Grandma Genie summer visit

Grandma Genie flew in to Florida on June 23rd and has been staying with us to help out this summer while Andrea is on the mend. Andrea has been recovering very well so far, but she still doesn't drive much and shouldn't be carrying anything over 5 pounds. We've all been trying to help Mommy around the house with everything and Grandma has been a huge help this past week taking the kids to basketball camp and helping us around the house.

This kids had basketball camp at the Landrum Middle School this week Monday through Thursday. Paige was a little apprehensive about basketball, but she ended up enjoying it and was actually interested in doing another basketball week later on this summer. It was a nice change of pace for the kids since they've been outdoors so much at sleepaway camp, so it was nice that they were indoors for the week.

On Thursday the kids wore their Blue Heat Academy basketball shirts and we got a pic with Grandma before they went to camp.

During the week it's been super hot and the kids swam with Grandma in our pool. They had fun with the big inflatables.

On Saturday we drove out to Amelia Island for Steak Out at Marche Burette. We stopped by the Nature Center before dinner and looked at the animals and Grandma bought the kids a couple of stuffed animals.

Steak Out was wonderful as always. It was a perfect night to sit in the covered area and listen to the live music and enjoy our favorite steak dinner.

We were talking about eye colors during dinner and took a couple closeups so we could compare eyes.

After dinner we rode the shuttle to the hotel to walk around and then walked back to Marche Burette for ice cream and we all ate way too much ice cream. While we were eating our dessert we saw Andrea's tennis teammate from JCP come by and we talked to Molly and her husband Daryl for a bit before heading home.

On Sunday we were pooped and decided we didn't want to leave the house, which sounded nice to Connor and Paige. We used our new grill for the first time and Grandma Genie had Connor snap a pic of me grilling in my snake shirt.

After lunch we swam for a couple of hours and then we just relaxed around the house and got a few things taken care of. We changed out the flowers in the pots in the lanai and moved some of the furniture back to the original spots now that we decided Andrea no longer needs the rocker in the master bedroom.

Camp Pinnacle pickup

On Friday morning, our friend Anna picked up her kids and our kids from camp. Dock thanked the parents for trusting the camp with the kids and the kids did their Camp Pinnacle chant for the parents and sang some songs.

When the kids arrived in Jacksonville, we met Anna at Town Center to greet them and then drove them the rest of the way home. It was so awesome to see them and it was the longest we've been apart since they've been alive! We heard their stories on the way home, all about their cabinmates, counselors, activities, and all the fun they had. We were thrilled to have them home safe and sound and we were happy to hear that they both loved it and would want to do it again next year. Connor and Paige were both on the green team, which won the team challenges and the Pinnacle Cup. The first pic on the post has the green team, which was a nice group shot of 1/3 of the campers.

I went through the Cabin group photos and labeled their friends.

Connor's Graveyard Fields cabin had ten boys and two counselors, they were all the same age and had just finished 6th grade.

Paige's cabin was Hiawassee and they had ten girls in her cabin and she was the oldest. Some of the girls had just finished first and second grades. Paige's counselor Kait wasn't in the picture we labeled, but Zoe was blocked in their other group photo, so we went with the photo where you could see all the kids.

After all the photos were posted, I went through and purchased a lot of the photos I liked best. They were $1.69 each, which wasn't too bad. They used a great camera and had lots of neat action shots. Paige was in about four times more pictures than Connor was for some reason, so there may be more Paige pics posted. I think I'd posted some of the screen-grabs in an earlier post, but decided to post in all the pictures we purchased, and there were probably some new ones.

Camp Pinnacle Week 2 Update

This past weekend we got a letter from Connor, some information from the kids' counselors, and a cute weekend summary the kids put together.

Connor wrote his letter on day 2, but we didn't receive it for quite a while, so not sure if he forgot to mail it, or if the USPS is just that slow. We were thrilled to hear from him though.

The camp photographer never seems to have many pictures of Connor, but Paige has ended up in quite a few photos. She is almost always smiling, and is always surrounded by friends. We got two letters from her right away, but we haven't gotten anything recently besides the counselor summary and Paige's weekend summary.

My favorite part of Paige's letter is that she asks for chapstick for "next year", which I believe implies that she is having a good time and expects to return next year!