We are now routinely getting peas and if we wanted to we could be getting onions too. A few of the cherry tomatoes are yellow gold and in a month some zucchini (poor David).
This week held a great deal of out of the home activity.
I took off Monday Wednesday and Friday to supervise Kiernan and 18-20 other kids his age in their Cub Scout day camp experience.
Cub Scout day camp for our district had a Star Wars and STEM theme this year.
Over the course of the week the boys met full sized Star Wars characters and got to chose to fight for the light side or the dark.
They learned about robot building and propulsion engineering.
They got to do some time honored and much anticipated marksmanship sports.
Kiernan was just happy to get away from his sister.
To make up for being ineligible for Cub Scout Day camp, Megan got to do some pretty cool activities herself over the week. The best of which at the beginning was a pirate adventure in Baltimore with mom.
She sailed the ocean blue and found some treasure and learned some pirate songs.
Kiernan learned about NASA and launched some bottle rockets.
Click on the picture above to see the way up high 2 liter bottle he launched.
He loved the robot building and contributed quite a lot to the design and function of his teams battle bot. Not all the teams made battle bots. Some made rc vehicles and some made sensor bots which responded to objects in their way.
Kiernan's group made a battlebot tank thing to which he added a hacking battle ax to the rear for defense or direction changing attack.
There were a good deals of up and down moments in which he wanted to go home and be done with all the noise and confusion. I found the week quite reassuring in terms of comparison to other boys of the same age in the same situation. I was surprised to see how many other boys were in the same state, or worse.
Many of them, especially those that seemed most bold or even most uncontrollable were in the worst states by the end of the week.
Boys who were most competitive and/or aggressive were also those most often in tears and generally speaking those who seemed most withdrawn at the beginning of the week were in a fairly stable if unenthusiastic state by the end of the week.
Kiernan as a middle of the pack sort had moments of overwhelmed and moments of joy tempered by a general acceptance of life as it presented itself.
One day was missed due to both of the kids throwing up and rushed off to the couches with blankets and buckets.
I had a hard time being away from routine (and a hard time dealing with the sleeplessness of sick kid late nights) but also quite enjoyed the science and the marksmanship.
I thought the science was good. I thought the Star Wars theme was fun and familiar.
I enjoyed so much Kiernan's pride in his successes and think that over all the experience was worthwhile.
Everyday he brought his bb targets and every day they improved.
Every night Megan got up at 2 or 3 and we helped her and dosed her and sat her up so she could breath easily.
On one evening Kiernan began to complain loudly of leg pains. So in a better safe than sorry move we went to urgent care and had it checked out.
It was fine and the next morning her was fine as well.
This is the same leg he had trouble with a few years ago.
I think there is something up there. Ever since he was about 9 mo old he had on and off been troubled by it with a cyst and then an unknown growth (bone spur? teratoma? random funky leg?).
On the other hand it doesn't hurt so all is well.
The final day of camp saw an epic lightsaber battle with the light side facing the dark.
In the middle of the week the kids were asked to chose light side or dark.
At that time Vader came out and all the boys including Kiernan rushed him to collect their black bead necklaces and join the dark side.
Immediately upon his return Kiernan burst into tears at the thought of being a bad guy. He rectified his moral error and dragged me off to help him shift his allegiance to the light side.
So on the final day of battle he took his proper blue weapon (pool noodle) and vanquished many foes under the cannon fire of a firetruck hose.
The last day was long with many melt downs (none of them his) and an eventual knighthood banquet.
The whole family came to the banquet and Megan was enchanted by Vader and Chewie (so of course was I).
Kiernan showed off his new knowledge to his sister and we all went home.
On Saturday we cleaned and went to the river and prepared for the 4th of July.
We got some family over (Aunt Lore and cousin Katie) and had a small cookout and did the traditional Kuehnert tye-dye.
That evening we went for the Mount Airy Fireworks. This time we tried parking at the Mount Airy Elementary School.
This is the first year that Megan felt ready to join us. She doesn't love loud noise and for that at least our location was perfect.
I think we were a little far off for optimum viewing but the parking was great and there was a playground and it wasn't too loud and we brought enough blankets and chairs.
I even remembered patriotic glowing things to hand out.
We covered up with a warm blanket (it got chilly) and enjoyed the show.
On the morning of the 4th we rinsed the tye-dye.
We picked some berries.
We picked a cherry tomato.
It rained for the whole rest of the day.
We had a cookout under the awning and ate lots of food.
We had cherry pie and 3 layer jello and red white and blue cake.
We played video games.
We watched movies.
We hung out with family and admired the judgy looking turtle.
Happy 4th of July all.
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