Summer Camp & Birthday Parties

It's that time of year again, time to figure out the child care arrangements for the summer and plan Charlie's 7th (seven!!) birthday party.

On the child care front, after a YEAR on the waiting list, Amelia is finally registered at Merry Deb nursery school, a private pre-school in Braintree. Aside from being extremely highly recommended by several people I know, Merry Deb has the advantages that a) it's about 50% cheaper than the daycare Amelia currently attends, and b) it has a summer camp for older children at the same extremely reasonable rate. The summer camp is virtually impossible to get in to without a sibling in the pre-school, so after Amelia's year long wait I was successfully able to enroll Charlie for the summer. They are both starting the first week of July (which is the first week of summer vacation thanks to all those snow days!) and I am hoping that since Charlie will be going with her, the transition to a new school will be easier for Amelia. The older child program sounds great, with field trips every week including hiking, mini golfing, a trip to the zoo, a trip to an indoor inflatables place, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember right now. And the price of having TWO of them in the summer program will only be $20 more a week than what we are paying for just Amelia now. Unfortunately, the location of the new daycare makes for a longer commute for Mike, who will be doing the dropping off & picking up the three days a week that they will attend, but you can't win 'em all.

On the birthday party front, Charlie wants --you guessed it -- reptiles for his birthday party, so we are having Curious Creatures come out again (they did his third birthday party) for a 40 minute show which will heavily emphasize the reptiles, per Charlie's request. I must be cracked in the head since I decided to a) have the party at our house to save money, and b) to invite Charlie's entire class. So if your idea of fun is seventeen 6 or 7 year olds and a bunch of reptiles (including a large boa constrictor and a baby alligator) in a tiny house, you'll want to be there, Saturday May 4th from 2 to 4! Otherwise I'm guessing we'll have a little family party up in NH the following weekend, coinciding with Mother's Day :-)