[day 177 ... june 26]

Addie and Rachel's birthday party at Jump Planet was fabulous fun! Cory was so delighted to see friends from school again, especially Theo and Charlie. They couldn't get enough of each other. They sure miss being in class together every day. Hopefully they'll be classmates again this coming year but we won't know until August what the new class groupings will be. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[day 176 ... june 25]

Broccoli is the mainstay vegetable in our family - at least for those of us who eat vegetables. I was a carrots-and-corn kid myself, but have branched out into a whole variety of yummy green veggies now. So there's hope for the picky little ones in the family.

It's discouraging, though, to find that the organic options at the store are so inferior to the regular crop. I wouldn't mind paying a bit extra to skip all the pesticides but the veggies almost invariably look old, dry, buggy, and otherwise unappealing. Farmers' markets would be a much better choice, but adding that to my shopping rotation is just too much right now. Hopefully before too many more months/years.

[day 175 ... june 24]

Niall is in heaven this week: basketball camp. He's been asking me about playing basketball on a team for several months now, though I keep telling him that basketball is a winter sport! I did promise him that he'd have some basketball camps this summer, though, and managed to squeeze a few into the summer plan. It wasn't easy. I have to find camps for both boys that are in the same place, and Cory can only do MiniHawks at his age so that constrains the choices considerably. And I don't want to drive them to Mercer Island or Issaquah, so options are limited even further. I spent a whole morning just trying to find camps that would work for the weeks that we aren't on vacation. It was not fun at all!

Unfortunately there were few basketball camp options that fit in with everything else, but at least this week worked out. I'm also planning to check out a YMCA membership which would give us more options for recreational b-ball as well as a winter kids' league.

It's amazing to watch him be so passionately into this sport. When I watched him today, they had just learned about defense and he was totally into it. And boy did he wear himself out, too. Just exhausted - really good for him. Though makes for a rather crabby evening. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.

[day 174 ... june 23]

An overdue haircut for Mr. T. Looks very nice, I must say. There's something so tidy and dashing about a new haircut on my boys. Love it.

[day 173 ... june 22]

Today was Cory's first day of sports camp! He's the fourth kid to attend a Skyhawks MiniHawks camp, following all his brothers right down the line. These half-day camps are very cute and fun (when done well, which they usually are). The kids are all 4-5-6YOs (Cory's camp was nearly all tow-headed 5YO boys this time - don't know how the coaches kept track of them!) and they learn a few skills about each sport: soccer, basketball, and baseball. They play lots of fun games and have plenty of water and snack breaks.

Cory was sure he didn't want to ever go to camp, but once he was there and got into it, he had such a great time. He's really tentative about new situations but warms up and gets into it before too long, thankfully. His two coaches for this camp are terrific, which makes a big difference too.

[day 172 ... june 21]

Niall gets immersed in reading just the way my sister Sieglinde does. Love to watch him getting absorbed in a book like this.

Niall is tracking his minutes of reading this summer to earn prizes as part of the King County Library summer reading program for kids. He doesn't need the incentive to read but he's so competitive, he loves to rack up the minutes on the little chart.