Camp in July, but that’s not stopping her from jumping right in and acting like a camper now. 

I didn’t take any outside pictures today, but here are Lydia and Eleo with last week’s bunch. 

This was Lydia’s and it was so cloudy that the temperature in the box only got up to 75 degrees. Our record at school was 150, and today, Josiah’s box beat it with 153.  That temperature certainly melts the chocolate but it doesn’t do much in the way of toasting the marshmallows. We sure did have a good time though. 

Blasts from the Past