Candice & Todd's blog: July 2025

A lot has happened!

- I had to work much of the 1st week of June. Mercer started his new job -- working at the summer camp again.

- Isabella and I took a trip to Athens, GA for the 1st full week of break while Mercer was on a mission trip in Puerto Rico.

- the next week, I ran an architecture camp for 3rd - 5th graders & Isabella took photos / was my helper along with a couple of students who came many of the days.

- I wrapped up some work (reporting) for school the following week between appointments and renewing my architecture license, then Isabella and I took a short trip to Florida the week after that.

- We took a family vacation to Texas over the 4th of July week with Mercer and Todd in on this road trip. (This trip was partly in June and partly in July)

- The week after that long road trip was for recovery, more appointments, an online conference and getting prepared for school.

- which brings us to our FINAL road trip of the summer for Isabella and myself (our 4th trip!)... to North Carolina.

There were some smaller things sprinkled in between, but that's the gist of our summer break!

Photo dump below:

The cabin we stayed in when we took Isabella to the medical camp in Athens - it was sitting in the middle of nowhere (literally - the address was " ### Nowhere Road " (can't remember the numbers) - and it was at the back of a farm surrounded by a bamboo forest.

Our air B&B was really cool - everything was hand-made / customized for this little cabin in the woods.

It has a "Tin Roof Rusted" (B 52s) theme. (Posters and paintings on walls + a jukebox that wasn't working with B 52s songs).

Isabella's room was upstairs - which had a great view.

My room was under the loft - "secluded" by a sheer curtain. :)

There was a tiny kitchen - and a built in table around the spiral stair.

It was enough for the two of us, although, it says that 4 people could stay. Whew... it would be tight!

The bathroom was quirky - with a monkey light over the tub. There were a lot of fun little details throughout.

Here's a cool mechanism above the barn door for the bathroom. Custom crescent-moon shaped table that wrapped around the spiral stair.

Even a metal cat cut-out that was placed in front of the window so it looked like there was a cat on the window sill.

Well, one day there really was a cat on the other window sill -- the lady had 5 or 6 of them that roamed the property. Isabella was in heaven and really didn't want to explore Athens or go out... she just wanted to pet the cats.

They also had goats / provided goat food.

(here's another cat) - I booked this place because it advertised an EV charger. It did have a slow trickle-charger, however, every evening when the owner got home from work, she plugged in her car!

I had to go pay to go to various business parking lots around to charge up, unfortunately... and... even had to stop for a couple of hours at a mall on the way home. I had such "RANGE ANXIETY" while using my car for it's 1st road trip. (the battery is just so so small.... only 100 mile range without air conditioning. It drops to about 83 - 85 when the AC is on. So... not sure I'd stay there again (plus it was higher than I wanted to pay - but it was cute!) and/or - not sure I'd take my car on a short road trip like that again.

But, we made it! And Isabella had a good time at camp. (It was rocky at first -- she did not stay all day the 1st two days :/ I got calls to pick her up early as she was not feeling well.)

While she was at camp, I went on some hikes at a nearby nature preserve & drove around Athens a bit to explore since I haven't been since I was in college.... and I don't remember any of it. I did a LOT of errand running... and drove around non-touristy parts of the city as well. (multiple Target runs, CVS trips, grocery trips, etc) :/ Isabella and I didn't go out to eat at all -- but I met friends for lunch 2 days while I was up there. I

At the nature preserve, there was a pond with a nature stand out over the water (camouflaged so wildlife couldn't see you / show up and not be afraid, but that didn't work the morning I was there... there was minimal wildlife. Interesting idea, though). I bet this pond was stunning when all of the lilies were in bloom!!

This pond was used in making pottery & I love finding ruins -- there were parts of a round brick structure that had fallen in the woods.

One day, I ventured out to the Georgia State Botanical Garden which is just outside of Athens. I did take some photos of flowers, and some sculptures out in nature. It was a nice, relaxed stroll.

It had rained, so everything was wet, but made for some interesting photos!

I liked their children's area -- they had things to walk through and climb on that represented of a felled chestnut tree. A pretty creative design.

There was a chapel -- which was locked but would be a FABULOUS place for a wedding!

I tried to push the phone up against the window to "see" inside.

There was an exhibit in one of the buildings featuring delicate porcelain flower art, but I really liked this one artist who made flower art out of real objects (like branches and animal skulls) + thin sheets of painted metal for the flowers and leaves.

I didn't get to explore Athens as much as I wanted, but I got a little flavor of some things around between dropping her off and picking her up at camp.

She liked the camp and is interested in going back, although she said she could do the one in Rome again too?? We'll see when we get closer.

She loved the activities at both camps, but this one had a couple of unique things that she had not done before: dissecting a lamb's brain?! and... on the last day, they spent the whole day walking around a real hospital / got to see some behind-the-scenes stuff.

Scattered here are photos from the camp's website that I could find her in + a couple that she texted to me from camp including her sutures that she sewed into silicon. She still talks about that!

She's wearing the blue bandana in many of the photos / easy to find!

Here's the photo she texted me of her sutures. Not bad!

And - photos of the lamb's heart. Looks like they all took turns (per group) cutting the one brain? At any rate - she was so excited to share that *gross* news! haha.

Before....

.... During....

