The One Where We Drove an Extra Fifteen Hours

We’ve been back from our summer vacation for almost two weeks now.  I think I can talk about it. Let me say, though, we did have lots of fun making some great memories.  Unfortunately, many of those memories happened in my car, traveling over 2500 miles and about 45 hours.

Here’s how that went down. We all drove to Oklahoma to see my family, a distance of 800 miles and 15 hours. We stopped in Springfield, MO, to play after twelve hours, even though the temperature was 106. Those hooligans scoff at the heat!

The GI Joe had Army bidness to take care of in Kentucky, so he flew there the day after we arrived in Oklahoma and spent a week.  Then he flew back to Wisconsin, to work a few days (and be all alone in our house, which I was most envious of). In our plan, he was supposed to fly back to Oklahoma on the 4th of July to spend a few days (he hasn’t seen my side of the family in over 3 years, thanks to deployments and such…or it always conveniently works out that way it seems).

Meanwhile, we were having a great time in Oklahoma, spending time with my dad, largely doing things that involved the hooligans eating. My dad has a really rare form of encephalitis that suddenly took his memory about two years ago. He has some of it back, but lives in an assisted care facility.  The kids loved visiting Papa Tractor at his new place.

We also apparently cured the deafness in his right ear, as he told me while driving home from getting this ice cream with the kids, all hopped up on sugar and being hooliganish. We’re helpful that way.

I thought the coolest part of our week was that the kids got to go to the day camp I attended.  I was a counselor there, as well, in junior high.  Five mornings a week, my co-leader and I were responsible for  teaching about twelve little girls archery, fishing, swimming, crafts, and horseback riding, and I got paid $15 a week. I thought I was living large, I tell you!

In this photo, it was the last day of camp and all the campers were waiting as the counselors threw $150 in coins into the pool for them to dive in and get. The noise level while waiting was insane. We went to Sonic for slushes afterward and the boys were counting their loot.  One got 14 cents and the other 24, I think.  They spent the afternoon plotting what they could buy with it.


The oldest hooligan learned to jump off the diving boards, which thrilled him to no end. We don’t have outdoor pools or diving boards here in Wisconsin, so he was deprived of that. Swimming is his favorite sport, and, while it’s not pretty to watch, he loves to swim.

My aunt invited everyone to her house for a Sunday dinner.  My cousins’ kids are all intermingled with ours as far as age, so they could not have been happier, running wild on the farm. I’m pretty sure they ate something other than popsicles, but who cares?  I was having a blast getting to chat with the “grownups” instead of watching little ones for the first time in years.

Now comes the twist in our plans.  My father-in-law, who lives in Colorado, was hospitalized with a severe infection.  We decided that the kids and I should drive to Denver on Tuesday, then the hubs could fly there on Wednesday morning.  His ticket already had a connection in Denver, so it was easy to change. Again, I feel the need to point out that he was ALL ALONE to travel.  Envy. Sigh.

It’s about an eleven hour drive from my parents’ house to his parents’ house (or ten if you’re without kids and dehydrate yourself).  We stopped halfway, in Hays, Kansas, and took advantage of their fabulous public water park my friend Sarah (who’s from there) told us about. If you’re ever in need of a travel break, it’s well worth the $3 admission.  Waterslides, a lazy river, huge zero entry splash pad/pool, and a regular pool with diving boards.

When we started west again, the kids were all tuckered out and content to nap, read, and watch movies for the remaining 5 hours.

We got there late Tuesday evening, and spent the 4th with that side of the family.  The hooligans love to visit (and terrorize) their great-grandma.  Nonna makes the best Italian knot cookies in the world, if you were wondering.  She's in her 90's and just an amazing, funny, and extremely tolerant woman.


We spent the afternoon and evening at Frank’s sister’s house, where again the hooligans had fun running wild, jumping on the trampoline, and generally creating chaos. We ended the day by watching fireworks at one of the very few displays allowed in Colorado.  With all the wildfires burning, almost all fireworks were banned.  Even sparklers and snakes. But, seriously?  Do you think we give the hooligans things that could be turned back on us, flaming, even if it's legal?


