James Sleepover Party

James is 10!! Two whole hands! 

He had a sleepover birthday party, and could not be convinced to invite more kids or do some kind of outside the home activity. Let the record show that I offered/encouraged: indoor swimming at the ARC, go-karts or mini-golf, the arcade at the mall, ninja open gym, coding class -- or anything else! 

His cousin & one friend came over - I also offered to offload Leah and Amelie somewhere, but he said they could stay. Mostly, they wanted to play video games and stay up entirely, entirely too late. They did play outside some in the yard & with the neighbors & at the park. 

There were s'mores on the deck & pizza & fruit & a Home Alone marathon. I think they may have also gone down into the basement & done some autotune experimentation. Sam won Melissa Ethridge tickets on the radio & took James the next day, too, to prolong the birthday celebrations. 

One of the main things he wanted for a gift was a robe! Ha!

Show me the hood, I said: 

Birthday Interview

James turned 10! Yesterday! His party's not for a week so I forgot about the birthday interview until today and then we did it instead of read a book at bedtime. After we were done, he had a blast reading back through his old interviews and poking fun at his  younger self. 

1. How old are you? 10
2. What is your favorite color? Black 
3. What is your favorite toy? The Nintendo Switch 
4. What is your favorite game? Hollow Knight
5. What is your favorite song? "Big Idea" by AJR
6. What is your favorite animal? Fox 
7. What is your favorite book?  This is hard. This is always a hard question. I love so many books. Trying to think here. My brain is mashed potatoes. Hilo Book 4. It's very good. The entire series. But mostly book 4. 
8. What is your favorite movie? This is also very hard. I think it's probably Napoleon Dynamite. 
9. What is your favorite TV show? Gravity Falls (even better than The Simpsons) 
10. What is your favorite thing to eat? Crab Rangoons 
11. Where is your favorite place to go? Big Surf 
12. Who is your best friend? Grover 
13. What is something you learned last year? I learned how squared works. 
14. What is something you'll learn now that you're 10? Typing. 
15. What is your favorite part of school? Reading
16. What is hard for you to do? Hollow Knight Pantheon 3 
17. What is your favorite thing to do? Go down the ride at Big Surf that goes straight down and then straight up where you think you might die. 
18. What do you like about Me (Mom)? I can cuddle you.
19. What do you like about Dad? He's much more, like, I can do Youtube whenever I want.  Go nuts. 
20. What do you like about Amelie? I can talk to her about video games and stuff. 
21. What do you like about Leah?  Everything. Except she crawls on me, yells at me, jumps on me. (We were typing over last year's answers and he wanted me to leave that one, but then added:) She's very cute. 
22. What do you like about yourself? I can read very well. 
23. What do you want to be when you grow up? Author 

Here’s the link to the interview he did last year for his 9th birthday 

8th birthday

7th birthday

6th birthday

5th birthday

4th birthday 

3rd birthday 

Soccer!

Leah’s been saying for a while that she wanted to be a professional soccer player when she grows up so we thought we’d better sign her up to play for the first time. You have to sign up way in advance!

She’s on team Germany. 

  

They passed out shirts based on number preference & not size! She picked #7, which fits like a dress!

Updated with the last match of the season photo: 

Camp Wakonda, Take 2

James had his week at camp Wakonda (several weeks ago!) Sam dropped him off at the YMCA camp near Springfield, because I (mom) have "terrible taste in restaurants." 

At the restaurant: 

His bunk: 

His cabin: 

James did not appear to be terribly sad upon being left for the first time ever for a whole week away.

The camp very helpfully did big photo dumps daily on Facebook so that we could spy on him. Here's the opening ceremony (I think). You can see he's standing up:

With a counselor:

Yelling? 

It was easy to find James from this day, since he was wearing a stand-out tie-dye shirt. It looks like they did a climbing wall (and swimming?)

And facepaint:

 James passed the YMCA swim test! (far left) here are the pictures in reverse order:

This is the Holiday Olympics. His cabin was representing Day of the Dead.

 

 

 

 

Three-legged race: 

More climbing:

I don't know what this is, but he sure looks goofy.

Waiting for showers?

It looks like he had a good time! He didn't write us any letters!

Updated (since this post needed another picture!) with his cabin photo: 

Clover Chains

One of Amelie's interests is still making these huge clover chains: 

People are usually perplexed/impressed - it takes a lot of patience and dexterity to make those tiny knots! Here's a little bit of a roundup of some of the other photos I've taken of her hobby over the years.

A gigantically long one from 2020. 

And another from Quarantine. 

She found a 5-leaf clover this year at the new house & Sam took a somewhat blurry picture:

Plus here's a link to the first time (NOT EVEN THE ONLY TIME!) Amelie found a 6-leaf clover.

Statisticsbyjim.com tells me that the odds of finding a 4-leaf clover are 1 in 10,000 and 1 in 100,000 for a five-leaf clover & also that the Guinness world record is a 56-leaf white clover!

From vacation and at the playground across from church.

Her clover chains frequently adorn the play structure at the park, too.

Now if only I could get her interested in crochet.

Capen Park

We've visited the grindstone side of Hinkson Creek many, many times but somehow had never gone over on the Capen Park side to let the kids/dog play in the water over there. 

Leah & Spark and I went a bit ago - I think this was the day we spent 4 hours at Cosmo Park in the morning and then 2.5-3 hours at Capen park in the afternoon since Sam had taken the big kids to Big Surf and it was so nice outside. I asked Leah what she wanted to do & that's what she said!

Happy dog!

 

 

Leah did get a little bit wet: 

I wonder how?

We saw crawdads & fish & frogs. I did have to give her a piggy back ride to the car.

 Earlier in the summer, James & Amelie got to go with a friend of theirs while Leah was at school so I guess it evens out. James wanted to wear his swimsuit & I told him it was too cold to swim, but he did this anyway, just in his clothes: