Camping with the Cubbies

This weekend we went to Cub Scout family camp with the Pack.  It was a lot of fun to spend time with the Cubs and their families.  We went to Camp Pico Blanco south of Monterey and inland a bit.  It was a beautiful location in the redwood forest.  The trees are so tall.  There are a few oaks and other things sprinkled in, but it is mostly the redwoods.  I was afraid it was going to be cold.  The area is known for being cold and foggy along the coast.  We got lucky.  It was freakishly warm and nice, which meant 70s during the day and 60s at night.  I'm used to either hot desert days or cold mountain nights when I camp.  This was just weird, but I'm not complaining.

There is a little river that goes through camp.  The kids spent a lot of time playing, swimming, splashing, panning for gold, fishing for crawdads and anything else they could see, at all hours of the day and night.

They did find some sparkly sand, but the fish were in little danger since they were fishing with a t-shirt and left over bacon grease.

At the waterfront the river had been dammed to make a little space for swimming, canoeing and kayaking.  In the evening the bats came out and swooped and fluttered all over the surface of the water.  There weren't any mosquitos so I don't know what they were eating or maybe they were drinking.  I don't know.  I only wish they had been around during the day to eat the little flies that were swarming around.

 

While some of the boys went on a 3 mile hike that turned into a 7 mile hike, Buddy boy sharpened sticks and carved his name in the sides.  He was making arrows, because you just never know when you'll need one.

 

 

One of the best things for My Girl was the little sisters.  There were several little girls for her to play with all weekend.  She loved it.

 

They dubbed this notch between two redwoods their clubhouse.  When they weren't in the water, or trying to tell the boys what to do, they were here.

The camp staff had volunteered to come up for the extra weekend.  So the archery and BB gun ranges were open as well as the craft and nature lodges.  The kids had a good time with leather work.  We all did archery.  This was one of My Girls favorite parts.  I really liked the archery as well.  Dad and I went out on a date last week to an archery range for a lesson and some practice.  It was fun to put my new skills to work.

 

We had a good time.  It was great to spend some family time as well as get to know the other families better.  They are a great group of people.

New dress

Here are photos of the new dress and the girl who didn't want her picture taken.  Keep in mind that this all took place in about a minute and a half.

My Girl picked the fabric and requested ruffles and fluttery sleeves, even though the pattern had neither of these things to begin with.  I also added buttons to the front instead of a zipper in the back so that she can get in and out of it herself.  That's the theory anyway.  I like the bright colors and big flowers.  It suits her and she's five.  You can pull off a lot of color when you are a five year old with a big personality.  Dad saw it and said, "That's one she'll be embarrassed by in 20 years."  Yup.  Or not.  I like the photos of the daisy bell bottoms I had as a preschooler.

First week of school

The first day and the first week of school have come and gone.  Here are the photos.  Dad and I both went so that I could put my shoes on and take photos as we drove.

Both kids were pretty excited and happy to be going.  Buddy Boy is pretty familiar with the routine by now.  It was good to see his friends greet him on the sidewalk and in the courtyard before school.  Unfortunately most of his friends are in the other class this year, but I seem to mind more than he does. 

It was the big day for My Girl.  Kindergarten is a big step.  She is more than ready, but she was still nervous since she only knows one boy in her current class from preschool.  Many of the other kids are familiar faces from three years of picking up Buddy Boy.  One interesting thing about her class is that it is 2/3 girls and 1/3 boys.  That will either be great for my super-social girl, or not so great if it means lots of girl drama, or most likely, it will be both.  At the end of the first day she had loved it so much that she wanted to go back after dinner.  She just couldn't wait until morning.  I hope the enthusiasm lasts.

For me this means more quiet time at home during the day.  Not completely quiet, since Dad works from home most mornings and some afternoons as well.  Don't worry.  I haven't had a problem filling the hours.  One of my time fillers is my school job working with the Potions Center at school.  Once a week I will be teaching introductory chemistry to small groups of K-2 graders.  I taught this when Buddy Boy was in Kindergarten, now I am one of the two people in charge.  I think this will be fun.  I really enjoyed it last time.  The Potions center is part of one of my two classroom work shifts each week.  I like knowing the kids and what they are doing in class.  It helps me reinforce it at home. 

At the end of September I also start teaching at the nearby Jr. College again.  My first class was last Winter quarter.  This fall I have two classes, one on Friday while the kids are in school and one on Saturday.  They are both the same class I taught last Winter.  I don't mind the teaching, but it sure chews up the weekends.

