It’s been far too long since I’ve updated! Figured I’d get at least one post in during
May J Nothing like waiting till the last minute,
right?
So much has happened in the past month and a half! For starters, I’m going to yet another school
starting in 2 weeks. Mom and dad had
been evaluating the options and finally decided to enroll me at this new school
which has a private Kindergarten option for me for next fall. I miss the cut off for the public schools by
3 weeks, so if I start in public school, I’d either have to test in early next
fall (when I’m almost 5) or wait until I’m almost 6 to start Kindergarten. I’m pretty sure I’ll be academically ready to
go next fall, but it’s so hard to tell whether I’ll be ready socially or
emotionally ready and that’s probably the bigger deciding factor on whether I
go early or not. There’s also no
guarantee that I’d get in if I tried to test in early to public schools (no set
criteria and a lot of the decision is up to the individual principal), so this
is a great solution. I can go to private
Kindergarten here and then mom and dad (and my teachers of course) can
re-evaluate whether I go to public Kindergarten or 1st grade the
year after. Gives mom and dad an extra
year to have to decide and lets me experience the Kindergarten curriculum in
the social setting more similar to the preschool I’m used to. Mom’s going to the parent orientation tonight
and she and dad are taking me to meet my new friends and teachers next
week. I’m pretty excited about it,
though of course I’m sad that I won’t see all of my current friends every day
anymore. It’s ok, we’ll just have to get
together on the weekends more.
Soccer is almost over and I’ve started back in swimming
again. We’re going to the same pool where
mom and I did the Mommy and Me classes, but now that I can go underwater by
myself, I can take lessons without mom or dad.
I’ve only been to one session thus far, but it was a lot of fun! There were 3 other kids in my class and Mr.
Warren was my teacher. Mom got to watch
through the window and I did a fantastic job!
Last weekend, we went camping! We loaded everything up in the garage on
Thursday night so we were ready to go on Friday afternoon. I went to school on Friday morning so mom and
dad could work in the morning, then mom came to get me before naptime. We loaded up the car and headed out. We intended to go to Shenandoah National Park
along Skyline Drive, but by the time we got there, ALL of the sites were
full. Can you believe it? Well, I guess we can, given that it was a
long holiday weekend and we didn’t think to make a reservation. One of the rangers gave us a list of other
private campgrounds nearby, so we scouted some of those out, but they looked
awful. First one was full of slides,
golf cards, TONS of RV’s – everything *but* relaxing, so we did some more
research (thank goodness for mobile internet!) We found two other somewhat
promising sites that were sort of on our way home if we ended up having to go
home. We got to what we thought was the
first place, but it turned out to be a big giant warehouse that was actually
nowhere near the actual campsite. Turns
out the guidebook we had listed the wrong address. Don’t know how that happened, but with the
benefit of the internet, we were able to find the real directions. Ended up stopping by the second one that we
were planning on stopping at and it was also awful – tents, RV’s, and people
EVERYWHERE and right next to each other.
No thanks. So we kept driving to
what was going to be our last stop.
As we pulled in, there was a huge sign saying “Campground
Full.” Boo L We decided to stop for a minute, get out, let
me use the rest room, then head home (this was all after about 5.5 hours of
driving, so it really would have been a bummer to leave). Mom and I went to the bathroom and as we were
walking back to the car, another couple came walking by and said “You know you
can go right across the street and there’s plenty of space and it’s free!” What?
We figured they had just climbed into an area of the woods that they
weren’t supposed to be in. We all looked
at each other and decided it was worth checking out, though.
We drove across the street and daddy hopped out to scope it
out (they didn’t want to get me out of my carseat if we were going to go
home). He was gone for a few minutes and
came back and said that he found a decent spot, but we had to hike our stuff in
rather than driving in and having the car right by the campsite. We decided to stay – after all we had been in
the car for so long and were really looking forward to a few relaxing
days. We figured a little hard work in
the beginning would probably be worth it.
Of course at this time it was getting late, so we had to hurry so we
could get the tent up and a fire started before it got TOO dark.
