Carlotta-locks and the Three Camp-Outs

Our family camping experiences this past month of July could best be described by a re-telling of the less-than-famous tale of 

"Carlotta-locks and the Three Camp-Outs"

Carlotta and her beloved troop of boys sought adventure high and low, and near and far... 

Carlotta's brave guide Gino said, "I know a place we can go! Let us travel to Arches and explore the vast  and varied rock formations of that distant land."

They recruited some fellow adventurers and set off for adventures in Arches.

They did in fact find adventures of all sorts in Arches, but it was proclaimed,

"Arches in July is MUCH TOO HOT!" 

So Carlotta and the troop of boys turned to Gino once more and he, in all his wisdom, said, "I know a place we can go! Let us explore the alpine slopes of the mighty and dangerously volcanic Mt Rainier!"

So the brave adventurers once again hit the road in search of adventures at Mt Rainier.

And again, they did find that Mt Rainier offered many kinds of adventure, but it was decided, 

"This 'summer'* at Mt Rainier is MUCH TOO COLD!"

Carlotta was beginning to doubt Gino's abilities at seeking out the best camp-outs. 

Yet once more, she and the boys inquired of Gino as to where they might next seek adventure. And Gino said, "I know a place you can go (as sadly I cannot accompany you on this latest quest)! Make your way to the central Oregon coast to South Beach, where you will be able to scout the sandy shoreline of the great Pacific Ocean."

So Carlotta (a bit apprehensive at having to camp without her trusty Gino) and the troop of boys journeyed to South Beach with another brave family to discover the adventures that awaited them there.

And miracle of miracles, fantastic adventures of all sorts were had there, and Carlotta and the troop of boys happily declared,

"This weekend at South Beach was JUST RIGHT!"

Carlotta and the boys returned to Gino with glowing reports of joyous adventure and delightedly made plans to return to the lovely central Oregon Coast in future summers!

*'summer' seems to be a relative term these days. Only last week did the Pacific NW decide it was time to warm up to the 80s. George (aka Gino) has visited Mt Rainier several times in the past few summers and NEVER has he seen that much snow still up there. That photograph was taken at Reflection Lake, which ordinarily by this time of year is snow-free and surrounded by summer flowers while reflecting Mt Rainier towering directly in front of it. Global warming? Yeah right. : P

Stay tuned for more about each of our 3 fabulous adventure-filled camp-outs.

Papu's surprise visit

I mentioned this briefly the other day in the midst of my long-winded lost-camera saga...so I thought I should tell the tale.

We came home from a very wet & chilly camping trip up at Mt Rainier one Sunday evening a couple weekends ago. You probably know what it's like to come home from such a trip. You have a lot of stuff...a lot of wet & muddy stuff which has to be unloaded and get cleaned. So you can imagine what my Monday was like...and imagine my happy joyous reaction when George called me that night just as I was preparing to start dinner and said, "My dad is in town and is coming over tonight."

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My house was a complete wreck! There was camping stuff everywhere on top of the usual little boy wreck-iness (AND we're still "recovering" from having wood floors put in last month, ie: more MESS!) I didn't even know if he was planning on spending the night as he usually does when he comes to visit so I turned into Mom, the Drill Sergeant, and marched every one of those five boys upstairs to clean their rooms NOW. Meanwhile, I tidied the downstairs as best I could...and threw a pot of pasta together for our very quick dinner.

An hour later...there was Papu! 

Don't get the wrong impression...I love my father-in-law and I am happy he came to visit...just a little more notice would have been helpful (and not the day directly after a camping trip too.)

He'd brought a co-worker with him as it was a business trip that had brought him up here. We visited with them for a bit at the house & then took them to the Nike campus to show the co-worker. There were a couple soccer balls out on the field so we took the liberty of playing for a bit.

I love tiny Zac getting in on the action down there.

Now, is it really fair to make the baby play goalie?

It turned out to be a really fun & beautiful night. Plus, Papu treated us to Coldstone afterward...totally made up for the short-notice visit!

  Thank you Papu!

Lessons in Capitalism

My boys ran a lemonade stand 3 days this week. (Along with their friend Brandon.)

They made strawberry lemonade and peanut butter white chocolate chip cookies (which were DIVINE, if you ask me...SO good. I ate too many.)

It's hard to see those cookies, but trust me--AMAZINGLY delicious, and the boys made them themselves.

Zac & I were their first customers...and Zac approved.

After the first 2 days, they'd made a little over $33. Not too bad. But then on the third day, they had competition. Two girls (and friends of ours) set up their own lemonade & cupcake stand in the very same spot the boys had been using. The boys were not happy about that. 

They tried setting up just a little ways down from the girls...but that proved unsuccessful so they moved to the opposite side of the park. They also dropped their prices. Yet still business was frightfully slow while the girls were getting all kinds of business.

As it turned out, the girls were selling for charity...and how can you compete against that?

The boys came home feeling a bit crestfallen. They scouted out the park a few hours later and the girls were gone so they quickly grabbed their stuff and went back again. But sadly, they'd missed the peak of the day....oh well. I love the little lessons in capitalism.

And I love those cookies. Seriously so good--you can find the recipe in here!

