Creativity Camp

This is my friend Erin. She is one of the gifts God gave me when I went away to a big, scary college (note that "big" and "scary" are highly subjective according to whom you ask). She came to visit me with her brood last week and my creative juices were on overdrive. Even since she left, I've been getting little creative projects done. Erin came with her three children, which in my opinion puts her in the category I put all families with more than two children: CRAZY. But this is why she can handle it... look at her holding her baby while sewing a project for my oldest child. This didn't even phase her.

Here is a project Erin did of my daughters drawing. Isn't putting it on a pillow brilliant? It's some sort of fabric pen that washes off in water.

Then we made these from the popular pillowcase dress, but we didn't use pillowcases and we didn't have a pattern so we just made it up. We're smart because we graduated from a big, scary college.

And I did a lot of embellishing boring dresses from Wally World:

I made Erin do the zig zag stitching because zig zag stitching scares me. In fact, my entire sewing maching scares me.

This dress was Blynn's vision. It already came with the pink buttons on it, but she wanted red ones added in between. Please excuse the posing.

Rusty did not like all the attention of the photo shoot to exclude him, so here are some I took of him.

I'd like to introduce you...

to Miss Mac.

This is our family boat built by my grandpa in 1958. Here he is on the right with my dad sitting on top of the boat sanding the fiberglass. My aunt remembers that he ordered the plans from a magazine and they all killed many healthy cells in their lungs by sanding that fiberglass.

Here they are on Shaver Lake.

She also remembers that the color scheme was picked because of the car and the colors available for the engine. I love the color scheme.

This is my cousin, sister and I in 1981. I guess I can see where Blynn gets the posing from.

And here she is in 2010. We took her out of the barn a couple of weeks ago to clean her up and assess her situation. This brought back so many memories.

A new generation of passengers.

This first aid kit was completely intact. My Grandma was always prepared.

Is anyone as excited about these old life preservers as I am?

And this?

This item is what my sister and I remember the most about the boat. My Grandma would make coffee on the boat and then give us girls a cup. Then she would ask us how many sugar cubes we wanted. I'm pretty sure I would say 21 or 36. Remember that I was 4 years old. I think this is why I like my coffee so sweet to this day.

And seriously this is the best find of them all. Is anyone else screaming like I was? No. Well, are you not seeing what I'm seeing. Look closer.

This is jadeite my friends. I still sense that you are not as excited as I am. This is now the only mug I will drink out of.

As we were working on the boat, everytime I would turn around, this is how I would find my sister.

Now we just have to see if she is sea worthy. The boat not my sister.

Trailers Part Two

Last night we spent the night in Todd's dad's trailer. They are driving out to pick it up and drive it across multiple states to take it home. So Todd felt like we needed to get it out and make sure it was camp-able since it has been sitting for a long time. It turned out to be a lot of fun, but that does not equal a lot of sleep.


Remember, this does involve a 5 and 3 year old so we did go to bed when it was still light outside. Todd and I did contemplate coming back inside after the kids fell asleep to watch some tv, but seriously who does that?

Everytime Blynn's report card would come home this last school year, it would always say she needed to work on her counting. What? Does that mean at home? Because that is why I send her to school, so I don't have to teach her. Just sayin'. Actually, I like the idea of teaching her at home. Notice I said "idea". So, we find that the game "Sorry" helps because we make them count everytime we move. Except it doesn't really help for counting numbers 35-50, which is what the last report card said. So I guess I might actually have to do some teaching this summer.

See how into it he is. I think he likes board games as much as his mama likes them.

I hardly slept. That's just the way it goes when you have a very paranoid imagination. At one point I thought a pack of coyotes were going to take over our tent. Then, I heard this hotrod zipping around and then it just stopped. I was certain that a gang was circling us. And if this gang got out of the little hotrod I was hearing, it would most definitely be a gang of clowns. But with all of that said, sleeping outside in the country all night long is really neat. I woke up 782 times and everytime I would look out the windows. I could see all the stars and planets that were in our sky. A teeny sliver of a moon. The sunset and the sunrise which was amazing. The air was very fresh.

Trailers Part One

It turns out the world doesn't revolve around me and we're actually quite busy this month. Todd and I got to go away just the two of us to Morro Bay in my parents trailer. This means we had no access to the Tour de France. So that proves that I DO love Todd more than George Hincapie.
I feel like Todd and I used to be a very photogenic couple. Then children, age, and invisalign nubs came into our life. Seriously, what happens with our necks as we age? It's like it is now a tissue for skin, saggy, and moley (is that a word)?

This is the view from the trailer. It was a great trailer park and we made great friends with all the 80+ year olds on our trailer cul-de-sac. Of course, they asked us the same questions every time they walked by.

It was overcast some while we were there and that was just fine with me. I welcomed the cold weather.

Don't worry, I had a picture of the kids nearby. Just so I wouldn't forget to come home to them.

Is it bad if I was more excited to come home to the two stages I had waiting for me on my DVR?