Father/Son Overnighter = Mother/Daughter Overnighter...

Hooray for Father and Son overnighters!  They are so fun because there aren't any Mommies there to nag at little boys  to stay away from the fire, to remind them they've eaten too much sugar and to demand that they wash their teeth before they jump into their sleeping bags!

Bigger hooray for Father and Sons overnighters because that means girlie girl time and no boys to whine and complain about eating out, shopping, chick flicks and late breakfast...  Or so I envisioned!  But my delusional thoughts were looked to be reality until Her Royal Highness finished her banatsticks class.

We walked into the Mexican restaurant and then I remembered who my little girlie girl really truly is!  The host seated us.  Except her little Royal Hiney wasn't about to seat itself because she didn't want to sit where the host seated us.  She wanted to sit in a completely different booth on the other side of the restaurant dining area...  I'm not a fan of reinforcing naughty-ness, but before her screams got us kicked out I had to do something!  Bribery!  And it worked.  We were in a happy place again, until she started shoving chips into my mouth, one right after the other.

I survived dinner and off we went to our upscale shopping mall, Walle' Marte' where we intended to pick up some beads for a new bracelet.  But before we got to the bead section and after we left the dog food section, we found ourselves in the middle of another temper tantrum.  This time over not wanting to ride in the cart.  The next tantrum was over riding in the basket of the cart and the following tantrum was over riding under the cart.  This was turning out to be such a fun evening that I couldn't contain myself anymore!  We skipped the bead department and hurried home to watch our chick flick... Up.  Cute show.  I liked the snipe!  I don't know if my peanut did or not because she crashed.  She looked so sweet and angelic that I decided I'd let her sleep in my bed.  I know better than this!  Arg!  Delusions!  She tossed and turned and kicked me all night long! 

So the Father and Son overnighter was fun I hear.  They got themselves packed up just before this happened! 

Rained so hard that the water puddled up this deep in a matter of just a few minutes!

And you might wonder why my spirited child isn't in this picture.  Well, she was sleeping like a log... in my bed!

Grandfather Leo Howard Oswald

I'm in the final stages of designing a photo book of my Grandfather's WWII photos.  I am so in love with this book!!  When my Grandfather took these photographs and wrote their significance on the photo backs before sending them home, I don't think he ever imagined that he would, in the year 2010, have written his own book!  This photo book is penned in his own hand.

There was minimal photo editing involved.  I didn't want to do any restoration.  The distress of the photos helps to tell Grandfather's story of long ago!  Unfortunately, the deckle edges of most of the photographs had to be cropped out.  I tried to work with them, but no matter what I tried, the bed of the scanner was impossible to minimize against the black background.  The handwriting on the back of the photographs required quite a bit of editing.  Magic eraser made it a breeze, but still, it was necessary to enlarge to the point of pixels in order to remove as much of the photo paper as possible to allow the handwriting to overlay the photographs and black background and still maintain legibility.  There is no added text, other than the text that my Grandfather wrote on the back of his photographs.

The title of the book came into being while I was working with a spread of two photographs of my Grandfather.  On the backs of these photographs he wrote  "Just me." and signed his name "Curlie."  On the back of the second, he wrote "Just me again." and signed his name "Howard."  As I tried to imagine how he must have felt while entitling the photos, in the middle of a war so far away from family and his "honey," with all of his thoughts towards home, I was struck by his modest proclamation of "Just me."  I imagined the excitement of loved ones getting his letters with the photographs and how they must have been shown to everyone back home!  And I began to imagine all of his posterity today who will soon be able to own his book, and how excited we will be, and how we will likely show these photos to everyone who will care to see!!  So my Grandfather's modest "Just Me" is what it is to be entitled, as this is just his story!

As I've gone through these photographs, I feel like I know my Grandfather a little bit more!  I'm especially in awe and grateful to him for his sacrifice in serving our country. 

So Many Cherries, So Little Time!

My sour cherry trees produced well, and of course, since the strawberries were two weeks early, the pie cherries came during girls camp!!

