Mini Putt...A Trip Down Memory Lane

This town we live in, which shall remain nameless, is kind of a drag to Dad and me. I don't think it's a bad town. I just think that since we both grew up here, moved away to a larger town with more entertainment, and then moved back here, we don't appreciate it like some others might. We are thankful to be near family though, and we are super glad for the local summer classic, MINI PUTT!!!!!!!!! We many not have much to do in this little community, but we have mini putt, so we're good to go! Here are the girls taking in their first round of the season. Ainsley looks kinds of sedated. Not sure what that's about.

A few holes in, Bennett found a four leaf clover in the hole as she retrieved her ball. Did this symbolize a night of good luck on the course????

Many of the obstacles on the course have been the same since Dad and I were kids. I think that's what we love about this mini putt. It's kind of a walk down memory lane. Here is a favorite...the swirly metal thingy. It took about 512 tries for the girls to get their balls through.

Dad tries to give a resistant Ainsley some golfing tips on another favorite hole, the up and down moving pillar things.

And another favorite, kind of. This light house hole is tricky and the girls were kind of cursing it by the time we finished. This hole used to have a little moving block that went up and down as you tried to get your ball through the tunnel, not to mention water and live goldfish in the pond around the lighthouse. Tough stuff, let me tell you! They've simplified it by removing the block and the water, but it remains a challenge. As we left mini putt, the sweet little teenager working the joint gave each girl a pass for a free round of golf the next time we come. Lucky us! (I'm sure it's because Bennett found that clover.) Looks like we'll be heading back to our local summer time gem sometime soon!

Veggie Tales...You Are Never Too Old (Apparently)

When Bennett was a baby/toddler, she was a Veggie Tales FREAK. Oh, my. I cannot even express how much she loved Veggie Tales. It was alarming. By age 4 or 5, she still liked Veggie Tales, but her obsession was tapering off. For the past few years she has not really wanted a whole lot to do with the show...until last week when we resurrected a Veggie Tales Silly Songs video tape that I had no idea we still had. She popped that sucker into the VCR and what you see in the above video is what we've been dealing with ever since. Incessant belting out of Veggie Tales songs from a child who we thought was through with them long ago. I guess you are never too old. "OOOOHHH, you and me, and our sports utility vehicles. Cruisin to 7-11 for a bag of Frito-Lays!"

Happy Campers

Who in their right mind would attempt to tent camp with a bunch of people, many of them young children, and a super rainy weekend forecast? Um, that would be us! And are we ever glad we acted so foolishly! We attempted our first group camping adventure with several other families from our church. Since so many were going and we all made reservations, we decided to go for it, rain or shine. Here was the set up at our campsite. Our site buddy, Cy (minus his wife and sick son...bummer!) was awesome. He had the idea to have both of our tents face his extra canopy for added rain protection. Genius! It had rained all day Friday, but once we arrived to camp and began to set up, the rain was tapering off. Sweet!

What is the very first thing one should do when arriving at a campground? Go frog hunting! Ainsley and her buddies found a few right away.

We had a great evening for some campfire smores. Interesting how all the adults were standing or sitting around and the children were working with the fire.

Cy introduced us all to a camping treat his family enjoys, the banana boat. It's a banana, cut open and topped with mini marshmallows and chocolate chips. Then you wrap it in foil and heat it over the fire. A tasty new treat!

Rain? What rain? Grant had told us all that on the Wednesday prior to camping, when the weather was great, that he was outside eating his lunch at work and God told him, "If you think today's weather is fancy, you just wait until this weekend!" Well, he was so right! It was supposed to be super rainy and stormy, and here is a picture of our Friday evening sky. It was PERFECT camping weather. A beautiful night and blessing from the Lord.

Another new campfire snack...tube biscuits cooked over the flames (thanks, Tracey!) When camping, you have to eat something with the pliers on your Leatherman. You simply must. It's so rugged.

We slept pretty well. The only misfortune we had was a slow leak in one of our air mattresses. Bennett woke up looking like she was stuck in a venus fly trap. Terrifying!

No rain Friday night, no rain overnight on Friday/Saturday....a DOWNPOUR on Saturday morning. It didn't last long, really, before the weather cleared again for a beautiful Saturday. Here are the soggy camp leaders during breakfast. Despite the rain, we still managed a hot breakfast over a raging fire.

The kids kept themselves busy during the breakfast downpour by making cool stuff out of colored duct tape.