The cousins got tickets for an old-fashioned family amusement park, Lakeside, so we went on night. The boys were pretty bored with the “little kid” rides (as you can see from their smart-aleck faces), but loved the smaller thrill rides.  I thought the plexiglass maze was the funniest part (I was watching everyone else crash into the walls), and was the designated rider with the middle kid on the roller coaster. It was his first time, and his emotions about it seemed pretty mixed.


I also forced everyone back into the car to drive up to Georgetown and ride the loop railroad one day. It’s a good rule of thumb that the mountains are about fifteen degrees cooler than the Front Range (see…all that college was not wasted), but it was about 30 degrees cooler that day.  It rained, sleeted, and then the sun came back out.  It was perfect, after our long, hot, dry summer. Being flatlanders now, we were totally unprepared for such a temperature change (plus, I had packed for Oklahoma, not Colorado), so we even had to buy tourist sweatshirts.

One of my favorite parts of the Colorado leg of our trip was that I met a new friend.  I've gotten to know her through my blog, and she is a friend and coworker of my sister-in-law.  We met for coffee one day, and I wish I'd had the whole afternoon to spend, talking about crafts, knitting, and solving all the world's problems.  As it happened, we only solved about half of them. But I'll be back, Steph!  She gave me a fabulous tote bag from Ravelry.com, filled with more fabulousness...body butter and lip balm she'd made, lots of knitting she'd done (including an amazing circle with various shades knit wedges), and a super sweet card.  I love making new friends!


As many times as we have crossed a border into Colorado, we had never stopped to take a photo.  I had the best of intentions as we crossed from Kansas to Colorado, but there was construction and we were rerouted onto the other side of the interstate. I mentioned this dream to the hubs, so on our way OUT of Colorado on I-76. almost to Nebraska, he insisted on stopping.

After a quick photo and bathroom break, we strapped in, settled down, and arrived safely home eighteen hours after leaving Denver. Whew. We are poster children for “I need a vacation from my vacation.”

First Day on the Job as Cruise Director

Well, school’s out, so I’m on my new full-time job…entertaining my hooligans for the next 3 months. Woo-hoo!  Actually, I am looking forward to having no schedule every day.  Of course, a week from now I’ll no doubt be making a countdown calendar to September 4.

To kick off summer vacation, we made a string maze for them to follow to get to their summer surprise packages.
They each had a different color string (red, white, or blue) tied to a popsicle stick with their name on it.  They had to wind them up to get to their gifts.

My GI Joe did the strings for the boys, and they were quite difficult in places…but the hooligans were remarkably patient.


Except for Princess Thundercloud, who frequently hurled hers to the ground and “Hmmph”-ed loudly. The boys were very willing to help her, which I thought was pretty sweet.  Again, it’s the first day of summer…that will change, I’m sure.


He definitely had the toughest one to follow.  He was feet from the prize and could see it from here, but kept winding.


The first to finish, he went off to help his siblings and waited to open his present.  Amazing!


Their loot included water pumpers for the lake, educational card games, lots of books and a couple of workbooks, art supplies, a couple of toys, and a candy bracelet (left from Halloween, but they didn’t care).  Oh, and they each got a whole pack of gum.  I’m pretty sure my kids would walk to town and back if they were promised gum. And "town" is 11 miles away.


One thing I included that they seemed to think super cool were these coupons for each of them.  This way, they can have time alone with one of us, and know that the others will have the same chance.  That doesn’t mean they won’t squabble about it while we’re doing it, but they thought the idea was great!

This little project took us about 10 minutes to string, then about an hour for the hooligans to follow their strings, wind them up, and peruse their treasures.  As usual, GI Joe had his doubts, but it proved a fun way to kick off vacation!

I’ve got to get back to impressing my new bosses with my entertainment skills…after I do laundry and go to the post office and Costco, that is.  Have a great weekend!