.... and After

And some others from the school's website.

And... while we were in Athens, Mercer was in Puerto Rico!

Here are the 6 teens that went + the 2 chaperones.

The rest of the photos are from the chaperone + some that Mercer texted to us. Photo dump for this trip too!

I don't have much of an explanation of these photos, but here's what they did:

They all went grocery shopping. They went to church on Sunday.

They worked at a local facility -- doing some physical work moving / cleaning out a room and some painting.

The pastor of the church cooked them a meal and served them. They also played games with the youth there.

When they worked, they had a tee they all wore to look uniform.

They worked at a food bank (and had to wear pants). They packed 659 meals at the food bank -- or some number like that??

They went to the beach a couple of times and they went kayaking.

Some things that we heard about: There's a Dave & Buster's there. They went to a mall. They went to a fort and a historic town. There was no air-conditioning where they were sleeping. They ate ham and cheese sandwiches every day. There was a coupling while on the trip (one girl went + five guys.

They hung out in two groups of three. Mercer was a third-wheel. :( There was some horse-play (we heard about a little bit of damage at the facility.) Mercer was so respectful and funny.

He was always dancing. (we got to see some videos, but obviously they don't post in this blog)... and the chaperone told me too that he was always dancing. (He must have been happy. :) yay!)

Souvenirs were cheap. The chaperone + Mercer talked about how the Puerto Rican's do not want American influence to take over, as they're happy with their island the way it is. And they are nervous with the current administration impacting the way things are.

Overall, he had a good time.

We were glad (and relieved) to see him when he came back. So was the dog!

He went back to work the next week. Isabella and I worked that next week too -- running an architecture camp for kids.

There were only 10 kids... and I had a couple of student helpers who came in for much of the camp time to help with cutting / techniques. But it was still exhausting!

I was the only adult. IF they ask us to do it again -- I will require that another responsible party is there -- another paid worker. I had to steal away to go to the restroom and had a hard time with check-in when people were late because the check-in spot was on a different floor of the building from my room.

Overall, it went really well. I had to ebb and flow with the schedule, but we kept them busy and I think they learned some things while also having fun.

(and it kept Isabella from being home alone all week!) She did help me with sorting of materials / handing out materials... and I think she wasn't that much older than many of the kids. She enjoyed some of the activities.

With the money that Isabella earned helping me, she wanted to get gel nails done. Seriously! (at this writing - late in the summer - several of the nails had fallen off, so she ended up taking them off. That was an expensive lesson!!) oh well.

We popped down to Florida for a few days. One day, we visited dad, Charlie and Michelle. They were all surprised how tall she had gotten since we saw them last summer. She is now taller than grandma (Isabella was thrilled with this!)

She's gaining on Michelle.

There's no way she'll be as tall as grandpa!

Isabella liked the murphy bed in the unit. I went grocery shopping first thing that morning while she slept in and I assumed that our unit had a stove (it had washer dryer, dishwasher, burners, microwave, fridge.) oops.

Well, we learned later that you CAN cook a small pizza in a frying pan if you really need to!!

One day, we stayed in the Orlando area and went to the hotel pool, visited the Coca-Cola rooftop tasting room at Disney Springs. This was the "around-the-world" tray -- including the Beverly - a TERRIBLE drink! There's also one from China that tastes like bbq sauce! no joke. It's weird!

This was the "float" tray.

Isabella actually liked the Beverly this time! (she hated it when she went to World of Coke in Atlanta on a field trip once.)

Here's a cool light fixture in the gift shop made out of the coca-cola glass used for bottles.

Afterwards, we went for another swim, but at night.

Our last day in town, we went to a cat café,

this is the "oh my gosh.... it's SOOOO cute" face!

we went to a unique petting zoo kind of place (I found it online when looking for capybara experiences). You buy a big bucket of fresh food and walk around / feed their animals. They had farm animals (like goats, cows and pigs) + exotic animals (like llamas, baby peacocks) and tortoises!

The kangaroos apparently are nocturnal -- they didn't care about the food that you could get over into their enclosure. They mostly slept. This one cracked us up!

peacock...

and baby peacocks who just pecked and pecked at the pieces of lettuce (she spent a lot of time here)

Unfortunately some of the animals were behind double gates and you couldn't go in and feed. But - we pestered this poor girl who worked there enough asking questions, that when it was time to feed the capybaras - an hour or two later (YES we were there for sooo sooo long!!), she picked Isabella to go into the enclosure and help her!

(this was amazing b/c the whole reason we went is because you could pay to have a hand-feeding experience, but when we got there that girl who was working at that end of the farm told us they were too short staffed and not doing the hand-feeding events that day!)

we were sad, but what a cool experience it turned out to be .... and that experience was for free -- not the "extra" capybara experience as advertised. yay!

All of that... and when asking her later in the day what her favorite thing was: she says playing with the barn cat. Really?!

oh well. she loves what she loves!

We visited dad and Charlie again after this animal experience. We got to see Melissa and her 4 year old grandson Levi on this trip too.... then, we had one final night swim and shut down the pool before we headed home the following morning.

She and I were home for 1 day to unpack / do laundry / re-pack before taking our July 4th family vacation. That will be featured in our "July Edition" blog post.

But this "June Edition" blog post will round out with