We took a light load up (chairs and tent and such) and I sat
and watched daddy start to put the tent up while mom went back to the car for
more stuff, rather than standing around being little help to dad (you really
only need two people for a small part of putting the tent up). Daddy was actually able to get the tent up
all by himself and mom grabbed most of the stuff from the car, including the
cooler which was pretty heavy. You’ve
got to do what you’ve got to do, right? Dad
got the rest of the stuff from the car and got the lantern set up while mom got
our sleeping bags set up. By that time,
it was already after my bedtime, so daddy went back to the car to drive to go
get some firewood – we didn’t have enough time (or light) to go search for it
on our own. Mom read to me while dad went
to get the firewood. Dad wasn’t gone too
long (thankfully, because I’ve proven that I can’t fall asleep while mom’s
anywhere near me – remind me to tell you about our trip to Fredericksburg a few
weeks ago). Mom didn’t want to get out
of the tent in the dark (she couldn’t turn the lantern on), so I ended up still
being awake when daddy got back. Mom
said good night and sat with dad until he got the fire started. I talked to myself until almost 11:00 Friday
night (because I had a long nap in the car).
I got mom up on Saturday morning and we walked down and
across the street to the bathroom. I don’t
think we were technically supposed to use them, but no one stopped us. They were very clean and it was nice to be
able to wash our hands and faces in cold water (did I mention how hot it was
last weekend???) Mom made a big thermos
of coffee and we made eggs, bacon and sausage when we got back to the campsite
(thanks grandpa and grandma for the camp stove!) Yum!
I was pretty whiny and defiant on Saturday morning, so mom
and dad made me rest after lunch time. I
finally fell asleep (it had to happen for all of our sanity) and mom laid down
in the travel hammock that we got daddy for Father’s Day last year. She ended up falling asleep too and said that
it was the best nap she had ever had. I
was much happier when I got up as well and we had a fun afternoon! Not much to do out there other than relax,
blow bubbles, collect and throw sticks and rocks, run and jump around. It was perfect!
Sometime Saturday afternoon, the host from the campground
across the street came up to tell us that he was opening the gate so we could
bring our cars up to the campsites!
Apparently there were so many people and people had to hike way up the
mountain that the ranger told him to open the gates. He said he had never seen so many people
there before, but we sure appreciated having the car closer to our campsite
when we packed up the next day!
We had campfire chili dogs for dinner – YUM! I got to roast my own hot dog, but it got too
hot on my face, so I let daddy finish cooking it for me. I also really loved the chili, especially
eating it with my spork J What a fun word to say! After dinner, we searched for the perfect
marshmallow roasting stick and daddy cut the end down so it was sharp. We roasted my marshmallow first and I got to
have the first smore of the night. Then
daddy and mommy had theirs and I got to eat the last bit of chocolate. Needless to say between the nap and the
chocolate, I was up pretty late Saturday night as well.
We got up Sunday morning, had bagels and cream cheese for
breakfast and started packing and loading our stuff up to go home. We figured it would be nice to have at least
a full day at home to unpack and get settled before going back to school and
work on Tuesday. It was much easier to
pack the car on Sunday than it was to unpack it Friday night! And the drive home wasn’t even too bad – about
an hour and a half and I managed to stay awake the whole time which made it a
little easier to get back on a normal schedule Sunday night.
We showered when we got home and went to Whole Foods to get
stuff to grill. We were going to have
ribs, but mom bought the wrong kind (the kind that weren’t already cooked), so
we couldn’t eat them Sunday night. We
ended up ordering a pizza instead and daddy smoked the ribs on Monday instead J
Since it was so hot on Monday, mom and I went out and bought
a sprinkler. We have one for the yard,
but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun as what we got. I wore one of my new suits (I’m in a 5T!),
put on my sandals and ran around for a long time. Our yard got kind of muddy, so we moved it
around a few times, but I had SO much fun.
Back to school and work on Tuesday and now just looking
forward to another weekend. One more
day!
Mom promises to post more pictures soon. She’s taken at least one every day this year
(there’s ONE day she missed), but I think she’s kind of burned out on the
editing part after the 365 project from last year. One of these days she’ll buckle down and power
through it…
