July 2019 – Family Highlights

Highlights

  • Swim lessons
  • Dada survives a broken back 🙁

The boys kept busy this month with some of their favorite hobbies along with some new ones while Dada suffered through a pretty intense situation with a slipped disc in his lower back. Calan and Evan kept busy most weekdays doing swimming lessons with Coach Lynn (both boys now at our house). They also continued their respective summer basketball seasons. At home they really got into building with our old Lego collection. Many days, the kitchen table would be filled with constructions of miniature house interiors and along with an explosion of unique puzzle boxes. Lego puzzle boxes consist of putting together Lego bricks into a small box. Different pieces can be “secretly” slid or pulled to find little “keys” and unlock different compartments within the box. The puzzle box solver would be successful once they opened the box to find a small, hidden treasure inside. Calan especially had fun building these from online tutorials. Evan enjoyed making his own versions too. Thanks to Keegan who discovered these and shared on the way back home from the mini football camp the boys attended together last month.

The butterfly family that we watched develop over the last couple of weeks were finally ready to be released. We had a rather anti-climatic even in the back yard when we let the last remaining…well, surviving one go.

Calan

Calan continued to play piano more this month. It was great to see him carry on playing into the summer. In the last few years, he would get busy with other interests following the late spring recital. He was learning and playing around with some jazz songs. He really liked trying some out in the Robert Schultz book. Mama also organized a lesson with her old studio accompanist who was visiting his hometown Camarillo for a couple weeks from New York. He and Calan had a fun filled session together discussing the blues and even doing a improvisational duet on the piano.

Calan also kept going on his weekly math studies with Mr. Henning. Calan also tried to get back into coding this month with some success. Code.org offers a great starting track for younger kids, and Calan liked going through their beginner block-coding program

Evan
 
Evan recently got on a kick of making fun, little art inventions. This was owed in part to Mama’s reorganization of the front closet; mainly converting it into a fully stocked “art closet”. Evan absolutely loves this. It’s full of supplies to make any kind of artwork or craft you can think of…or at least that a five year old can think of! You’ll find him pulling out cardboard, glue, scissors and markers in one of his sessions; then cutting and assembling interesting “inventions” that only a guy like Evan could come up with. He also loves the “tinker bin.” This bin is full of lots of random supplies that allows the creative mind go wild
 
Evan is back in full stride again with swimming this summer. He’s even started using fins on “fin day” with Coach Lynn. He’s getting better and better with each lesson. The best part is he seems to like it and feeling proud about his progress.