Mary's Birthday

We celebrated Mary's birthday this week. It's hard to believe she's 11!

The Friday before her birthday we invited a friend over and went swimming and then had pizza and cake. We had a great time. The pool wasn't very busy either.

Birthday balloons have become a tradition in our family. Dollar Tree's totally the place to go! The star shapes also last better than round. Not sure why, but it's true. 

Mary combined a gift card she got from her friend with the money from us and her grandparents and bought "Heartlake High." It's one of the Lego Friends sets. She ADORES Lego Friends sets. The fun thing about this set is that it can hook onto her "Olivia's House" set that she already got for Christmas. You make each little room in a block and then can put it on however you want so she made a castle for a while and called it Hogwarts. It was pretty cute.

Mary originally wanted to make a swimming pool cake like we've made for her before. You basically make a white rectangle cake, cut out the middle, and put blue jello in there so it looks like a pool. Things didn't quite work out as planned with the cake, and the middle was going to be the best part so we decided to cut off the worst edge and turn it into a beach cake instead. It turned out pretty cute actually and much easier than the pool version anyway.

I was a little disappointed in myself for the way I cut out part of the cake where the "water" was supposed to be, but it turned out pretty cool. The ocean floor isn't exactly smooth and level either.

I used a recipe for pudding frosting that I found a few months ago. I found it when I was desperate for Adam's birthday in March when I discovered I was nearly out of powdered sugar in the middle of a snowstorm. I used vanilla pudding but put a bit of cocoa powder in it and crushed up chocolate cookie crumbs so it would look more like sand for the beach. It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. I let Mary put on all the swimming gummy bears in their life gummy saver life preservers or on their fruit by the foot towels.

In case anyone's interested, here's the recipe for the pudding frosting. It came from Kraft's website. My hubby's not a big fan of cake, but he actually helps us eat the cake when I use this frosting.

1 package (3.9 oz) instant pudding
1 cup cold milk
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tub (8 oz) Cool Whip

Beat pudding mix, milk, and sugar with whisk for 2 min. Stir in Cool Whip.

Balloon Festival

The first weekend in August we took a VERY quick trip to Craig, CO. Doug did most of his growing up there, and his mom still lives there. His mom arrived for a visit the last day or so in July on her way home from visiting her siblings in Illinois. We decided to drive her home because Craig was having their annual balloon festival over the weekend.

We took off early Friday afternoon after I finished my work for the day.

The trip turned out MUCH longer than we planned. Mary needed a few stops. She hasn't been carsick in a while, but it came back with a vengeance. So we took a little walk while we waited for her dramamine to work. We walked until we saw roadkill ahead and then turned back.

We finally made it by 8:00 and had dinner. Then it took forever to get the kids settled for bed. Shocking, right? Kid can't settle down on a road trip? I'm sure that never happens to anyone else, right?

We got to bed insanely late and then had to get up early to see the balloons. We missed the actual launch, but we saw some of them in the air.

After the balloons launched they had some other activities at the park. The kids' favorite was the bouncy castle slide. 

Craig has a wood carving festival earlier in the year. Some of the carvers were selling their work and doing a little demo. These welcome bears were ADORABLE.

Of course here's what I want to put out for the sales people who come by the house, especially those pesky siding salesman. No, I can't afford it, and no, I'm not willing to finance it.

The local fire department brought one of the trucks out for kids to "tour." The kids really enjoyed that. 

They also got to do some art. Unfortunately, Mary's the only one we got a picture of. I was frankly surprised Alex even wanted to do it. He's not big on art. Adam as usual painted a picture of angry birds and pigs, his favorite things to draw. He's really getting quite good at it.

So after hanging around the festival for a few hours on Saturday we started the drive home. Fortunately the trip didn't take us as long as the trip to Craig. Mary learned a new trick to take her dramamine. She takes a drink of soda, puts the pill in, and then swallows them together.

It Turns Out

I really don't like camping...

Of course I didn't realize that until AFTER  we attempted to go camping this week.

It was okay the first hour or two while we were getting the tent set up and starting to get our hobo dinners all wrapped up and ready to throw into the fire.

Then a wasp decided he really liked hanging around the picnic table.

After finally getting rid of the wasp (there may or may not have been fire involved and a bag of potato peels) the rain came down

and down

and down

and then turned to hail

and then came down some more

and some more

and some more...

Our fire seemed to be out COMPLETELY.

So as we took shelter in the tent we decided to eat the chips and bagels that were supposed to be part of breakfast and lunch for the next day.

Of course somehow our fire managed to reignite itself after the storm finally stopped. So we roasted some marshmallows and made smores and then went to bed.

After playing around a little the next morning we packed up and came home even though we'd planned to stay another night. I never regretted it, especially when the rain storms hit again that evening after we'd come home.

It's nice to have my own bed and above all my own bathroom. No matter how dirty I let it get, it doesn't hold a candle to the nastiness of an outdoor toilet at a campground...

On the plus side, the sign at the campground said the "host" would come by to collect our camping fee, and he never did so we got to camp for free.

So here are the highlights...

The highlight for the kids was this bridge across the creek. Adam could hardly make it across without holding my hand the first time, but after a while he was running across like a pro. They played the "grumpy old troll" from Dora the Explorer fame and "Temple Run" across the bridge. 

Not sure why the rocks in the creek are orange.

When I woke up in the morning I discovered why the tent was so cold. Alex had gotten up in the middle of the night and opened the window of the tent.

Life Can't Always Be Charming

No lie...

My buddy Alex has always lived a pretty charmed life. He's had many, many, many, many (did I say many?) close calls in his life. And yet, he'd never had a broken bone in his life or had to get stitches.

Did you notice how I said HE'D and not HE'S??

Well the charmed life he was leading hit a big speed bump a couple weeks ago while we were visiting my parents.

My dad uses four-wheelers (or ATVs to city folk...) that he uses on the ranch. (It's much easier to catch than a horse, right??)

So Alex and his cousin Josh were driving them around and decided to race. The race came to a sudden end when Alex crashed into Uncle Jim's Razor (pretty much a dune buggy). On a side note, it took me forever to remember the thing was a Razor and not a Rascal. Although frankly I like Rascal better. I chuckle thinking of my brother driving around on a scooter designed for elderly people.

So a trip to the ER at the hospital where I was born was required. It's a teeny hospital where back in the day my doctor was able to get me a full blown cast. However, times change and Alex just got a splint and we had to take him to get a cast once we were back here in town.

And because he's so cute, here are his photos.

The good news in the whole situation?? WATERPROOF CAST