Happy Fourth of July! Well I survived the week, but just barely. Tom took off last Sunday for San Francisco and returned late Friday night. In the meantime, Scott was off to cub scout camp for the week. He had a great time shooting BB guns and archery, and this year tackled the wood burning task. The boys decorated their own hiking sticks. Not to mention, half of them ended up with a burned finger(Scott included). As Dad Seitz says, the project is not done until you bleed on it. I car pooled with our neighbors whose son was also in cub scouts which worked out great. The Dad volunteered for a few days(I got a bit panicky when the camp called to say Scott was not signed in however). Scott had run off to his Den and the DAd did not know which group he was in. I was just glad he wasn't lost. I hadn't seen him for a whole day since I dropped him off the morning before and he spent the night at their house while Allison had her Twilight party. I spent all day Friday with him and the boys on my volunteer day. It was a very long day. I am impressed with how many activities the boys participate in-Shooting range, Field games, leather crafts, science projects and scout skills. We parents even got to play capture the flag too. And on Weds night we had our own special parent's night complete with BB gun shooting, archery and cooking our own dinner over the fire. I think we had our fill of camp skills last week.
Of course, I had a break in between the cub scout week with Allison's Twilight party. I rushed home on Tuesday night with pizza and balloons. The girls had already started arriving. Allison kept them busy with the Wii trivia game for Twilight and her Bella Bingo game. They all ate and we packed them up and off to the movie theater.We were there about an hour early, so the girls had their picture taken with an Edward(vampire) cut out and went in to see the end of the last movie, New Moon. The newest movie Eclipse started at midnite. Altogether we had 12 in our party including girls and adults. Everyone enjoyed their movie night and the girls stayed up until 7am. They had to crawl out of the basement though in the morning since a few parents had errands to run and had to pick up before 10am. The others stayed a little longer and enjoyed breakfast.
I had to clean up before lunch though since I took the cat to her yearly check up. Tom was even a bit worried about her since she looks like she has lost a bit of weight. Turns out she is fine, maybe a bit hyperthyroid. But they are running more tests to see if she needs to be medicated. Pika is 10 yrs old. They said she looks great, just about 1lb lighter. She just never was a big cat. I even tried to feed her extra canned food, but she is not used to it and turned up her nose.
I had to run home again in time to meet the air conditioner repair man. So far he has been out 3 times and it is still not working. It is completely fried. We are trying to decide on a new unit vs trying to patch this one back together. It is not a good time for the air conditioner to be out. Maryland is having a record heat wave. The kids and I did not sleep at all last Sunday night, it was just too hot and humid. Even in the basement. It has been about 100 degrees almost every day. I bought more fans to blow the hot air around and that helped a bit. Last Sunday I took them to cool off in a local lake called CAscade lake. The kids usually go there with the YMCA camp and have been asking to go back. They have rafts to swim to and a jumping platform as well as water slides in the lake. We had a great time floating in the lake and helping sink the rafts for about 3 hours on Sunday. It was a great way to cool off.
Scott and Allison also spent some time last week swimming at our neighbors house during the evening. Thank goodness for friends and pools. We even spent the evening at our neighbor's house cooling off after dinner last Sunday. They invited Tom and I over for Anniversary drinks, but Tom was already out in California. I enjoyed the drinks, as well as the air conditioning!
Besides putting on her Twilight birthday party, Allison arranged to meet with a few girls this past week to write up their presentations for next year's Confirmation class. Allison enjoyed volunteering last year and signed up again this year. The girls did a great job and turned in both outlines that are due next week. Allison also finished summer piano lesson number 2.
Tom made it home late Friday night and the kids waited to take him to see the Airbender movie on Saturday morning. The kids love the cartoon, and thought the movie was not as good as the series. Tom had a hard time staying awake(I think his long travel day had something to do with it). Plus I hit him with all our issues-dead air conditioner. Not to mention all our electronics were screwed up due to a power surge this past week. Looks like I need a new laptop-the screen on this one keeps flickering now. And Tom had to rebuild our TiVo recorder. And all this with the house surge protector in place.
Meanwhile, other sad news. Tom's mom called to say that Uncle Peter passed away on Monday after his fight with lung cancer. The funeral was Thursday in Virginia. We were very sad to hear about his passing, and our thoughts and prayers go out to Aunt Mary.
Some good news is that our friend John from Northrop managed to get a job with a company here in Baltimore that he previously worked for briefly when he first relocated to Maryland. At the time it was a small, new company and John thought he would give it a try, but opted to stay with Northrop for security(who knew). We are just so happy to hear he is employed and they have lots of work for him. Now we are cheering for Mike Bozyk to find a new librarian position in LA.
We are spending the 4th of July evening at our neighbors-swimming and grilling, and maybe lighting up a few sparklers. Last night we all headed out to hear the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra play their holiday concert and shoot off fireworks. I couldn't believe how many people I ran into from work and school. We even took John with us for the night to celebrate his new job.
So keep your fingers crossed that we get air conditioning soon! I may have to work some extra hours after all!
Happy 4th of July! Kathleen
This is a shorter week since Monday is a holiday. The kids just have 4 days of camp, but Allison is looking forward to archery at Girl Scout camp, and Scott is so excited to be going to his classes at the Community College, including a legos robotics class and pets and vets. He can't wait to bring Cookie to school! We just got back from a neighborhood kids and dog parade in our neighborhood park. Scott ate his weight in cookies and popsicles.
Happy Fourth of July! Kathleen