Where did July go?

I really thought I would write more in July, but the month has already gone and I did get my fingers to connect to the key board once!

So where did the month go?

The week of July 4th I was home with Paul.  Our babysitter was on vacation and Mark had to work, so I was home.  It was a quiet week.  We enjoyed the fireworks in Gastonia.  We were going to go to a baseball game, but it was ridiculously hot.

On July 7th, Paul and I travelled to NYC to visit the Welsh family and for Paul to attend summer camp with Miriam at the NY Botanical Garden.  We were there for 10 days.  Paul and Miriam had a great time at the gardens - I enjoyed hanging out with Cyprian during the day with Mary and John in the evenings.  It was hot.  And the Welsh apartment lacks central air.  It was really hot.

Highlights of the trip for me:  seeing the Monet exhibit at the NYBG, and taking Paul and Miriam into the city to see the Today Show and the Lego Store and FAO Schwartz.  We had a super time together.  I was glad to have Kate with me when traveling around with the kids on the train.  I would have been fine on my own, but it was nice to have another adult with me who knows her way around, at least a little more than I do.

I have taken Paul contra dancing.  Twice.  And now, Paul admits that contra dancing is more fun than the Wii or the DS!   He asked how many times he would have to dance in order to be an expert like me.....perhaps three more times?  I told him it would take probably 50 more dances.  I think we will have that within the next two years!  We might have to dance on monday nights during the school year - the exercise and social development are so good for him.... if we can just wake up on time on Tuesdays, we will be fine.


Yesterday, Aug 2, Paul and I went to the National Whitewater Center.  We had the most fun, ever.  We went on a ropes course.  It scared the begeebers out of him, poor guy.  But we made it through the course.  Then we climbed up to a platform to zip.  Only we didn't zip.  We had to climb back down.  Too frightening to the short one.  We then went to a less intense zip line, only Paul wouldn't zip.  I DID zip, and I began to wonder if I had made a mistake bringing him out for the day.  We changed course and went down to the Catawba river and rode on a flat paddle board boat.  Paul rode on the front of the boat and dangled his feet in the water.  The previous scary-ness of the ropes course and zip failures left him skittish.  He was almost ready to go home but then something amazing happened... I stood up on the boat and he freaked out about the rocking of the boat.  Then I started paddling and he realized I could control the boat... he calmed down.  Then I gave someone else directions on how to stand and paddle her boat... and he realized I might know what I was doing and he asked if HE could paddle our boat.  So I sat back down without flipping our boat over and he stood up and took the paddle.... a smile spread across his face and all of his fears melted into the Catawba River.... after 45 minutes on the water, he sounded like an old salt who had been on a boat his entire life.  And he had resolved to go back up to the Canyon zipline (the less intense one) and try again.
So we did.  And he LOVED it!  We zipped across it twice before heading over to the Eco-trek office to get a GPS and trek around the whitewater center searching for set points on the GPS - there were 11 points around the park - it took us about an hour and we found them all.

At the end of this, we were ready to go home.  Did I mention that it was 90 something F?  I reversed my promise to never go to Sonic again and stopped there on the way home to get icy cold drinks....  It was drink one or pass out, so I chose to drink a cold drink!

All in all it was a GREAT day.

Today has been much less exciting, but quietly ordinary.

I think I will run tomorrow.  Just because I can.  I hope my time is better than last year's.

Summer is quickly fading - we have less than 20 days before school starts!