Today Logan started a week of camp at our local recreation center.  I dropped him off in the morning.  As I was filling out some paperwork, Logan talked to a camp leader at the check-in table about the schedule for the week.  Then he decided to pull up a chair and sat down next to her at the table instead of going to play with the campers in the room.  So I just said goodbye to him and headed to work.

    When I came pick him up at the end of the day, a camp leader asked Logan to share the exciting news with me.  Logan was picked as one of the Campers of the Day.  I was told that he did great listening and participating in the activities.  Logan told me that there were four campers of the day, and at the end of the week there would be a Camper of the Week.  This camp was quite large, possibly 40 to 50 kids, so obviously I was very proud of him.  He also showed me the little Olaf he made and shared that they made snow today.  After a snack, I took him upstairs at the recreation center for his piano lesson.  Interesting thing was that he headed straight into the classroom and picked a piano to sit down.  Then he asked the teacher if he should start practicing and he did.  Wow!  I was impressed how motivated he was and what a good camper he is!

      Logan kept telling us that he and Rohan will have a playdate this weekend.  I guess they have been talking about it during the camp days.  So Vrinda and I arranged it for today, and she dropped off Rohan right before lunch.  Both Logan and Rohan chose to have him stay for 3 hours, and they all went up to the game room to play.  Stuart picked up pizza for lunch, and the boys finally came down to eat.  After lunch, they went back up to play.  The three of them played nicely on their own which gave Stuart and I some time to catch up on our own things.  Later Logan had a chance to show Rohan the Minecraft game, and afterward they played on a Tablet side by side with each other.  They talked and laughed together, and had fun.  Connor was left out sometimes, but instead he built himself a fortress out of chairs and blankets that he was very proud with.  Finally toward the end of the three hours, Connor did ask to play with Stuart as he was bored.  After Vrinda returned, Rohan and Logan did not want to stop playing, so we offered the ice cream Vrinda brought to put a nice end of this playdate. 

     Today was another Saturday swim lesson for the boys.  It was a later time in the morning since Connor had piano class first.  After piano, we picked up some lunch and headed over to the pool.  We checked in and the boys would be two of the three boys in this group lesson.  They went into the water and started taking turns working with the instructor.  They began with the boogie board, then later freestyle swimming to the instructor.  The boys did well and the distance they swam slowly got longer.  Later the instructor tried having them lay on their backs which neither cared much for it at all.  Overall the lesson went fine.  The following is the video clips I captured, first with Logan, then Connor and end with Connor jumping into the pool to the instructor.

    After eating lunch, the boys went back into the pool with us.  It was a really quiet day, so the pool was just about empty.  The boys swam to Stuart, to me and then back to the stairs.  They kept swimming this cycle for many times.  We also played around under the water as well.  Later Stuart and I were tired, and we finally convinced the boys to call it a day to go home.

     Logan just finished four weeks at Galileo camp.  Since yesterday was the last day, Stuart decided to go see the “end of the week show” and surprise Logan.  According to Stuart, Logan walked in the gym with his group and started scanning the crowd.  As soon as he spotted Stuart, he was pleasantly surprised and waved back to daddy.  The show had the similar format as the one we went to two weeks ago, and all the kids paid attention to the skit presented by the team leaders.  Afterward, Logan and Stuart picked up all his hardwork from the week, and ended the camp day earlier than usual.  Logan was proud to show us what he made this week, a nightlight, a hand grabber, a handheld vacuum, and a storage box seat that he can actually sit on.  The things seem to be getting more sophisticated.  Connor was jealous and wanted a box seat of his own too.

     We made plans to check out a weekly summer concert at the local park last Thursday.  After work, I picked up Logan and then got some burritos for dinner.  We met up with Stuart and Connor at home, then we got ready to head out.  It was 1.4 miles to the park, so we decided to walk and pull the kids in the buggy.  it has been a long time since they were inside it and they barely fit now, but they loved the ride.  We arrived at the park and were surprised how great the turnout was.  The weather was beautiful.  We sat down on a blanket and enjoyed the dinner with music.  The boys had a good time and almost wanted to dance.  After they finished eating, they wanted to throw around the football for a bit before moving on to the structure to play.  Connor saw two of his ex-classmates and they played together for awhile.  Right before the end of the concert, we wrapped up to take our hike back.  It was a fun evening and a good exercise for Stuart and I.

      I have been making up some weekly worksheets for the boys to do during the summer.  It is a way to have Logan do a little reading, math and now some piano practice, and be motivated.  The boys do enjoy getting the rewards; we had gone out for ice cream and had a pizza dinner out.  The new reward was to watch a movie, and today was a perfect day for it as Stuart was going to help Scott out at the Obon.  The boys and I were planning to see Inside Out and they were excited.  We arrived at the theater at a good time.  We walked around a bit, got us a big bucket of popcorns and found the perfect seats in the theater.  We enjoyed watching the movie, and the boys stayed focused the entire film.  As we walked out, we talked about and shared what we liked from the movie.  The timing worked well, so I decided to take the boys to visit daddy at Obon.  We found parking relatively easy and walked a couple of blocks into the festival.  The boys were happy to see Stuart behind one of the food court booths, and Connor could not wait to talk about the movie we watched.  Then we left daddy to check out the festivities.  We started at the children area and the boys had fun playing at the carnival games.  They both won some little toys, a toy snake, and tiny stuffed bears; and they were good to share their loots.  Then I saw the Taiko drummers getting ready, and the boys were interested to watch.  They also surprised me by how quickly they found a spot to sit down to watch; it was indeed a good spot and we comfortably stayed put for 30-40 minutes for their entire performance.  We then returned to Stuart and he just finished his shift.  We sat down to have some food, then said bye to Scott and Tracey to go home. 

      We had not gone swimming this past week, and I had promised the boys that we could go swimming this afternoon.  But since we stayed at Obon much longer than I anticipated, most of us were not interested to go swimming anymore except Connor.  He really wanted to go and so I had to keep my words.  We had a good time playing in the water even though Connor said he wished daddy and Logan were there too.  When it was time for “kids out”, Connor moved onto the wadding pool.  Connor saw his friend from school, but instead of playing with him, Connor was focused diving into the water and trying to swim.  He stayed in there for a long time until I asked him out to go home for dinner.  We had quite a full day today.