Summer in a nutshell

It doesn't take much to settle in to a summer routine.  After our trips there was still a lot of fun to be had.  We had our slow days where the highlight was sleeping in followed by a bike ride and Minecraft, but it seemed like there was a lot going on as well.

We continued our "study" of Western History with a visit to Stanford to see the actual real Golden Spike.  They refer to it as the Last Spike at the museum.  On the way to see the spikes we passed the Thinker.  We also walked through the sculpture garden and saw the Gates of Hell.  They had a reasonable degree of patience with my interest in seeing the art.  There is a fantastic collection of Rodin.

There was a lot of Cub Scouting going on for not having the weekly den meetings.  Buddy Boy went to a week of day camp and had a fantastic time.  He absolutely loved it.  There were also weekend pack activities.  One of these was a trip on the Niles Canyon Railroad.  It is a surviving piece of the transcontinental railroad not far from here.  It has been fun to put the pieces of this story together across three different states this summer.

 

My Girl did gymnastics and dance at the community center.  She loves both of these classes.  She is very focused on getting the moves just right.

 



 And sometimes it is just fun.

 

My history loving Buddy Boy had an Ancient Egypt camp as well as a Lego robotics camp.  Both were great.  He learned something and had fun.  One day when I went to pick him up from the Egypt camp I found him sitting on a couch wearing a King Tut-like funerary mask made of metallic gold poster paper reading a book about making comics.  He was in heaven.  At Lego camp they made things with motors in the morning and the Mindstorms robots in the afternoon.  Now he wants one.  We'll see.

 

My Girl had day camp with friends at the park.  Buddy Boy did this camp a few years ago and quickly hated it.  There were crowds of kids and it was all silliness and singing and games and crafts.  My Girls loves it.  There are crowds of kids and silliness and singing and games and crafts.  They are such different kids.

We also have a couple of movies in the works.  The first is a Western about Bill.  In the first scene he has a shooting contest with Annie Oakley.  I won't give away the ending.  You'll have to see it for yourself.  (I'll be posting it eventually.)  He has a few more scenes outlined, but nothing finished yet.

I'm not sure what this one is about, but it involves a desert island and a crate of things that washes up.  There may be zombies.  This is still in process so the release date has not been set.  I won't be doing any ironing until then so if we look a little wrinkled, this is why.  Not really, but it is a good excuse.

You can't go through a summer without at least one trip to Happy Hollow.  There was more than a little bit of sadness when Buddy Boy was too tall for one of the rides.  But the roller coaster chased the tears away.

 

 

So there you have it.  It's a lot of photos, but it was a lot of fun.