I never went to a sleep away summer camp, but in sixth grade we went away for a week to an archeological camp at Northwestern University. Yup, a whole week away. Our teacher’s must have been crazy! We sang songs, told camp fire stories and learned about working an archeological dig. It was really cool! Of course on that same trip my two best friends suddenly decided I couldn’t be their friend anymore which was heart breaking—oh the drama of summer camp! Despite the craziness it’s still a really great memory.
Our summers were spent driving from Michigan to Santa Cruz, California. And while I wouldn’t have traded my those memories for anything, Â I was always intrigued by kids who went to summer camp!
How about you? Was summer camp a big part of your growing up? Fun memories? Crazy stories? Tell me more!
My apologies for being absent from Modern Kiddo this past month.
As I mentioned earlier, my Dad was diagnosed with mantle cell leukemia in late March and I took the month of June off from work to help care for my father in Florida and Boulder.
Sadly, my beloved Dad died last Friday. His obituary ran in the New York Times today. Unfortunately it doesn’t include the fact that he was the most supportive, loving Dad in the world who kept every crappy piece of pottery I made, would send me back my letters from college red-penned with edits, and came up with a dance called The Buzzard that Morris Day ripped off and called The Bird. My mom said it best—the heart of our family has been ripped out. And it hurts. A lot.
Thank you so much, friends, to everyone who reached out to me during the last month. Every hug, comment, text, email, call was so so appreciated. And especially big thanks to Alix, who has been running this site with amazing grace for the past few weeks since I’ve been out.
As you can imagine, I am gutted wit grief and still in shock—it all happened so fast—and will probably take at least the next week or so off from posting to focus on mourning and being with my family.
Oh, Esther Williams! Who wasn’t a bit blue hearing about her passing, so we thought we would remind everyone of her delightful movies of our favorite vintage movie mermaid.
I think almost everyone is familiar with her name, but probably not her movies. Well, folks you are in for a technicolor underwater treat!
I think Esther Williams has one of the most interesting “discovered” stories around! The infamous cancellation of the 1940 Olympics during WW2 led to this bathing beauty’s career. Since she didn’t have a goal of gold on her mind, she took a job at a department store, which led her to being plucked from anonymity by famous movie producer Billy Rose (who was married to Fanny Brice of Funny Girl fame) from her department store clerk position to star in Acquacade, an all swimming, all singing, all dancing spectacular at the 1939 World Fair. I KNOW! There is so much awesomeness in that sentence… And of course Esther Williams made quite the splash! (Pun intended!)
And so started her glorious career as Hollywood’s favorite swimming sweetheart! MGM had a swimming pool built on its lot solely for her! And boy did she make good use of it, starring in some of the most marvelous eye shatteringly stunning movies ever.
Esther Williams is dazzlingly beautiful and I find her acting charming and she’s clearly super smart and very fun in real life. She is a wonderful good sport/foil to some of MGM’s funniest leading men. I recommend checking out Neptune’s Daughter
in which Esther stars across Red Skeleton and a dreamy Ricardo Montalban! And Million Dollar Mermaid has the most insanely gorgeous swim numbers choreographed by wildly creative Busby Berkeley.
Another great one is Dangerous When Wet, which sounds so naughty, but features Esther swimming with Tom & Jerry!
And hoo boy, the costumes. Or should I say bathing suits. Fabulous! Speaking of bathing suits, are you familiar with Esther Williams line of bathing suits? They are magnificent to say the least and must be made of magic because they turn you into an immediate glamour girl. ModCloth carries them as well. Seriously, they look good on every woman I know regardless of the different body type. And may we all look as great at 91 as Esther does today. Esther makes chlorine seem like an secret anti-aging serum!
Let’s take a peek at her magical swimming moves!
If this doesn’t get your kiddo begging for swimming classes, I don’t know what will. In fact, I had the Peach watch it before her swim class and it made all the difference.
Thank you so much, Esther for years of enjoyment that sent so many of us into the pool!
Hi guys. Lots going on over here at Camp Kiddo. I’ve been working on a new exciting work project, but it’s been totally time consuming with lots of late nights. And our sweet Dottie is going through a difficult time with a beloved family member experiencing health problems. That’s why posting has been rather light the last two weeks. Please bear with us while we simply deal with life.
In the meantime, I saw today that GROUPON was offering 50% off on registration for the Color Run and I thought it might be fun to re-run this post I did on the Color Run last year. HAPPY FRIDAY everyone!
This weekend Wolfie, Greg and I participated in one of the coolest things ever: The Color Run!
The Color Run is a unique 5 kilometres event unlike any other. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience that is less about speed and more about enjoying a crazy colorful day with your friends and family. All levels of experience are welcome, all that matters is that you participate—and that you wear white clothing! Why? Because at every 5 kilometer marker, runners get blasted with colored powder, turning the procession into a moving rainbow. And friends, it’s AMAZING!!
Soooooo, the run fills up really quickly and spots in the San Francisco run were all full. But that didn’t stop us! We decided we’d show up anyway to support the runners and check it all out. We weren’t sure if we could bring Sammy  (technically, I think dogs weren’t supposed to be there) BUT he’s such a big love, everyone just lit up when they saw him and ran over to pet him. With his big smile and wagging tail, he sort of became the unofficial “Happiness Mascot” of the SF Color Run!
We started hanging out at the pinkie red kilometer color marker and as you can see, Sammy really got into the spirit of things!
We decided to check out the blue team, and those guys were all was jealous that Sammy was all pink, so they got in on the action too—giving Sam a pretty baby blue bath. The powder, by the way, is an all natural non-toxic mix. It’s corn starch and color—and it’s safe to eat, although the warn you it’s highly caloric. Don’t taste the rainbow…
The race starts out slow….you see a handful of runners coming through, with a lil splash of color. And then suddenly you see a SEA of people and the color cloud gets bigger and bigger!
We didn’t make it over to the yellow station but it was SO great because we could see it in the distance and all you saw was this POOF of yellow. Even if you don’t run, you will still get lots (LOTS) of color splashes.
The finish line is one big colorful dance party…they toss out extra packs of color (and you can buy larger packs like that one up there) and people are just throwing color all over the place. Everyone is bouncing around and grinning. SO. MUCH. FUN! The whole scene looks like a futuristic, candy colored, post apocalyptic water color painting! Hmm, never thought I’d type THAT phrase!!
They gave away free Slurpees and Coconut Water too… Whoo hoo!
I can’t recommend this enough. And it’s a great thing to do with kids (whether they run or simply enjoy the color mania). They have Color Runs all across the country, through out the year. Even if you can’t run, you should head on down and check it out—in some ways its even more fun just volunteering and observing. There was so much happy energy in the place! Everyone was smiling {Special howdy do to our sweet pal Nuala from tea collection, who we ran into there!} Wolfie thought it was the coolest thing ever and wants to start training to run for next year!
PS
We were soooooo filthy when we got home, and it took a while for us all to get cleaned up. So we decided to wait to bathe Sammy til the next day. Um…mistake. The blue dye is reeeeally tricky to get out! He’s nearly white, but still has little blue paws and tail.
PPS
This is the video that Wolfie and I watched back in January, and it was what sold us on the event! I hope you watch it with your kiddos too!
has the most insanely gorgeous swim numbers choreographed by wildly creative Busby Berkeley.
, which sounds so naughty, but features Esther swimming with Tom & Jerry!
