Dogs and Cousins

Well, the COVID positive calls from the school continue, including another close contact call for Evie.  One third of the kids in her class either have COVID or have to quarantine because of close contacts and not being vaccinated.  Evie has not had any symptoms and has been fully vaccinated, so she is able to keep going to school.  She restarted her dance activities this week, and I forgot to mention last week that she is doing theatre classes on Saturdays again, so Saturdays are for gymnastics and theatre, and then she has ballet on Mondays and Tuesdays, and a tap/jazz class on Thursdays.  She's a busy girl, but she still manages to get all her homework done and has had straight As this whole year.  I am so very proud of her.

I've started looking at summer camp options for her because programs are starting to publish their offerings.  Evie wants to go to our local Presbyterian camp one week.  It's a sleep away camp about an hour from where we live, so she'll be gone for 5 days and 4 nights.  I'm sure she will enjoy it and do well, but I'm not sure how I'll do!  

For two weeks of the summer, we'll be gone (hopefully) on our 10/40 birthday trip.  Evie will be turning 10 and I will be turning 40 so, just like we did with Seth for his 40th birthday when we went to Japan, we're doing a bucket list trip for me.  I've always wanted to go to Italy, so I wanted to go there for my 40th.  Evie's birthday is the week before mine and when we were watching some travel shows, she saw people enjoying the Alps and she said that she wanted to go there for her 10th birthday, so our plan is to go to Switzerland for her 10th birthday, and then head to a tour of some Italian cities for my birthday.

Another summer opportunity I wanted to explore for her is Mississippi State University's vet camp. That would be a great university for her to attend if she is still thinking she wants to be a vet, and I thought vet camp would be a great introduction.  Unfortunately, the offerings they have for Evie's age are the week before her birthday and they require you to be 10 years old.  So she's 5 days shy of being able to go this year, but we'll try next year.

Speaking of her interest in animals, I got some video of her snuggling with Siouxsie when Sioux was in an especially cuddly mood.

The picture below is from Wednesday when I brought Beau with me to pick Evie up from school and we went to the pet store to get him his own big boy harness.  He's been wearing ChuuChu's old one cause we don't like to have to keep spending money on growing dogs.

Evie finished her read-a-thon this week with 670 minutes read, which I think is pretty good for how busy she is!  She raised over $500 for her school's tutoring program!

Yesterday, we went to my cousin's house to play board games and for Evie to play with her 4 girl second cousins.  It was great to be together with them and I think we may make it a monthly thing.  I felt a little guilty because we haven't seen Granna and Grannadaddy since school came back in session because of the COVID positivity rate increasing so much.  I'm just worried Evie might carry something to them and I would hate for that to happen.  So it felt a little wrong to go to Daniel's house when we haven't even seen Granna and Grannadaddy lately, but Daniel and his kids aren't at risk for catching anything or carrying anything right now, so we took the opportunity.

Evie and Novalee (3), Naomi (10), Natalie (6), and Nyla (11)