Hi all, dad here blogging for a change. Posts have been few and far between over the past 2 years so I wanted to make sure I captured what a typical summer vacation looked like for Grace and Clara. In the summer of 2017, Grace is 8 years old and will be going into 3rd grade and Clara is 6 and will be going into 1st grade. We have been lucky for the past few summers to utilize an in home daycare provider (Melissa Long, whose daughter Makayla is one of Grace's friends) instead of a daycare center such as KinderCare, which we used our first summer in Ballwin, 2014. The use of an in-home daycare provider also offers challenges, especially when that daycare provider has 3 kids of her own, including a young son that is under a year old. We have to work around her family's vacations, doctor schedules and other "emergencies" that pop up so we know we need to find alternate activities for the girls as well as schedule our own vacations. Overall, the experience has been great as if offers the girls an opportunity to play with kids besides each other and gets them out of the house so dad can work!
Summer vacation for the Parkway school district/Oakbrook Elementary starts in mid-May. The end of the school year activity for Kindergarteners is putting on the Three Piggy Opera for family members. Clara was extremely excited to sing and the songs she'd been learning for the past month or so and thankfully she didn't exhibit any of her trademark shyness when on stage. Great job Clara!
As for Grace, she ended 2nd grade with an opportunity to share projects with family and a chance to say goodbye to her friends and teacher, Mrs. Evans, for the summer. Granted, some of her friends, like Makayla and Kara (in the picture below), she would see during the course of the summer regardless but I'm sure it seems like a big goodbye for an 8 year old.
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| Clara getting ready to perform. |
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| The Kindergarten gang. Deetya, Saanvi, Alysse and Clara. |
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| Grace and her favorite teacher, Mrs. Evans |
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| The three amigos; Mikayla, Grace, Kara. |
In May, we were finishing up gymnastics lessons for the season, which both Grace and Clara participated in. The season culminated in an "Olympic" event which was meant as a showcase for the students to show off their skills to their family members. Both girls participated and did their best considering they have had only 1 full season plus a partial season of gymnastics behind them.
From a weather standpoint, May is the perfect month to go camping in Missouri so our first weekend out of school, we went camping at Washington State Park. Washington State Park is located about an hour south of St. Louis so perfect location to pack up and go and hope there was a site available. There were a number of state parks and campgrounds still closed from the terrible flooding of the Meremec river earlier that spring so the few parks that were open were packed. Mary had to convince the camp hosts to let us have a site that had been reserved for the weekend by no-shows so we lucked out for sure. I played catch using a nerf football with Grace, Clara presented a variety of topics at the amphitheater (to an audience of just me), and Mary took us on a hike, which Clara obviously protested.
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| Happy faces during a hike break at Washington State Park. |
Grace was also participating in softball at this time, her first year on the team, so it was exciting for me to watch her grow and progress as a ball-player. I was extremely nervous watching her at catcher the first game I was able to attend. Softball at this age utilizes a machine to pitch which is just as erratic as a human. Grace took a few wild pitches and foul balls to the head (face mask/helmet to the rescue), legs and arms which resulted in bruises, but she never acted like it bothered her and she stuck in there to stop the ball whenever she could. Coach Tyler was proud of her catching ability as well as me. As a batter, Grace did very well and because of their age, the erratic nature of the pitching machine, and the requirement that the batters swing at everything (no walks allowed), each batter got 7 strikes so I rarely saw Grace strike out. Grace enjoyed the experience enough to agree to play fall ball, in spite of a scary moment when she fouled a ball back into her neck. There were some tears and ultimately a bruise, but Grace stayed in the game after taking that particular at-bat off and was back on the field the next inning. Grace and her team even got to walk around Busch Stadium with other little leaguers as a reward for an excellent season!
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| Grace and teammates in stands at Busch Stadium during the May 31st game against the Dodgers. |
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| Grace's coaches and team, the Lightning, got to parade around Busch Stadium before the start of the game! |
We took trips to Six Flags, where we are members for the second year in a row as well as a trip to Grant's Farm with two of Mary's co-workers, Vicki (her manager), Vicki's children, and Mark Post. Mark and Clara seem to have a special buddy/buddy relationship and Mark needles Grace about her constant Packer gear as he is an avid Patriot fan. Both girls agreed to like Tom Brady over Aaron Rodgers in order to get ice cream from him, but kept their fingers crossed so as to not disappoint their father. Now that's something I can be proud of!
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| Riding the trolley into Grant's Farm and having a snack with Vicki's children. |
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| On the ferris wheel at Six Flags. |
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