Aidan's 8th Birthday!

No, that's not a typo.  These are pics from Aidan's birthday party last year, right about when I disappeared from the social media universe (sorry).  I haven't abandoned this blog and I don't have a new one or anything like that, but it was just a really rough year and updating was left on the back-burner.  I'll get into it more in other posts I guess but suffice it to say that last year's back-to-school routine was so rough that I just didn't have the energy or mental clarity to write or post anything. I think the last time I went this long was probably the months right after Aidan was born, and actually, his sleep habits this entire year (entire year!!!) have been worse than they were his first year of life.  That is saying something, my friends.  

As for other excuses, well... the good news is that I absolutely do have pictures of every single fun event we took part in the past year, starting with this birthday party here.  Good thing too, since I don't actually remember participating in any of it, haha.  The bad news is that the pictures are on three different devices, only two of which are working and accessible at the moment.  So we'll see how that goes.  Basically I have everything from August 2014 to I think Thanksgiving on this computer here and nowhere else, so I'm trying to get all of those posts up before my (fairly old) computer bites the dust.  I am afraid that may be imminent.  And I just jinxed it, didn't I?  Wait... if you say something out loud and jinx yourself, but then you admit you jinxed yourself, out loud, does that, like, reverse the jinx?  By the way, this is me after almost four months of semi-human recovery sleep (so like blocks of five hrs at night).  It's been a rough year.  Wait, I think I said that already.  Okay, on to the birthday celebrations:

So, as you know I like to have a theme every year and for Aidan's 8th birthday the theme was Camping.  I made him a S'Mores cake and the kids brought their Scouts stuff with badges, we had a nature-themed outdoor scavenger hunt (complete with walking sticks, lol) and I set up a "make your own trail mix" station with a whole bunch of stuff.  Generally I like parties that are fun and celebratory but laid back and relaxed.  That's better for him too.  

Oh, so the cake had chocolate bar and marshmallow outside, with teddy graham "bears" encroaching on the camp, and pretzel logs, a graham cracker tent with a "sleeping bag and pillow" inside which was actually half of a graham cracker with an icing pillow, and the "campfire" with the candles and mini-marshmallows on toothpicks.  The table centerpiece was just a lantern, branches and pine cones, brown paper for a table runner. 

Also sorry for the picture dump, I was too tired to go through and pick exactly which photos I wanted on here so I just uploaded everything that was on the camera.  Based on what I'm seeing on my computer right now, still to come (hopefully in the next few weeks?) are:

--pool pics and video

--playground pics

--back-to-school 2014 post, hey only a year late

--Nan's birthday party and family bbq 

--Fall Festival 2014

Summer Camp Round Up

Hope you enjoyed the whole little "Staycation" series!  So here is where we are right now:

Summer is slowly coming to a close and we are getting into Back to School mode (wahhhhhhh!!!).  My sister and her family have returned from their week at the Jersey Shore.  My parents just returned from a week in North Carolina with my aunt and uncle.  Aidan has completed his six weeks of Summer Camp, and has vacation until after Labor Day.  Here is a partial round up of Aidan's activities over Summer Camp, minus some of his class photos and artwork because I haven't downloaded it from my camera yet.  

So to review, their Summer theme was "Great Books" this year.  The whole school made a "Book Worm" (really a caterpillar) listing all of the books everyone had read over the Summer.  Also, every year the kids dress up in costumes each Wednesday, so this year they dressed as characters from different genres of books each week.  Aidan is not the most receptive to having his picture taken (cough... understatement) but I tried to get a few.  

So here he is dressed as a fairy referencing a Shakespeare poem about "Faery rings"  He borrowed this one from his cousins and he had a wand and everything.  

 

 

 The teachers had a little write up of the class activities each week but so far I only have the first one.  I'll have to post the others later.  The following weeks he dressed as Sherlock Holmes, then I had wanted him to be The Doctor from Doctor Who for Sci-Fi/Fantasy week, but he was home sick.  He was a cowboy for Non-Fiction week, and the last week he dressed as Christopher Robin and brought in Pooh and his friends.  He really did look cute, too bad he had pulled another all-nighter and was not being the least bit cooperative :( 

 

 The rest of this week and next I'm trying to get Aidan's room and the rest of the house organized for the back-to-school onslaught of paperwork, and on the days I'm home I have planned out our schedule so that Aidan can get some time in at the pool, library, and other places that we don't like to go on the weekends because it is too crowded.  And oh yeah, someone has a birthday coming up! :)  Actually he and another girl in his class already had a class party to celebrate all of the kids whose birthdays fall before the start of school (there are a lot.  August is a pretty popular birthday month it seems).  

Also I'm so behind in posting.  Here is the rest of what's coming up:
--Aidan's Summer Reading List (I did still want to share this even though Summer is pretty much over.  You can see the sorts of books he reads and what he got all of his Book Points for.  I think he was probably the class winner, as I'm lucky he enjoys reading with me so we have a great routine set up for that). 
--Summer Music Playlist
--Shark Week!
--Late Summer Garden
--Fit2014!