Dad’s Two Weeks With the Kids

TSP has been hard at work on her summer program for the past five weeks. The first few weeks there were plenty of things for the kids to do (Cub Scout camp for AJP, a week at grandparents are more camp for both and then basketball camp for AJP and dance camp for BLP). The issue was that those activities spanned three weeks which left us with two weeks. We really didn’t want to have the kids in day care, so they went to swimming lessons and hung out with dad for two weeks. Except for the work that came up on the staycation, it went really well.

The main event was swimming. The kids had lessons each day (except for the day it was too hot to swim). They both did really well. We also swam each afternoon to practice what we learned.

The two highlights (and by highlights I mean what I actually took pictures of) were our week one dessert making activity and the Washington Nationals baseball game. During the first week we tried to stay engaged by coming up with an over the top ice cream dessert to make. We brainstormed possibilities, read cookbooks, talked about things we’ve eaten before and thought about how things would turn out. Originally, we came up with three ideas. This was pared down to one once we found out how much work and calories this whole thing involved. Since we love S’mores so much, we made a S’more ice cream dessert. It was a graham cracker crust with homemade chocolate ice cream on it. We then added Marshmallow Fluff and put the whole thing under the broiler for about a minute to brown things up. There are some things we will need to tweak if we ever do this again, but overall it was fun and yummy.

Two views of the finished product.

The second big activity was a church youth activity at the Washington Nationals. Facing the fact that we no longer live in Boston and Red Sox games are almost impossible to get to, we like the Nats experience. There’s no way this team will replace the Sox, but the game was fun. There were three home runs (whenever AJP goes to a game he sees at least one, which is saying something since he’s been to about 15 games), some good defense and some interesting errors. The youth from church are great and we had a very good time with them.

Fun with the Nationals.

Overall, we’re blessed to have fun, well behaved kids. Even though our apartment is nowhere near as clean as it should be, we all had a great time. More importantly, we were able to help TSP out. We’re all grateful for the sacrifices she’s making, and I’m especially grateful for the example of hard work she’s setting for the kids.