More July 2024 - Home, Camps, Soccer, Certificate of Merit

The Cikaneks picked up a crazy steep waterslide that Scott jerry-rigged up on a ladder. It was unstable but very fun. 

Another video of Tiny doing her signature slide.

Tiny and Ever earned free Girl Scouts sleepaway camps with their massive cookie sales (more than 1,000 boxes each). We realized that sending two of them away for camp and having Bear home alone for a week (well, five days) would be really sad, so we offered camp to Bear. She decided to go, and we sent them all off - but to three different camps! Ever's old friend from Palmquist, Grace, went with Ever to a horse camp (for which we had to pay because it wasn't eligible for the cookie rewards). The Girls Scouts let me apply Ever's credit to Wren (which shocked and elated me). Wren wanted to go by herself (also shocking), so she and Tiny went to different camps. 

Ever's face in this pic is classic Ever - so not amused by the silly, trying-to-be-fun thing the counselor was saying. 

Jim took one day off the week the girls were gone so we could have some fun. We went paddleboarding in the lagoon and went farther into the lagoon than we were allowed to. Although I despise rule breaking, it was really cool in those recesses and made the trip way better. Then we went out toward the ocean and saw a couple of guys jump off a little bridge, so we did that, too. We felt like very fun middle-aged people. 

I picked the girls up on Friday. They had a pretty good time but said it was really hot, and Ever would have liked more time on the horses.

We went straight from Wren's Saturday soccer game to a Wave game at Terero Stadium. 

Posting this bottom pic only because Tiny is cute and mischievous. 

The very next week after the Girl Scout camps, the girls went to Cedar Lake Camp up in Big Bear. Molly Bowen, mother of Lucy and Lola (JCS friends of Ever and Wren, respectively) invited Ever and Wren to the camp, which is run by some Christian church in the area. (Molly knows somebody who is associated with it.) In looking into it, I found that Tiny was just barely old enough to attend, so we sent all three. Overall, they had a great time. Each day had a theme - like He is the light; He is the way; whatever. They learned Christian songs and seemed totally into it when we picked them up. Ever and Wren said Lucy and Lola didn't hang out with them at all (rude), and Wren never recovered from seeing a spider in the bunk house on Day 1. So after all was said and done, Tiny wanted to go back the next year, but neither of her sisters wanted to (for Bear, that was because of the spiders).  

Miss Amber Dahlberg, the Biggers' piano teacher, facilitated Certificate of Merit testing for them, and they both passed. 

I've got an Ever-wakeboarding-while-with-the-Rondos video in my July 2024 photo folder. I don't know if that's really when it was taken. I could very well have posted this already somewhere else. 

Lastly, Bear (second from the left) with her soccer team.