Camping Fun

We had a super-fun time on our camping trip this week. We spent 3 days, 2 nights at Ocean Shores, camping at the state park and enjoying lots of fun times. The weather was perfect: sun, wind (of course. It's the beach, right?), and warm days. The nights, on the other hand, were absolutely freezing, with temperatures dipping into the low 40's. But we bundled up and kept warm by the fire.

We also:

built sand castles

ran in the ocean and on the beach

flew our kite

got sun-burned

dug a giant hole in the sand for the girls to climb into

roasted marshmallows over the fire and made s'mores

the girls helped chop wood for kindling

fought off 2 large racoons that wanted to take over our camp one night

went for hikes

threw a baseball around

ate lots of salt-water taffy and even ice cream

got eaten by mosquitos

played games in the tent and at the picnic table

hiked to the bathroom at 2 in the morning for an emergency potty run (and we saw the most beautiful stars in the sky on the way back to our tent)

saw a snake near the beach

saw a beautiful butterfly and some dragonfllies

and tried our best to knock the waves over in the ocean.

Check out our family photo page for some more pictures~

http://picasaweb.google.com/MForee/OceanShoresCamping#

Mustache Month at work

Can you guess which one is me? We're wearing vests made to fit over our bunker gear with air bottles on (for fires on the freeways), so they do a great job of making us look about 100 pounds heavier. Flattering, eh?

There is always an exception...

Yesterday, I got out some "new" shoes for Karina from our hand-me-down box. One is a pair of white sandals that have velcro closures on the front and back. We tried them all on and when it came time to try the sandals, I fit them to her foot and explained that when she puts them on, she will only have to undo the back velcro each time. The front can stay closed and she can just slip her feet in and out. No big deal really...unless you are Karina.

When we put shoes on this morning, she excitedly chose the new sandals. She clarified once more with me to make sure that it was okay to just use the back velcro, trying hard to understand why you would not want to undo the whole thing every time. I reassured her that it was the way to go to save time and keep things easy. She agreed reluctantly once again, but I could tell she wasn't believing that this was really the way to go.

As we were driving, I noticed she was unusually quiet, clearly deep in thought. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I had to know what she was thinking about so seriously.

She looked up at me in the mirror (almost in tears) as she said: "but Mommy, if my sandals were on fire, would it be okay to undo the front velcro? I wouldn't want my feet to burn up! That would be okay, right?"

So...when you see our Karina putting on her sandals the hard way every time...just go with it.

Kindergarten Graduation

Jadyn's last day of school was officially today.

But last Friday she had her Kindergarten class graduation. The kids made graduation caps, dressed nice, and held a small ceremony in the cafeteria.

Her teacher, Mrs. Roddy, had the kids sing a few songs, recite lines together to a poem, and even made a really neat slideshow of the kids during the schoolyear.

Jadyn was so proud - and we're so proud of the great year she had!

Way to go, JJ!

It's always fun to be with Grammy!

Thanks for coming over for the day, Grammy. We had so much fun!