  

Pause and Be Happy

Before I start on today’s post, here’s an urgent reminder that Stampin’ Up!’s Retirement List ends tomorrow, 31May.  Those stamps and accessories will be GONE FOREVER, people!  So if there are any you love, get them now…you can shop on my website (See it? Up there in the right sidebar?  Yep, that’s where you go.  But come back!).

I was at Target a couple of weeks ago and found a set of printed paper tapes in great summer colors…lemon, lime, strawberry, blueberry, and watermelon.  They were with the kids’ summer craft supplies, but I felt they could be used by me, as well. I’ve been wanting some washi tape, but haven’t found it locally and keep forgetting to order it. The kids’ stuff was considerably less expensive, so I thought I’d give it a try.


I’m still busy trying to decide what project is worthy of my new tape, but my fingers were itching to use it, so I made this notecard. I just cut some of the tape to cover the front, wrapped a little bakers’ twine around it, and stamped a sentiment using the Pursuit of Happiness set from Stampin’ Up. Oh, and attached a little library clip, also from SU!,

With such a happy card, I decided to include some photos of the hooligans playing the sprinkler over the weekend.

It’s amazing the joy a regular old lawn sprinkler can bring!

We offered to go to the beach or the splash pad, but they wanted to stay home,

He was the only one smart enough to keep flip flops on while playing.

Those eyelashes slay me…he drew a family picture the other day and put big ginormous eyelashes on me, but no one else. He said that now my eyes are like his.

She really was having fun.

It’s gonna be a long, hot summer…I’m so glad they’re happy with the simple pleasures for now.

And do you see why the card sentiment made me think of sharing these photos? I hope you all have time to pause and just be happy today…or sometime soon!

Here, There, and Everywhere

I admit it…I was a blog slacker for a couple of days last week.  So, as a reward for your patience, here’s a look at the daily life that was keeping me busy over the past week and a half or so. Tomorrow, I’ll be back with something crafty!

  
My kindergartener invited me tea to at his class for Mother’s Day.  It was lovely, with bonnets and corsages made by the hooligan and refreshments made by his teachers.  They sang a few adorable songs and then read to us.  He read “The Grouchy Ladybug,” which is one of our favorites…”Want to fight?”  comes up often in conversation at our home.

I was thrilled to see that my job is to “craft stuff” according to him.  Most of the moms’ jobs involved cleaning. I was just happy it didn’t say “Laying on the couch eating bonbons and watching TV.”










    
On Mothers’ Day, everyone pitched in to get the garden ready to plant. It’s only about 10 feet on each side, so it’s not like they had to cultivate 40 acres by hand. They found lots of long, fat, wriggly worms, so I think our vegetables will have some excellent soil this year…no excuses for puniness!

After Princess Thundercloud had a timeout for flinging dirt with her shovel, they all lost interest and played Ring Around the Rosy. Oh, well.
                   

Last Friday was Field Day at the hooligans’ school, so Thundercloud and I had a fabulous time watching the boys compete in running, jumping, and throwing.


The kindergartener had apparently been working on his technique with his fourth grade buddy…his form certainly looks a lot better than he would have learned from me.  Oh, wait, I don’t run unless someone is chasing me.

As soon as Field Day was over, we packed up our gear and headed to the Wisconsin Dells for an Army Strong Bonds Family Wellness Retreat. What a great program the Army has.  We had classes for a few hours each day, then lots of free time to spend as a family.

 
We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge, so spent large blocks of time in the waterpark.  The boys are fearless on the slides, and Thundercloud loved body-surfing in the wave pool.  I was just thrilled to get to wear a swimsuit. Not really. As the kids get older, though, I have to admit it’s much more fun to go to the waterpark with them.

We also went on a boat tour of the Upper Dells, largely to see this amazing feat.  These trained dogs leap from point to point.  My mother-in-law told us not to miss this.  As a little girl in Chicago, she came to the Dells and saw the same thing.  Not the same dog, of course.

