Saturday, December 29, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
I'm back. For now.
The kiddos and I recently spent a week camping on Hunting Island in South Carolina. Grandma and Grandpa joined us and we had a blast - lots of things to do, even with a few days of incrdible winds! Next year will be even better as I remember more about this camping stuff.
One of our favorite parts of the trip was seeing my baby brother, Mike. The kids called him Unna Mikey when they were younger and, for me at least, it's stuck. He's Unna Mikey.
Well, Unna Mikey guilted me into blogging again. He doesn't use Facebook and so isn't able to keep up with the kiddos and all their exploits. If I want him to know what's going on in their lives, it's gotta be here since he is far away - and on the road most of the time to boot.
More of the pics from our trip later - but for now, a little bit that relates directly to Unna Mikey, even though we're not together anymore.
Unna Mikey gets to travel a lot for his job and therefore collects a bit of currency from other countries. Knowing his niece like he does, he gave her a birthday present of currency from various countries. He gave her the assignment of looking up each currency, finding its value, its country and something interesting about either the country or the image on the bill. She's already gotten started on that project - she was very excited about the 10,000 Bangladeshi Rupias Unna Mikey gave her. (Until she found out that 10,000 Rupias = $1.03! What a lesson in currency exchange that was for her!)
I digress. (See, I haven't changed all that much.)
On our way home from Hunting Island, we spent a day on Jekyll Island, Georgia. While there, we toured the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. It's a great little place that does important work rehabilitating and releasing endangered sea turtles. Amiya, especially, fell in love with the turtles. She spent a lot of time taking pictures, listening to the caretakers, reading information and soaking all that information up. On our way out, I grabbed a little brochure for a turtle summer camp.
Amiya read the brochure in the car on the way home and was initially very excited. Then she saw the cost. $200. She knows us. She knows we're careful with money and that we want her to do fun things, great things, challenge her brain, challenge her thinking. But she knows that $200 is beyond our budget for 5 days of camp - especially considering we'd have to get a hotel room for the week. Her eyes teared up and my heart broke. What parent doesn't want their child to be inspired and follow through on that inspiration?
So I told Amiya that she should save every penny she comes across - and maybe if we see that she's serious about this, Vinay and I will try to find a way to make it happen. But we'd need to see that she was really serious.
$200 isn't spare change for our kiddos. They don't get money easily. Birthdays and Christmas from family out of town are their main source of cash. We've recently started allowances and the kids do alright with that, but Amiya struggles with it. That being said, if she does her chores and saves all of it, she'd have almost everything by January. That would leave Vinay and I six months to see if/how we can make it work. And if it turns out that we can't, she'd still have $200 for a rocking camp in Tampa - Busch Gardens, Lowry Park Zoo, etc., all offer hands on animal camps.
Grandma and Grandpa added in some cash for their birthday present, and Amiya added in the money she has been saving since Christmas - she ended the day with almost $60 towards turtle camp.
And that's not counting any Rupias or other foreign currency - she agreed that those were too cool to exchange! And right now, Unna Mikey, that's saying a lot!
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