Congratulations to Chase!!! (Top: J.Crew / Skirt: J.Crew / Sandals: TKEES) He officially became a certified scuba diver on Friday! (I ordered 2 large cookie cakes with scuba flag designs on them from Publix for their graduation and thought they did such a good job!)  My personal interest in scuba diving can without a doubt bc attributed to my dad who has been a diver since his teens. He’s always had immense respect and interest in the ocean and inspired me to get certified in college with Ryan. (Is my dad’s love of the ocean why I wanted to be a marine biologist as a kid or was that just every millenial’s dream? Ha!) Now our family’s scuba diving tradition continues with Chase! My dad has been talking to Chase about possibly getting scuba certified for years because he could sense his natural interest in nature and marine life. Chase has been talking about getting scuba certified for years and this year, now that he’s 10 and officially old enough, we made it happen through a kids’ scuba camp at a local dive shop. The format of the camp had Chase completing all of his written work before it began. He spent the two weeks before camp reading the material and taking online quizzes before he passed his big scuba test. (He did everything on his own and passed with a 98 percent! Go Chase!!) The practical side of scuba camp took place over five weekdays and began with 12-foot pool dives before progressing to dives in a quarry. He was excited for camp every single day and truly seemed to love it. Now we’re only all the more excited for our trip to Key West with my parents at the end of the month where he’ll get to use his new skills in the ocean! Saturday Saturday began with World Cup prep!! Have you guys been watching? Our family is all in — 3 soccer-obsessed kids and a soccer-loving husband will do that to ya — and it’s been a true blast for us! I think so much of what we’ve loved about the World Cup has been the country pride and the competition between countries. The boys love listening to the national anthems (and watching the players and fans sing with such pride and passion), learning where the countries are/their population/size, looking up their flags, etc. It’s felt like more than soccer to our family and something we’ve really been enjoying together! Since World Cup games were not on until the early evening on Saturday, we didn’t stick around home for long and made our way to Carowinds in mid-morning for a day of rollercoasters and waterpark fun. We were invited to the park to try a couple new things (more on that below) and jumped at the chance to spend the day together at our local amusement park. (Dress: Habitual via Nordstrom Rack — it was a great HOT day dress!) We began our day at Camp Snoopy which is sitll our family’s favorite part of Carowinds. It’s the younger-kid section of the park with rides all three of our boys can do together. Our favorite ride for years has been the Woodstock Express, a more traditional wooden rollercoaster with exciting but not-too-scary drops and turns, so that’s where we began! Next up was our second favorite Camp Snoopy coaster, Snoopy’s Racing Railway, which is such a smooth but fast and exciting coaster big and little kids can ride. (It reminds me of Barnstormer at Disney World for any Disney fans!) A new-to-us ride was Charlie Brown’s River Raft Blast which was a crowd favorite for our crew! After boarding a large raft boat, you can use the water cannon blaster in front of you to spray spectators as your raft meanders through the water.

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