The Weekly Wrap: June 23, 2025

Our kiddo wrapped up her first week of summer camp. To say she’s had fun would be an understatement. Swimming every day is still her favorite thing, but she’s had a blast with all of the other camp activities. She comes home hot, tired, and full of smiles. Getting prepped for camp every day is a little more work on us, but it’s entirely worth it to experience this joy. 

In just one week, I have learned a few things:

• Sending in a frozen water bottle with her lunch was an excellent choice. It kept her lunch cold during the heat dome AND I didn't have to worry about losing an ice pack.
• Adding one extra day of laundry to our calendar is annoying but necessary.
• Pretty much any surface in the house can be used to line dry things.
• Having a printed packing list by the door is clutch.
• Putting the kiddo straight in the tub when we get home made bedtime so much easier.
• Leaving the empty lunchbox and water bottle on the counter overnight reminded us to fill and send them in each day.
• Buying a towel for every day of the week was a good idea.
• Using really good, waterproof name labels and keeping them handy has made tagging things far easier.

Do you have any summer camp tips?

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• Where to get reliable information about vaccines if you now have a (reasonable) distrust of government information. [WaPo - gift link]
• Bring some boredom into your life. [Embedded]
• Maybe viral foods aren't always about the taste. [i-D]

• The changing history of lifeboats. [99% Invisible]
• Voices of trans rights. [Code Switch]
• The secretive history of being gay in DC. [City Cast DC]
• AI has a biased hiring model? I'm shocked. [The Academic Minute]
• When economic journalists go head to head. [Planet Money]
• Where funding for science is being cut. [The Daily]

• Well this is mesmerizing. [Boxlapse]
• We watched the entirety of newest season of Clarkson's Farm. It's still delightful but the last episodes were more pub heavy than farm heavy. I get why that happened but I really wanted to see how farm life wrapped up. Those final shows felt more like Restaurant Impossible than anything else. That said, this show continues to be both entertaining and informative. [Amazon Prime]

• This week was mostly familiar favorites and leftovers. One new recipe I made was chicken avocado BLT wraps. This was easy and delicious during the heat wave. We sous vided the chicken which kept cooking to simply baking the bacon. I highly recommend going with a hearty thick cut style. That gives the wraps some heft. We served our wraps with some leftover shoestring fries. [Eating Well]