Even more amazing was the backstory.  Way back when, someone in the Dells invented the first camera that could capture motion in a still shot.  That’s pretty cool, but the amazing part was that to demonstrate it, he made his thirteen-year-old son leap back and forth SEVENTEEN times to capture the perfect shot. 

Can you imagine what the kid’s mom said when she heard and saw the photograph?  I wonder if she then offered to take a perfect shot of her husband making that leap seventeen times?  And was she going to use a camera or firearm?


As a last stop before starting home, we had lunch at our favorite barbeque joint, Famous Dave’s.  We’ve been to this chain all over the country, and, to be honest, most of the were mediocre at best, so we were disillusioned. When we lived in Kansas, the one at the Texas Speedway was outstanding and we were thrilled to find the one in the Dells just the same.

This hooligan’s nickname is Porkchop, and he loves ribs…so he was one happy camper yesterday!  Even if he was to exhausted from the weekend that his eyelids were closing.

So there’s a glimpse at our busy life…hopefully this week will be a little slower, because next week field trips then end-of-school activities really kick in. It’s been a great couple of weeks, though, with lots of family togetherness and counting our blessings…I hope you’ve had the same!

Reaching a Milestone

Our eldest made his First Communion this weekend.  Being a convert to Catholicism, I had never even attended a First Communion Mass and really didn’t know what to expect.  It was a beautiful ceremony and the hooligan couldn’t have been less hooligan-like.  So now I can exhale.

This post is mostly for those family and friends who couldn’t make it to the Mass but are still interested.  The rest of you can read and look if you like, but you’re excused if not!

At the “dress rehearsal”

Making his banner, another tradition I knew nothing about and had to Google

His finished banner on the end of our assigned pew.  I really wish I could quit thinking of “Steve-O” the B List celebrity every time I see his first name and last initial.


Someone decided to let him carry a lit candle (next to a girl in a veil) at the front of the procession. I blurred everyone else’s face to protect the innocent, by the way.  I don’t have a weirdly focusing camera. This was the only part of the Mass we could photograph, the procession.


His little brother’s favorite part…cake!  Come back tomorrow and I’ll share the amazing recipe for both the cake and frosting.  We decided it was the best cake I’ve ever made (or eaten!). Oh, and both boys had on ties for church and took them off for dinner.  We’re not in the habit of making them button their shirts to their chins.

I’ve been so impressed with our son this year.  He’s had Religious Ed classes every Monday night and really enjoyed all that he’s learned.  I was worried about his being able to memorize all the prayers he needed to, but he was done memorizing before Christmas and has said them often since.  Part of his ADHD is that he was unable to memorize things, but with a lot of hard work and the medication he takes, he was able to accomplish it. I think there were seven prayers to memorize, and not being a cradle Catholic, I didn’t even know some of them.

The other two kids are so excited for the First Communions now.  This was such a wonderful experience for all of us, as we navigate our way through parenthood and “raising them right!”

Celebrating Hello Kitty Style

Well, Princess Thundercloud starts planning her next birthday party about ten minutes after the current one ends.  We’ve gone through approximately 532 themes this year, but the colors are always the same…pink and purple. She’s such a conformist.

I didn’t even get to make cupcakes for her preschool…she insisted on taking Strawberry Cream Oreos instead of something mom-made.  Can you believe it?

Here’s some ideas from the party we had over the weekend for her.  It was small…only six kids, counting our three, but it was perfect for a 4th birthday!




The centerpiece was pink and white wafer cookies. sugar-dipped marshmallows, pixie sticks, pink and purple M&Ms, and Malted milk eggs.  Thank goodness for Easter clearances!


To make the marshmallows, we used 6” bamboo skewers (the point is down), dipped the end of the marshmallows in melted white chocolate, then pink and white hearts and pink decorating sugar. Super easy and cute, but for some reason, my camera would not focus on them…maybe they were too glittery?


