May Crowning

A couple of weeks ago, the kids got out of school early and we took a mini-road trip for a hike at a beautiful park where there is a trail up to a tiny, 150-year-old Marian chapel. It's a perfect May crowning spot, and an easy-but-not-too-easy hike, with a great view from the top. What a picture-perfect day, and we had fun exploring the trails and breaking out WWD's awesome new glider plane. JPD was beside himself with excitement about that one--it was great!

Put Me in the Zoo

We celebrated our (probably) last 70 degree day of the year with an outing to the zoo. Goodbye warm fall days!

Can you spot the four wild animals camouflaged in their habitat here in the first picture? :)

Pumpkin Patch Day

This afternoon we went to our favorite fall farm for a hayride to the pumpkin patch, corn maze, visits to cute farm animals, and other fall fun. It was a quick trip, and no matter how long we spend there each year, it never feels like enough.
As we were leaving, JPD said "Mommy, that was GREAT!" And it was.

Happy Campers

WWD: "You know, this is the beginning of the end of summer."
Mom: "That seems right to me. Well, what has been your favorite thing we've done this summer?"
WWD: "You mean BESIDES this weekend?"










And look who lost her first top tooth!!
Oh KLD you are growing up so fast!

We're Going Camping

...this weekend. In a few hours, actually. I'm busily working on getting things ready. (Obviously, I'm busily PROCRASTINATING by writing about getting things ready instead of actually getting things ready.) Here's our weekend menu, almost all of which I'm preparing in advance to simplify things at the campsite-o-kids:

Friday Lunch: Still Home, eat leftovers

Friday Dinner: Roman Soldier Meal, salad, carrot & celery sticks, s'mores--of course
Turns out that the most common camping meal recommended by most of the websites I consulted closely resembles a fun activity for the first chapter of our history curriculum, which we're due to begin in a couple of weeks. It's a meal in foil: hamburger patty, slice of onion, sliced carrots, sliced new potatoes (ours have olive oil, kosher salt, and rosemary), to be wrapped tightly in foil and put into the campfire coals--while reading our history chapter on the Roman soldiers, of course. :) Last night I chopped and prepared all the stuff to go into the foil wraps.

Saturday Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs w/Ham (pre-scrambled in a container, ham pre-chopped)

Saturday Lunch: Cold Cut Sandwiches, Apples, Milk

Saturday Dinner: Baked Beans w/Hot Dogs, Cornbread (JPD and KLD helped make this last night), Salad, maybe-some-kind-of-dessert-I-dont-know-yet.

Sunday Breakfast: Oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins(all pre-measured); also bagels for a backup.

Snacks: I'm bringing all the random one-off granola bars and teddy grahams from our cupboard, plus little fruit cups, raisins, chips, etc. Also, bottled Starbucks (we may need more coffee than this) and Diet Cokes (of course) for the grownups. (Maybe some adult beverages, but maybe not--adult beverages just make me more tired, which is not something I'm needing to be lately!)

Being a camping rookie, this all seems like a big deal to me. For example, thinking ahead that we'll need brown sugar for oatmeal on Sunday morning, so I should measure some and put it into a container. And pre-scrambling the eggs and putting them in a container. All of it, really. While it's kind of nice to leave my home kitchen behind for the whole weekend, and relying on restaurants really seems to take a lot of the "camp" out of "camping," I must say that the jury is still out on whether camping is actually a vacation. Wait--what am I saying? No family "vacation" is actually a vacation for the Mom. Silly me--I always forget.

Now I'm off to actually finish packing all of the above...