Busy Beth: Scatterbrainedness- another week in our life gone by

Jayna Bells enjoyed her week of Camp Hydaway. It tired her out each and every day! She is not like her brother and made sure she had snack at the camp store. However she also didn't go overboard and in fact I had to let her know that it is ok to get both a candy/snack and a drink. That made her super pleased. On day one she didn't get anything because she didn't know how the store worked. On day 2 she got candy that she made sure to bring a bit home to share with Anthony. On the day she bought an airhead, she said "Mommy I tried to save Anthony some, but I just couldn't! storying about the bible stories she had learned about David. Absolutely priceless hearing my sweet girl teaching me about David and Goliath, David's Wisdom, the dead baby switch, King Saul and David's interactions. She obviously learned a lot while having so much fun too!

It was too good so I had to eat it all!" My absolute favorite was Friday at the end of camp. She spent an hour after camp

While Jayners spent her days at camp, Anthony mostly got to do his own thing, which included too much video game time on day 1 and 2 so we traded the games for pool and kid's gym time at the YMCA for the remainder of the week. On Thursday we swam 12 laps in the lap pool!! That was in addition to exercise and hot tub and family pool time. Next time I need to bring my goggles because it is hard to swim straight without them.

On Wednesday after we picked Jayna up from camp, we had to hop on over to get her buddies birthday gifts for a Friday afternoon party. In the midst of shopping the kids found a (dead) butterfly, that we had to pretend was alive. Jayna wouldn't give a real smile. Big Brother intervened and I got not only a real smile, but an exceptionally cute picture!

On Thursday we checked another item off of the bucket list. It is a Bittersweet day. On this day 10 years ago I got the worst imaginable call and for the first time and only time in my life, felt real pain, true heartbreak. I still miss that precious perfect Godson of mine and a single day never passes without him entering my thoughts. Two years ago I realized the ice cream place in town has "Christmas in July". It is always on Blake's angel-day. It is a good tradition that I am certain, if Blake was still alive he would be joining us in. Visiting his grave works, but that makes me sadder. I wanted something more on his angel-day, so this is our tradition on how to make a bitter day, my least favorite day of the year, a little sweet. I know in my mind the countdown to the saddest day of the year. I can't ever forget, so this allows for some happiness amongst the sorrow in memory of someone who brought me nothing but happiness and taught me more in 2 months than I could have ever imagined.

For you and in your memory Christian Blake Clark 5/28/03-7/25/03

We dressed in our Christmas gear and got into the extremely long line to get our free frozen treat. The rules are if you wear anything Christmasy-- green, red, a Santa hat, etc you get a free ice cream or snow cone. That is was too easy for us, so we go a bit over the top. We even shared decorations with a family in line who was unaware about the promotion going on so they too got free Mr. Goodies!

Christmas can't be complete w/o bell ringers! The man let Anthony ring it after he put in his donation.
And as if free ice cream isn't amazing enough Mr Goodie's matched donations in the kettle up to $1,000!!

Santa Clause gave the kidlets rings for Christmas in July!

On Friday after camp, was the Sprayground at Riverside park for Miss Jayda's 4th birthday. And of course that included best buddy play time for Jayna and RyLee! It was a great time and seemed an affordable do it yourself party with some great games, even though some of it didn't quite go as planned, the kids were clueless that there may have been more or less to it! That is the perk to kids, they can re-invent fun into a game that may initially seem ruined!