Summer 2014

Here's an attempt to capture our summer in one post.  (And hope that this gets me back into blogging).

Seems like a whilwind, and now Matthew and Renee start grade 1 tomorrow.  I'm more nostalgic about that than I was when they started Casa 3 years ago.

We had a great summer.  The kids had a great time at various camps.  highlights were the theatre camp and film camps where their personalities shone through.  Samuel's group did a  Scoooby Doo inspired skit that was admittedly his idea.  He was amazing in it, so confident.  Renee was a bunny rabbit on a bus going to Canada's Wonderland.  Matthew was a mean kid in his skit about a girl scared to go to school.  The night before the show we went to the Eaton Centre, a large mall in downtown Toronto, they still refer to it as the "biggest mall in the world".  Renee had to buy a "white, all white, the teacher said it has to be all white and clean with no spots, like bunny rabbits" outfit , Samuel had to buy a "what cool kids wear in the fall" long sleeve shirt with backwards baseball hat.  Matthew didn't need to buy anything until we got home and he remembered that he needed "clothes with holes and dirty, like those kids who are orphanages and don't have parents like in Annie and Hard Kocks life", good thing we had a few stained  and ripped on hand!

They climatized  well to each camp, made friends, and had a great time.

We are undoubtedly in a different plane of development, Montessorians refer to it as "second plane".  The play is based in reality, independent, and creative.  The sibling rivalry is picking up pace, as is the rudeness, both of which are expected and exasperating.

We had a great weekend with my parents, sister and be phew at rationale local resort.  The weather was lousy so we stayed inside and Matthew developed a taste, and skill, for pool and darts. He got a "bull dog" (ie bull's eye) in darts and got the hang of both pretty easily, a skills that will serve him well when he is a teenager.  Samuel really liked shuffle board, until he got a blood blister that covered half his thumbprint.  He eventually saw the blood blister as a good thing because that way he always had something to play with (no need to a fidget toy, bracelet , lego guy, shirt sleeve when you have your very own mushy, squishy blistered thumb!).

One of my dear, dear friends had her daugher's Bat Mitzvah at a jewish sleepover camp, and Samual came with me.  3 hour drive there and back the next day and he used my iPad for about 30 minutes, the rest of the drive we talked, he looked out the window.  He didn't know any of the the kids there but acclimatized to them quite quickly.  We stayed at a resort and I let him go up to our room by himself, he was so mature about it,  he locked the door, put the deadbolt on and asked "who is it" when I tried to use my key 10 minutes later.  He was watching FoodTV because he couldn't find Teletoons.  He loved the report bathrobe!

Matthew is a super star bike rider,.  He and I biked to the local mall about 1 km away to buy him new shoes and he was awesome.  Renee can ride with her training wheels and we did a few local rides which was fun.

Renee's favourite thing to watch on "screens" is DYI shows for making cakes, especially Frozen and misc princess cakes, with fondant.  She's asked me a few times if we can make a cake together with playdo.  She's very nervous about grade 1.  "I'm shy about it because I only have one friend", "in casa you start learning a about things, but in grade one it's about real life", " the teachers yell in grade 1".  All comes down to her not knowing the lay of the land yet.  Hard to see her like