First day of camp

We drove back from Iowa on Tuesday, it was a long but uneventful drive. It was sad to leave, we all enjoyed our time together, but we see the Dahlens out here in Colorado in just a couple of weeks.

Yesterday Anna went off to STEM camp. Officially called National Youth Leadership Forum (NYLF): Pathways to STEM (run by Envision), it is a prestigious camp where one kid is chosen from each school and Anna was nominated by her fourth grade teacher to attend. It was supposed to happen last year but covid canceled it and Anna was really disappointed. She was super excited to attend there this year.

Doing a CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) experiment – Anna is on the right

She is staying in a hotel and has a roommate who she likes. She has a bit of downtime in the evenings and we have spoken to her both nights. She is loving it. Today, she built a robot and did a whole bunch of experiments in a CSI-style investigation.

Juggling the soccer ball in the backyard.

Jude spent a lot of the weekend focused on soccer. He really wanted to master two things ad he achieved both. One, was to juggle the ball 500 times with his feet without the ball hitting the ground. He spent almost two hours at the park focused on this today and he did it! He made 513 and we rewarded him with a new soccer ball (his old ones are worn out).

Doing an “around the world” and successfully keeping the ball in the air

The other thing he wanted to do was an “around the world” while juggling. This is where you kick the ball in the air and bring your leg over the top of the ball as you can see in this photo. It was really cool to watch, he recorded a video of it too.