The boys all pick and froze a few bags, so when I made it home it was time to get serious with them!  Since I still have jars of cherries for pies and crisps, I decided to take the sour cherry jam route!  I LOVE sour cherry jam.  I LOVE to eat it on ice cream and waffles!  So I made a bunch.  And I didn't put it in the pretty jelly jars that I have.  I chose to put them in quarts, or else we'd be pulling out a jar of jam a day!  And that sure gets old fast.

I used my steam canner instead of a hot bath.  It is more manageable on a cook top because you boil a much smaller amount of water, and steam is hotter than boiling water which equals shorter processing time!  Thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law for such a perfect birthday gift last year!!!

I Said A-Boom Chicka Boom!

This picture is proof that I survived camp!  It was taken this afternoon before loading up our girls and heading home!

That's me and another unit's camp director, Amanda.  We have our arms around each other - because we became good friends this last week.  We might also be holding each other up so neither one of us falls over....

That's right!  We hardly stopped running this whole week!  And sleep, well, lets just say we had high expectations.  So maybe we were a little disappointed when we considered the quality of sleep for the week!

You know, they say that sleep is pretty over rated...

and with 150 girls up at camp, why in the world would anyone want to waste time sleeping?

It was an incredible program!  Can you see all of those "Title's of Liberty"?

The food was the best!  We had dessert after dinner and then dessert before bed, every night!

Except for these three silly girls, who snuck dessert at a random time during the day!!

There was lots to do!

Set up tents

evacuate tents for severe weather warning

bail water out of tents

make friend ship bracelets

Mm-Ah went the little green frog one day and we all go Mm-ahh-aw

build fires

make foil dinners

Make s'mores

Janitor style-  a-broom-sweep-a-moppa-sweep-a-moppa-sweepa-broom....

confiscate lighters and aerosol cans

forge rivers

Hello Kitty bandaids

run through poison ivy

spiders and tics and heat rash, Oh My!

First aid relays

swimming

flag ceremony

....take back my hunka hunka happy happy me!

secret sisters

confiscate cell phones and I-pods

Skits

Songs

Painting rocks

Swedish fish

French Braids

Awesome speakers

Hot Shower

Twizzlers

....and there was Herman, the family pet, cha! And he was this big!  THIS BIG!

No peanuts!! (peanut allergy up at camp)

Bishop's night (my personal favorite part) ;)

Tornado warning

another slumber party in the lodge basement

Self Defense

Don't give me no pop, no pop, don't give me no juice, no juice just give me that milk!  Moo, Moo, Moo, Moo!

no cell phone reception (thanks AT&T)

Duct tape purses

Crazy Hats

chase down a blown away tent

Branch time

clothes lines

1/2 dozen towels in lost and found

Whew! and Wow!

What an incredible week!  I'm in awe at how incredible our Stake Leaders are!

What wonderful people to get to serve with this week!

What amazing girls we got to know this week!

Since getting home, lovin' on my family and showering.  I think I might attempt another round of some good sleep... even if it might be a little bit over-rated!

Hay Fever!

What happens when two guys get together...

...with two red tractors....

And lotsa tall grass? 

They get lotsa dirty kids!  That's what happens!!

Blaine - you are just the cutest thing!!

The Attorney actually looks like he's working!!

They might also get a few bales of hay, too...

Ahhhh-chooooooo!

Well, maybe more than a few bales.

Probably more like lotsa, lotsa bales!

The End! 

At least for yesterday...

...'cause there's lotsa, lotsa, lotsa more stuff to bale out in the orchard!

If You Say the Word "Sweat" One More Time You Will be in Big Bad Trouble!

That's right!  And don't you forget it! 

And, next thing you know someone pipes up and whines, "My face is covered with facial fluids." 

And of course there has to be a smarty pants in the group who has to throw in the literary element of alliteration.  "Facial fluids feel foul." 

There were some other comments about condensating, which is just more of the same garbage I have to deal with when it comes to things like picking strawberries when its a little warm outside!

However, all of the whining certainly didn't stop the exclamations when especially large or perfect berries were picked!

And deciding whether we should dip the big strawberries in chocolate definitely didn't slow anyone down from completing the task.

So after all was whined and done, here is what we got in our first picking.  Not much compared to years past, but plenty for me to work with for this afternoon!

Robin's Egg

Pretty little egg!

Dramatic little egg!

Its still  pretty though!