Summer in a nutshell

It doesn't take much to settle in to a summer routine.  After our trips there was still a lot of fun to be had.  We had our slow days where the highlight was sleeping in followed by a bike ride and Minecraft, but it seemed like there was a lot going on as well.

We continued our "study" of Western History with a visit to Stanford to see the actual real Golden Spike.  They refer to it as the Last Spike at the museum.  On the way to see the spikes we passed the Thinker.  We also walked through the sculpture garden and saw the Gates of Hell.  They had a reasonable degree of patience with my interest in seeing the art.  There is a fantastic collection of Rodin.

There was a lot of Cub Scouting going on for not having the weekly den meetings.  Buddy Boy went to a week of day camp and had a fantastic time.  He absolutely loved it.  There were also weekend pack activities.  One of these was a trip on the Niles Canyon Railroad.  It is a surviving piece of the transcontinental railroad not far from here.  It has been fun to put the pieces of this story together across three different states this summer.

 

My Girl did gymnastics and dance at the community center.  She loves both of these classes.  She is very focused on getting the moves just right.

 



 And sometimes it is just fun.

 

My history loving Buddy Boy had an Ancient Egypt camp as well as a Lego robotics camp.  Both were great.  He learned something and had fun.  One day when I went to pick him up from the Egypt camp I found him sitting on a couch wearing a King Tut-like funerary mask made of metallic gold poster paper reading a book about making comics.  He was in heaven.  At Lego camp they made things with motors in the morning and the Mindstorms robots in the afternoon.  Now he wants one.  We'll see.

 

My Girl had day camp with friends at the park.  Buddy Boy did this camp a few years ago and quickly hated it.  There were crowds of kids and it was all silliness and singing and games and crafts.  My Girls loves it.  There are crowds of kids and silliness and singing and games and crafts.  They are such different kids.

We also have a couple of movies in the works.  The first is a Western about Bill.  In the first scene he has a shooting contest with Annie Oakley.  I won't give away the ending.  You'll have to see it for yourself.  (I'll be posting it eventually.)  He has a few more scenes outlined, but nothing finished yet.

I'm not sure what this one is about, but it involves a desert island and a crate of things that washes up.  There may be zombies.  This is still in process so the release date has not been set.  I won't be doing any ironing until then so if we look a little wrinkled, this is why.  Not really, but it is a good excuse.

You can't go through a summer without at least one trip to Happy Hollow.  There was more than a little bit of sadness when Buddy Boy was too tall for one of the rides.  But the roller coaster chased the tears away.

 

 

So there you have it.  It's a lot of photos, but it was a lot of fun.

 

Reunions - part 3

More on the reunions.  I thought I had better finish up before school starts.  Where did I leave off...

 

Here we are at the rocket garden.  Grandpa worked for many years at Thiokol/ATK.  It went through a couple of different names, but they always build rocket motors.  Out front in the public area is a display of some of the motors they built there over the years.  The big one in the back was for the Space Shuttle. 

 

 

The cousins quickly turned a rocket section into a playground.  They had a great time running up the sides as high as they could and sliding back down.  There was a minimum of crashes and no blood that I remember.

 

In the shade of the real rocket we played with stomp rockets.  Grandma ingeniously made stomp rockets out of PVC pipe, two liter bottles, and paper.  Each kid had a different colored paper rocket.  Those things could really fly.

It helped if you got just the right jump on your stomp.

 That evening back at Grandma's house she mentioned that the berries needed picking and she didn't think she would get to it before Sunday.  That would mean some wasted raspberry goodness.  Cue the cousins.  They went by the pick-one-eat-one rule of picking.  Maybe that was pick-one-eat-two or was it three.  There were a few that made it into the house, but none were wasted.

 

On the way back to the hotel there was a beautiful sunset so we stopped for a little photo-op at the Brigham City temple.  This spot is actually across the street at the Tabernacle, but it is the perfect photo spot.

 

The next morning we were back at the same place for some family photo-ing.  The kids were good about it for the most part, but there were a couple of the littlest ones that just weren't going to go along with the plan.  It had been a long few days for them.

 

After church we visited some friends at the park in the rain (thank goodness for gazebos) and snuggled some dollies.  It's good to be at Grandma's house.

And then it all came to an end with one last stop at Smith and Edwards and a long drive across Nevada.  This time we did get to see our Reno friends.  The trip wouldn't be complete without a visit. 

By the time we made it home our summer was half over.  There was plenty of time left for bike riding, swimming, friends, books, Lego movies, lemonade, Minecraft, camps, beach, and other vital summer activities.

Hooray for summer!

California Poppies

California poppies are one of my favorite flowers.  Here is my attempt at painting them.