Christmas in July

A little silliness for your viewing pleasure brought to you by 2 very silly boys:

I am very quickly falling behind in a very bad way. Too much going on. I will tell you a crazy story though. I thought my dearly beloved camera was stolen.

Last week, it was cub scout camp here...and on Friday, George was supposed to go, but as is the usual case, work trumped cub camp and so I had to go in his place. Lucky me. It wasn't so bad but I hate it when that happens. Anyway...all of this is a very long tangent lead-up to the 10 minutes before I was supposed to go and I was frantically searching for my camera and it was nowhere to be found. So now I was extra grumpy about having to go to cub camp--not only do I have to go last-minute but I can't even take photos of the day. I came home that night and searched fruitlessly again for the camera.

Now it's Saturday morning and I'm starting to get worried but I'm cleaning the house thinking surely it'll turn up. Around noon I decide to go to the Stake Pioneer Day activity with the boys...I run through the house again praying that the camera will turn up but no...and I'm SO SAD not to take any pics of the Pioneer Day festivities.... After that, I came home more determined than ever to find that camera.

I retrace my life for the past few days to think when last I saw the camera--Monday night, we got a surprise visit from George's dad (which is a whole other crazy story...) but I used the camera that night to get pics of him with the boys. We went out to ice cream afterward & I left the camera in the car. It was dark when we got home and I totally neglected to bring the camera in since I couldn't see it (out of sight, out of mind, you know). On Tuesday I was out in the car when I spotted the camera and the thought occurred to me, "I should bring that in...that's so unsafe there in the car." And that's the last memory I had of the camera. I couldn't remember ever bringing the camera in the house. And I'd searched the house enough that I was convinced it was NOT in the house. I thought of all the places I'd been that week where it might've been stolen in a moment of carelessness in neglecting to lock the car--I thought for sure it was taken when I parked at Goodwill.

Now I'm really worried and I do a quick glance at Craigslist to see if maybe it was there after possibly being stolen. I didn't see anything suspicious just then. But I had texted my sister to see if maybe, just maybe, I'd left it at her house though I was pretty sure I'd not taken it there. She suggested looking at Craigslist too so then I thought I should change my search there...and I did...and then I found a HIGHLY suspicious posting there. It was very vague & short on details where other postings were very specific about what was being sold. The one detail it called out was exactly the model my camera was!

Now my heart is racing...what do I do? I don't want to confront the thief of my camera myself. I started googling what to do when you find your stolen item on Craigslist and all kinds of stories pop up of people spotting their stuff that way and contacting the Police to set up a sting. But would they really do that for a little old camera? And how could I prove the camera was mine to begin with? So many questions... I eventually created a pseudo-email and contacted the seller to see if I could get any more details about the camera. I did hear back from him later that night and his response only aroused further suspicion. I was this close to calling the police about it. I called George though and he was a little wary of my suspicions.

I went to bed Saturday night with too many thoughts going through my head--I was plotting different scenarios too for getting the camera back, just in case the police wouldn't help us. I woke up Sunday morning with my mind still working a mile a minute. It was exhausting!

Church was at 9am though so I had to get ready and set aside all my crazy plotting thoughts--I grabbed my church bag to get it ready to go when I pulled out my YW binder and lo and behold, THERE IS MY CAMERA!

Then I remembered. Oh yeah, I had my YW presidency meeting that morning on Tuesday--precisely when I'd spotted the camera and thought I should bring that in. I had placed it in my YW bag! What a relief!!! And what a relief that I DIDN'T call the police! And what a relief that we didn't confront that Craigslist seller (though I still firmly believe that was a stolen camera that guy was selling)!

I feel so silly and dumb about the whole thing. I am so happy my camera wasn't stolen. I totally wasted that Saturday though. I was supposed to be packing for a short camping trip we were leaving for on Sunday afternoon...but I was so caught up in sleuthing for my camera that I neglected to pack and we left way later than I'd planned on on Sunday. Oh well.

And as punishment for that wasted Saturday, when we finally got to the breathtakingly beautiful beach from the campsite and I went to take a photo, my battery died.

Whoa, that's way longer than I'd intended.
Moral of the long-winded story: put your camera away in its place when you're not using it. And write down the serial numbers so if heaven-forbid it IS stolen, you have something worthwhile to tell the police!

Howdy

Hi friends,

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Pretty much the entire month of June we've been occupied in giving our house an internal facelift--we added in new wood floors in 2 rooms and refinished the existing floors so ALL the furniture & stuff from 3 rooms were stuffed into a 4th room...since all the stuff was out of the way we thought that was as good a time as any to paint walls and finally put up some trim & new baseboards...it's looking mah-velous, if I do say so myself. We also did a bit more to the kitchen and redesigned the office so it will actually look like a place we want to work & be creative in! Thanks to Ikea and my awesome new drafting table (a la Costco)...can't wait til it's all done to show it off. Pretty close to being done too!

Better than all that though....remember I was playing Lose It???? I LOST IT, and then some! I have officially lost 9 lbs now (8 lbs was my original goal) and I reset my goal now to lose another 4. It's SO nice to be able to fit into some of my old clothes again. Hooray!

Ta ta for now...

Carol