Summer!

Emily has been having a busy, but fun summer so far. Before we left for our summer road trip she met a girl in our neighborhood that is her age, so she was able to entertain herself with lots of play dates. She is very social and seems to have an easy time meeting people. For example, there is a band shell near the house that we are renting in Minnesota. It is right on the lake and has concerts every night during the summer. It is easy walking distance from our house so we like to check it out when we can. The other night we went to see a Caribbean band and Emily was thrilled to join in with the people who were dancing. Almost instantly, she found two girls her age to dance with and they had a blast. Here are a couple of short clips:

At one point, many of the adults decided to form a conga line that wound around the seats. As we watched forty-plus people go past us, imagine our surprise when we saw Emily and her little friends near the back of the line. I tried to get a video, but there was no way to really capture it.

She is looking forward to attending summer camps next week as a way to get more time with kids her age. Her camps next week are forts and American Girl (yes, we brought Ann with us just for this camp). She is actually going to do American Girl camp the following week as well. Other camps this summer include a Magic Tree House camp and a Pixie Hollow camp. 

In the meantime, we have been spending lots of time at the mall. Of course, rides are always a must, but this year we had a practical mission, too. We needed to get Emily her new school uniforms. She starts school a few days after we return home and her uniforms need to be monogrammed beforehand so we are planning to get it done before we leave Minnesota. We have purchased everything that she needs, but it'll likely be next week before we get a chance for her to choose her monogram style. Eventually I'll post a photo of her in her uniform, but in case you are curious, she will be wearing navy blue jumpers with white polo tops. We have lots of flexibility to choose the brand that we like best and we ended up going with Lands' End. As you can imagine, she looks very cute! 

As always, Emily likes to make us laugh with her one-liners. I don't think that she always anticipates that what she says will be funny to us, but once she sees the reaction, she is pretty pleased with herself. We were in the car on our way to Minnesota, about an hour or so down the road when she said that she needed to go to the bathroom. As you can imagine, we hadn't planned on stopping so soon, so we asked her how long she could hold it for. "Until I get to the bathroom," she responded. Ha, Ha! Good to know!