Summer camps

I’ll post about Maddie’s birthday soon! First I wanted to post about the girls camps they have been doing this summer. We have had a camp every week since the week after school finished! First, Sammi did CAT camp (creative arts and theater) at St. Paul’s preschool. She enjoyed it, mostly because her best friend, Caitlyn was there! Caitlyn has since moved to Kansas, so it was nice Sammi got to spend some extra time at camp with her. They sang songs and did art projects and it was similar to a VBS but with more arts and crafts.

The next week, both Sammi and Maddie did Summer Surge at a different local church.  They both LOVED this camp. Maddie was happy because she got to be in Sammi’s group, so that helped her with her shyness.  And her counselors said that Sammi was always looking out for Maddie and helping her, which was really sweet.  For this camp, they did the popular “Panda Mania” VBS package.  We bought the CD for it and the girls absolutely love all the songs. Even Maddie kept saying every day how much fun the camp was! So I’m glad they got to do one together and enjoyed it so much.  Here is a picture from the final show where the kids sang some of the songs for us.  You can see that Maddie didn’t want to sing in front of a crowd, but the fact that she even stood up there was a big deal for her!
Then, Maddie started preschool camp, which was 3 days a week for 2 weeks. This was at St. Paul’s preschool as well and was just a smaller version of regular preschool. Maddie was excited about this because she got to see her teachers and friends from preschool.  And on Thursdays, they had water day and the kids got to wear their bathing suits and they got out the baby pools for the kids to play in.  Oh, and we can’t forget about the freeze pop they got every day at the end! That seemed to be a highlight for Maddie!

Sammi also went to Twilight Camp, which was in the evenings for a week. This was through girl scouts and the theme was space. They learned about stars and also had a swimming day, where they got to swim in the big pool they have at the camp. I’m not sure Sammi loved this camp as much as the other’s, but overall she still had fun.

Last week, Sammi went to probably her favorite camp.  It was a Children around the world choir camp, held at our church by the Oakland Girls Choir.  She LOVED this camp! It was all day and they learned songs and dances from other countries. It was a very well put together camp and Sammi really loved all the singing and dancing.  The adults at the camp kept going on and on about how well Sammi did and how much they enjoyed having her there. They said she had a really good voice and was so mature for her age! So that was nice to hear. She had an incident with a pole the first day, and ended up with a big bruise on her head.  Sammi seems to get injured wherever she goes!Thankfully she was fine though! They had a performance at the end of the week, and unfortunately Brandon and I did not get to see it.  It was for a good reason though, since we had a wedding of a good friend to go to. My Mom and Dad went to the performance and took a few videos for me. Here is short clip of one of the songs they performed. 

FINALLY, this is the last week of camps. Sammi is going to VBS at St. Paul’s.  The VBS at St. Paul’s has 250 kids and was rather overwhelming for Maddie last year, so she decided she did not want to go this year.

I have to give a HUGE thank you to my Mom and Dad. There is no way the girls could have done so many camps without their help. They dropped off the girls and picked them up almost every single day. There was really only one or two times that I had to do it and even then, I still had help getting the kids ready.  This morning was the first day that I really got all 4 kids ready and out the door before 9AM. I was pretty proud! So we are all very thankful to Grandma and Grandpa for helping so much and making it possible for the girls to do so many fun things this summer!