Scrapbooking paper was on sale 7/$1 at Michaels, so we punched out Hello Kitty faces for straw decorations and to make picks for the cupcakes.


I cut out cupcake wrappers from some other scrapbooking paper.  The cupcakes were cherry cake with cherry buttercream, then we rolled the edges in the pink sugar and sprinkled on decoration.  When I say we, I mean it.  Thundercloud and her brothers all helped with making the cupcakes and the decorations. Without fighting. It was amazing.


We blew up balloons to make flowers and rows along the tops of the doorways, and my GI Joe bought pink heart and purple star Mylar balloons at the dollar tree. We think their balloons are the best…last year in Washington we used the same balloons for everyone’s birthday, starting in September and lasting until June.  They were a little deflated by my birthday in June, but we were moving to Wisconsin that month, so didn’t invest in more!


While the guests were arriving, we put on a Hello Kitty DVD and had HK coloring pages on the coffee table, which I covered with more of the scrapbooking paper, in case of over-scribbling.

After everyone had arrived and settled down a bit, they each made their own pizza. Thundercloud says she wants to be a pizza chef when she grows up, so she insisted on the menu.

We also had veggies and dip and a rainbow fruit platter with yogurt for dipping. I think the adults enjoyed those more than the kids, but that’s fine!  The kids drank Izze sodas, which they always think they want but end up not drinking. I think they don’t like the fizz, since they normally don’t drink soda.  Izze is just fruit juice and carbonated water, so I don’t feel horrible about them having it occasionally.


While the pizza baked and then cooled a bit, we played some games.  Here’s a friend playing “Pin the Bow on Hello Kitty,”  I bought a poster at Michaels then printed a bunch of bows using Photoshop.  I downloaded an entire kit of Hello Kitty party printables from Shery K Designs via Tip Junkie. The bow was on one of the designs, so it took no time to print and cut out. We just wrote each kid’s name on theirs and put a little double-stick tape on the back of each.  After the party, I peeled them off (carefully) and put the poster in Thundercloud’s bedroom.

We also played “Hello Kitty Says” like Simon Says and Hot Potato using a HK doll. We had another game but forgot to do it…we blew up a bunch of white and yellow balloons and tied them up in a big sheet. The plan was for the kids to grab hold of the edges and “pop corn.”  Balloon are always entertaining. Oh, well, there’s always next time!


After lunch she opened her presents.  What a difference from the chaos that always ensues when the boys are opening.  She and her friends opened each gift, looked at them, talked about them, then moved on to the next. She got this really cute cupcake memory game…we’ve all played it about 987 times already.

Ready for the cupcakes!

Fortunately, 4 candles would fit on one cupcake, so only she only blew spit on her own!


The last, and most anticipated event, was the pinata. This is one that you take turns pulling a string until it opens, the first time we’d tried this kind.  I probably should have mentioned that when I told the hubs I thought he could just hold the pinata this time.  He looked a little concerned. And unwilling.  The strings worked great, though.  Everyone took a turn, then since it still wasn’t open, they all pulled at once, which opened it right up.

My oldest even gave all his loot to the littlest girl there, since she didn’t get the concept of every man for him/her self!  I rewarded him with a chocolate covered Peep for his chivalry.


In addition to their pinata loot and game prizes (bracelet, necklaces, and erasers), each guest got one of these little cookie cups and one of the mylar balloons.

It was a fun, although much more relaxed than the boys’, party.  I think Princess Thundercloud felt like such a big girl, planning and helping prepare for it, and she was so excited to be the hostess.

Oh, and just an explanation of the great detail in this post. Every time I went to a party as a kid, as soon as I got I the car, my mom would ask what we played and what we ate.  And if we said, “Thanks for inviting me. I had a very nice time.”  I’m sure that never sounded rehearsed at all.

My kid party duties are over for a few months now…not until the end of September…but I feel the need for a S’More-gasbord and Beer Campfire coming on as soon as the weather is a bit warmer!