Monkey's Musings: Monkey's Summer

My little monkey still has several weeks of summer left but we have done a fair amount this summer.

In June monkey's sister and her family came up to celebrate his 10th birthday. They also brought his sister's childhood friend and her two kids. My late husband would have enjoyed that visit. Marcy's kids had never been to Greenfield Village before so Nick had fun showing them around plus it was nice for Nick to have company with a boy his own age for once instead of just his nieces. Sometimes it sucks to have 30 years between you and your sister and 26 years between you and your brother so you are growing up with their kids. I have explined to Nick this sometimes happens when an older man falls in love with a younger woman and he isn't the only kid in the world with half-siblings so much older then him so he just needs to get over it. He would just like to have siblings his age. That just didn't work out for us.

Anyway. July saw Nick having to do summer school after discovering he is disabled in reading and writing. I'm not so worried about those as he can function just several grades lower. It is the visual/balance which explains so much. His three weeks of school finished in August but he discovered his best friend that had moved to Europe two years ago had moved back and is now living in another part of the city so Nick and Alex had weeks to hang out together again. They were both really happy about that. The end of July saw Nick and I with a broken down car. Ugh! Never a great time for that. Thankfully it was nothing major that my neighbor couldn't fix and he didn't charge me for fixing my car. I just had to buy the parts. He has been great since Monte died. All Nick has to do is walk across the street and say SOS and he comes with the necessary stuff to look at my car. While he won't take any money now he better not refuse a Christmas gift from Nick and I to him and his wife. We are planning on giving them a giftcard to have a nice dinner on us. They really have been great. With Jim fixing my car Nick and I were able to go on our weekend trip to see his sister in Indiana.

We went for my husband's youngest granddaughter's third birthday. I'm not called grandma due to the small age difference between me and my stepkids and the fact that all bio-grandma's are still alive plus everyone was just used to calling me Kim. Why change for some of the grandkids. On the second day in Indy Nick and I were by ourself as everyone else had their plans. Nick and I decided to go to the Indy Zoo as something different. Other than not having enough money (car repair) for this visit to the zoo as they had a sky gondola, rollercoaster and other assorted rides plus other stuff a kid might want we still had a fun day.

Nick finished up his bike program this week. Alas he hasn't quite learned how to ride a bike yet. He can ride a two wheeler for few feet before he crashes. He hits the ground so hard his legs are covered in bruises that his knee pads couldn't do anything to stop. He was happy with the people and the program that he wants to go back next summer to finish learning. I asked him if he wanted me to finish teaching him so he could ride a bike now but he said no as he is still scared of the bikes and he just wants to continue with the program. I said OK. His balance issues are what has stopped him from learning all these years. My late husband tried for 3 years to teach him.

Thursday after his last class we went to a Metro Park and I paid the daily fee of $10 so Nick could ride a tandem bike with one of the people from the bike program in a 10 mile bike ride to end out the season. They were having a BBQ on Friday but we had to miss it.

Friday night I drove 70 miles in 96F hot and humid weather in my car for which the a/c doesn't work. I was so happy everytime the raindrops hit me through the open window. However it was a downpour when we got to camp. Nick had grief camp for the weekend. It was his first time at camp. He did swimming, made a drum out of a 5 gallon bucket, stayed up late, etc. I then made this same 70 miles one way trip to go pick him up Sunday morning. Afterwards we went to the nearest state park but the lake was closed for swimming so we headed across town to the other state park and try our luck there. Luckily this town is rural enough it has several campsites and state parks. Swimming lake was open so Nick got to go swimming again. He was as happy as a clam.

Now for some photos.

Greenfield Village