Summertime

As with every summer, this summer is flying by. Ellie is preparing for her senior year and recently had her senior portraits taken at the school. She’s lifeguarding this summer part-time. She’s also taking a college math class.

Max has been spending a lot of time exercising and working out. He had ambitions to get a job but didn’t have any luck. His job seems to be mowing our lawn, which comes with a lot of effort. He’s preparing for a sophomore year and hoping that he’ll make the soccer team this fall.

Clair has been busy with the first half of summer around Softball, and then math camp, and now relaxing until school starts. We are still praying God sends us a few more softball players so we will have our team this fall. 

Not much pool time for the kiddos despite their protests that they would miss the pool if we sold the house. It’s been on the market, but not a lot of interest. 

I finally have some part time work. It’s been a slow year. 

Math camp

Clair worked hard to go to math camp a second year. This year she was with the middle school high school group. She wanted it so bad that she solicited money for Christmas and her birthday to make sure she could go. The girl really enjoys her math, camp, and the competitive component of it.

The plan was similar to last year, she would stay with me in the hotels at night and spend all day at camp. Unfortunately, at the end of the second day she came home, feeling sick. We both hoped it was just a cold, but it was much more. She missed most of the second half of camp due to this illness, which was a horrendous version of the cold with these awful sores in her throat that came along with fevers and chills. 

We finally left New Jersey after two different healthcare professionals both said no strep throat and couldn’t do anything about it. It was disappointing to her.

Her friend picked up awards and shared with us videos from the award ceremony. Her team ended up coming in third in the sixth and seventh grade competition. I’m proud of her.

She met a new friend this year called Cassie who lives in New York City. It also encouraged her to reach out to the friend. She met last year Avery.

She loves math camp, and being around a bunch of other kids that enjoy the same thing even though she will tell you, she’s shy at the event and doesn’t speak up much

She’s already talking about next year. Since it’s so expensive, we were hoping she would get over it and not wanna go again but I think that’s highly unlikely.

It’s fun watching her in her element and seeing her proud of herself for what she’s able to accomplish. Math camp is definitely the only time she’s challenged mathematically throughout the year.

As part of the awards, they give away a lot of books on math and math competitions. I’m hoping she’ll read some of them this year.

This is a fun part of summer. She’s convinced next year and there will be no sickness. 

Pop up vacation

Whilst Max and Ellie were off at Young Life camp, we took what Clair called a pop-up vacation. It’s called a pop-up vacation because when we came home from church, I asked them what we should do today and while they were thinking about things we could do locally I decided we should head to New York City. After about five minutes of denial, they were both in!

 We went to New York City for one night! We left Sunday afternoon and came back late Monday night.

We stayed in Manhattan and made the most of our time there.

Sunday night we went up to the upper west side for dinner and walked back to our hotel after dinner seeing the site getting some ice cream. I’m just enjoying the liveliness of the city

Monday we started the day going to the math museum, which Claire enjoyed very much and so did I. Then we had some lunch at a cute café in Soho and proceeded to go to the ice cream museum where we had nearly 10 different servings of ice cream whilst exploring a fun child like museum. After that, we walked a little bit and visited the Ghostbusters firehouse before heading back to the hotel to collect our stuff and head out of town around seven.

It was a long ride home, but we made it home just before 11 where we checked on our kitties got showers and proceeded to bed.

It was a fun little trip. 

Here’s a great example of why we had to go to the math museum when Max and ellie were not with us. Claire is interested in looking at how you get the pink wheel to turn, but it took 1000 turns of this little knob before it would happen. Obviously we finally walked away from this after about 15 minutes. She really enjoyed getting to be hands-on and understanding of each exhibit.

Max turns 15

While we were in the Outer Banks, Max celebrated his 15th birthday. We celebrated him in the morning with a special breakfast of bacon and cinnamon buns, and some gifts and then spent the day at the beach.

In the evening, the whole group went for burgers. Paul decided we should play a joke and give Max the bill for everybody and he handled it quite well returning it quickly to the waitress and sending it to me.

Max is funny and he thinks on his feet very well. He has a response to everything in the moment sometimes without actually thinking it through and to his detriment. He’s working hard on his physical fitness, both strength and running. He is trying to be better at school. He’s strong and tall and he helped around the house a lot lot. He’s a great friend  and everyone loves being around him!

Beach trip 2025

I am thankful for this tradition and for time with my family and friends. We had a lot of great beach time this year. 

We checked out the acquarium in Manteo this year and everyone enjoyed it.