Museum of Science & Industry

We made a fun family morning in the city to go to the MSI.  Since I work so many weekends in the summer, this was a fun way to get the guys to the city and hang out with them.   After our museum fun, I dropped the guys off at Maggie Daley park to  mini golf and explore while I got in a few hours at  my office.  They walked over to meet me before we all drove home together. 

 

Several neighbors had posted about this cool maze, and it was great!  I'm glad I wasn't in there alone, or I may have gotten lost and definitely would have been disoriented.

William is finally at the age where he can read and interact with all of the exhibits himself.  We took him when he was younger and a lot of things he thought were boring since he wasn't fully engaging in them.  Now for my math, science and history whiz, this place is his playground.

The highlight was the U-Boat tour.  The guys had been on it a few years back when we had family in town, but I didn't get to go that day.   And it turns out William didn't fully remember it, but now he has read and watched so much about WWII that he was full of knowledge and the thirst for more knowledge.  He asked the docent some really amazing questions; including some she couldn't answer!  I was a very proud mom.

4th Grade

Another summer come and gone.  Somehow this one seemed even faster than any other!   After a fun 10 days in Kansas, William was ready to see his buddies back at school.  His teacher's name is Erica Johnson, and she seems very passionate about teaching!   We haven't formally met her yet since we missed Meet the Teacher day while William was out of town.  But based on the emails home to the parents and a few email exchanges, we're excited about what the year will bring!

Same backpack, same lunch box, plenty of clothes, and school supplies delivered to the school, so really we just had to stock up on "school food" for the daily lunch box and snack box.   I also ordered him a new pair of sneakers once I saw the state of his current pair.  They didn't arrive until day 2 but they're now his daily favorites. 

He was a good sport posing for my comparison photos on the porch and in front of the school sign!  He kept telling me, "I know the routine.  I've got this."  Oh how true it is.  Will I look back and say that 9 was the magical age when my little boy became all grown up?! 

 

 

Kansas Summer

William finished up summer with a 10 day trip to visit Kansas and his grandparents.   He had an amazing time and has been invited back for next summer!  After 14 hours in the car to get McPherson, he was thrilled that Grandpa Roger took off several days of work for some outdoor fun activities.   

Fishing and target practice and tower climbing at Maxwell Game Preserve 

Impressing grandpa with his prehistoric knowledge and miniature golf skills at the new Derby dinosaur park

Hustling grandpa at the clubhouse and then cooling off with a nice swim

And the indoor shooting range - because now that he's older he gets to try out a pistol.   He apparently is a pretty good shot!  His bowling isn't that good with the bumpers.  I think the guide was a big help here though!

Ever the animal whisperer, he did more fishing (I think they did three different "ponds" in total over the week) and his biggest victory:  the corgis let him pet them.  He specifically told me how happy he was that "the girls" took to him better this summer.   He also had a big excursion with Grandma Joni to Hutchinson to the salt mines where they got to experience a ride in a mine car underground!  He has now pretty much hit every Central Kansas tourist attraction there is!  Next summer is just all fishing and gardening I guess! 

After a week in McPherson, the grandparents met up in Emporia so he could spend a weekend with Grandpa Ed and Grandma Hilary in Kansas City.   While he there he got to watch planes at New Century airport, walk in the Gardner police department fundraiser walk (apparently they were quite near the end thanks to his lethargy for being up so early and grandpa's knees!), and spend lots of time playing with his cousins!   When we finally collected him on Sunday, we could barely let him out of our sight.  We missed our favorite little guy.  And he even agreed to sit between us to snuggle on the flight home!

We were happy to get to spend time with family on Hilary's birthday.  And who doesn't love a celebration complete with sombrero and fried ice cream?!

Summer Camps

William did five weeks of day camps this summer split between two favorites from last summer:  Kids Science Lab and Naper Settlement.  He also got to spend several "partial" weeks at home due to travel that we had that straddled the weekend/week and time at his grandparents.    But I succeeded in my goal of not having him home playing video games 10 hours a day.  With his camps running from 9-3 every day, he only played for 4 hours a day! :-)

Kids Science Lab themes were Explorers,  Make Your Own Boat, and Remote Control Car camp.   Make your own boat wasn't the name but I signed him up for something called "Engineering" that week - so that's what my calendar says - but the camp director suggested he might prefer the more advanced building stuff camp so we all agreed to the switch.  At the end of the week he had this water worthy catamaran!   And at the end of Remote Control car camp, that's what he had!  It rode really smooth across our wood floors when he got it home!  This camp has a pretty generous duct tape and foam board budget!

Naper Settlement themes were Invention Dimension and what ended up being Camp Scrambler.   In what could have been my total nightmare, it turns out I never actually submitted the registration for Naper Settlement back in February when I thought I had.   Their sign up process is a little low tech and requires faxing or mailing in a piece of paper.  Turns out I faxed the paper to their phone number instead of fax number so it didn't go anywhere.  And I never noticed that they didn't take payment on my credit card.  I get so many emails from their mailing list that while I did think it odd that I didn't get a "reminders about what to bring to camp on Monday" email, I was really just too busy to notice.  The guys called me from the check in desk on morning one and I quickly figured out what had happened.   They let him stay that day and we got the enrollment figured out later.   But whatever week I had signed him up for later in the summer was already full so he did the Scrambler session.   Worked out fine.   But seriously, I had this kid's summer nailed down to the minute in February and now I'm having to scramble?!  (Pun intended!)  It all worked out just fine!