Duct tape headbands are all the rage!

Some of us went on a hike on Saturday afternoon. It was a blast! Here is a picture of the girls getting ready to hike. You see lots of cool things on nature hikes like...shirtless trail runners?

Here are some of the hikers. Lots of great things were discussed on the hike, such as poison ivy, slugs, worms, pregnant worms, animal tracks, deer noises and Will Ferrell as Harry Caray.

Two dads, working together to push a stroller with relatively small wheels up a relatively steep incline.

Everybody, stop and gather round for a nature lesson by "Ranger Rick" a.k.a. Zach.

Is this a regular worm or a pregnant worm?

Back at camp it was dinner time! Here is Cy with his mammoth burger.

A makeshift extra rain canopy was created as rain continue to be forecast. Who's idea was it to hold this up with a large freestanding tree branch? This doesn't seem to pass any type of safety code, in my opinion.

Here is one tall, hot campfire.

The older girls wrote and performed a play for us at dinnertime. Bravo, girls! Bravo!

More campfire friends drove down to hang around the fire later in the evening. We were super pleased to see our friends, and the kids were quite excited that the very popular pup, Tank/Kisses was in attendance. Here is Tank, posing with Nick for a picture. He's obviously very comfortable having his photo taken, as he's kind of a trophy pet. Finally at about 9:30, a storm rolled through and our visiting friends had to leave, which was a bummer. But all in all, we had a fantastic group camping experience. We simply MUST do it again this summer!

YouTube Picks

Bennett and Ainsley are YouTube fans. Aren't we all, really? Here are their current picks for best YouTube vidoes. Enjoy!



First, a little Will Ferrell as Harry Caray humor. Next time you see Bennett ask her to do an impression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haAhdtDmsOw


And now, some Double Dream Hands!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm7yAWpX1Mc


And finally, a little 80's rewind. We might like to show our kids things we remember from the good old days. Here is a commercial they love and can be heard singing fairly regularly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdNf9pvPfjI

HONK If You Love Your Moped!!!!

Grandpa C. bought a pair of super sweet '81 Honda Passport mopeds at an auction last weekend. A little history...he used to sell mopeds back in the late 1970's and early 1980's, so mopeds were part of our lives. We had some awesome Vespa scooters back in the day, one with a sidecar, some that were pedal mopeds. It was heaven. Having these "new" beauties is really fun and exciting for us moped lovers! Here is Bennett going for a ride with Grandpa!

Dad and Ainsley also did some cruising around the yard. Don't you love the ridiculously tall windshields on these things?

Aunt L. is back visiting, and the two of us have a special moped bond. We used to ride the Vespas together all the time, and once while riding double we wrecked (she was driving) and I burned my leg on the hot muffler pretty badly. Good times they were! We were excited to do some riding together last night, but before we went out we had to take a kissy face picture (my mom has several of this type of photo of us growing up...no idea why.) Who is that fool in the background on the tv??? Oh Grandpa C and his ever-present Fox News.

Aunt L. and I enjoyed a sunset ride. It was just like old times.

There was lots of horn honking too. This video clip is super short, but it will give you an idea of how annoying my sister and I on a moped can be. HONK, HONK, HONK! We were riding by the living room window, trying to get our Fox-News-watching father to take notice of us. Silly girls! We love mopeds!

Maps, Naked People and the Sistine Chapel...Oh My!

So, I have this old, framed map. It used to belong to my grandparents and I've always thought it was cool, but I've never had it hanging anywhere in my house. Last weekend we unearthed it and I decided it was just too cool to be in storage. I'm hoping to reframe it and display it...well, I hoped so until Bennett and Ainsley saw it. They immediately noticed something I had not...FOUR NAKED PEOPLE are on the upper and lower edges of the map. Some call it art. My girls call it completely inappropriate! What to do, what to do. A friend was over and she suggested we simply draw some clothes on the nudies. Hmmm. Not a bad idea at all! Today I just drew some drapy clothes over their private parts and voila...no more inappropriateness on this map! As I finished the drawing, Bennett said, "THAT is MUCH better! Mom, you should go to the Sistine Chapel and paint clothes on all those naked people on the ceiling." Um, no thanks, my darling. I might get in serious trouble for destroying art, and penciling little loin cloths on these four folks was a challenge enough. I'm officially finished defacing art.

Hiking Makes Us Happy!

Finally. And not a moment too soon. Hiking season is here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We love the woods.

Bennett was ready in her bandana and Ainsley in her camp shirt.

Ainsley found some treasures today. Shells...the kind from snails and the kind from guns!

Bennett found some bones! Dad and I were hoping to find treasures too. Mushrooms! But alas, we came up empty handed. It's okay though. It was a picture perfect day to be out for a family hike.

It looks like we need to work on building someone's stamina. We're hoping for many, many, many more hikes to come!

A Little More Easter

Here are some more photos from our crazy busy Easter weekend! Here are the girls in their Easter dresses. I decided to go with a more practical dress this year so it could be reworn frequently. And it didn't hurt that they were on sale at Target for $7.48 a piece! I love a bargain Easter dress! Too bad it was such a chilly day...we had to cover up in cardigans, but oh well. It was still a lovely, sunny Easter Sunday.

The girls participated in a couple of egg hunts on Easter. This cousin egg hunt is INSANE. There are so, so, so many eggs. I believe Bennett found 77 eggs this year and Ainsley found 55. And of course, each egg had multiple pieces of candy in it. A few pictures down you will see the winnings. CRAZY!

They had a smaller egg hunt at Grandma D. and Grandpa C.'s house, but it was just as intense because Grandpa and Grandma's eggs have money in them! I tried to take pictures, but these little egg hunters wouldn't stop long enough for a photo. They are running in every picture I took. I think each of them pocketed about sixteen bucks! Grandpa and Grandma, will you please have an egg hunt for the grown ups next year? Pretty please???

And the Easter candy. This is just some of the candy we came home with. If you come to our house any time during the next 12 months, we will most likely offer you some Easter candy.

And unrelated to Easter, but exciting nonetheless, Bennett received her new specs the day after Easter! She is so thrilled to be able to see objects beyond five feet of herself clearly. These puppies came in the nick of time, as her class watched Mary Poppins in music class on Tuesday. She said, "Man, was I so glad to be able to watch Mary Poppins without the actors being all blurry!"

And a major part of our Easter weekend was having Uncle B and Aunt J home for a visit. We don't get to see them often, so when we do it's a special treat. Uncle B. and Dad did some jamming in the basement, and the girls joined them on harmonica, kazoo, and a variety of percussion instruments. Here's a short snippet from their jam session.

And We Have a Winner!!!

We had a crazy busy Easter weekend. There are so many things I could post about, and I will begin with the coloring contest. Both girls entered a local coloring contest, and on Good Friday evening, we received a call that Ainsley had won her age bracket! Exciting times, as this is the first competition she's ever really won. Here is the prize winning coloring page. Nice job, Ainsley!

And the prize...oh my, the prize!

First of all, our little winner got this gift basket FULL of goodies. You cannot even see the half of it in this photo. Ridiculously awesome basket of things we have here.

And next THE BUNNY. The bunny, who has been named Fluffy Delano Rabbit (F.D.R.) is larger than life, literally. F.D.R. is overwhelming. Here he is, overwhelming the back seat of our car. If every we needed an SUV, it was when we picked this fella up.

Where does one keep a mammoth bunny? We have yet to figure that out. Ainsley has made him a bed though, on the lid of her toy box. He overwhelms this space quite nicely. Move over Cardboard Brian. Make room for Ainsley's new love, F.D.R. Hooray for coloring contests!!!

Extreme Couponing

Okay, maybe we aren't extreme couponing over here, but the girls have TONS of fun doing something with my unwanted coupons. They love to cut, cut, cut them just for fun! Each week after I go through the coupons from the Sunday paper, I pass them on to eager little hands and the cutting begins! Usually the girls cut out the coupons and pretend play with them. They also enjoy cutting out pictures that appeal to them. This week's most appealing pictures are...

A spiral-cut honey ham? Of course! It's almost Easter, you know!

And the two cutest coupon photos of the week: A ceramic grandma/grandchild keepsake box and a Baskin Robins bunny rabbit, ice cream cake. Darling girls. Just darling.

(Sorry about the sideways picture...that happens randomly, on occasion, with my new camera.) Not surprising, some collector coins were clipped from the coupons. Here we have some uncirculated, colorized quarters featuring different national parks. We also see some special Abe Lincoln pennies. Coupon clipping occupies my girls for lengthy periods and it's fun to see what they cut out. Fun times!