Outdoor Ed

Last week, Hannah was able to go with the rest of the 4th graders to Outdoor Education -- a 3-day, 2-night camp sponsored by the school. McKay did this two years ago and while there is a part of me that is hesitant about sending my 10-year-old away on a school trip like this for 2 nights, I knew what to expect and I know the teachers and other school staff well enough that I was comfortable with sending her. Plus, she was SO excited!

Outdoor Ed is held at Ceta Canyon (about 45 minutes away) at a facility that is run by a Methodist church (I think) and is used for lots of camps, retreats, youth conferences, etc. They have a cafeteria and cabins with bunk beds and pretty good facilities.

They have a "parent night" on the second night of the camp where parents are invited to come and see the kids perform skits. McKay and I went down (since he had already been to Outdoor Ed, it was okay for him to go -- they discourage the younger ones from coming as to not ruin any of the "surprises" for when they are in 4th grade).

We found Hannah in high spirits, wearing her tie-dyed T-shirt and proudly sporting her bandana identifying her as a member of the "Yellow" team.

The kids are split up into groups of about 8 during the day with an adult leader -- they stay with this group for all of their daytime activities and classes. Each group has an identifying color and they come up with a group name, cheer, flag, skit, etc. Here is Hannah with her Yellow Yaks team flag:

Hannah and McKay (he's getting so tall!):

Hannah and me:

Hannah's group doing their cheer before they performed their lawn mower skit.

Hannah showing us her sleeping area:

McKay and Hannah near the sleeping areas just before McKay and I left to go home.

When I picked Hannah up on Friday afternoon, she was sunburned and very tired, but told us she had a fantastic time.

Pet Update

I realized I never put an update here about the latest with our pets.

If you recall, we acquired two huskes, Bear and Lupin, last spring from Courtney's teacher. While they have been good dogs, they seem to have a roaming tendency and we had to keep the locked up in our fairly small dog yard or they would just take off (and they did manage to escape several times -- once they were gone for 3 days). Brian was never very fond of the dogs -- they chewed up lots of his wires and other things and he's just not a "dog person". The kids liked the dogs, but honestly didn't spend a lot of time with them because (1) they seemed to forget about them as the dogs were in the dog yard out of sight and (2) the dogs, while very friendly, were still quite big and strong and could easily knock the girls over.

I was doing my best to take them out for a walk every morning -- although usually I think it was more they took me for a walk. One morning a month or two ago, I happened to stop briefly along the dirt trail where we walked when all of a sudden a deer appeared over the hill just ahead of us. Needless to say, the dogs went crazy and took off after the deer. I didn't have my feet planted very well and I ended up getting pulled over (face first) and dragged along for a bit before they finally stopped. (I had their leashes sort of looped around my wrists so I wasn't able to easily let go, and if I had, they would have been long gone.)

Needless to say, this event was sort of the final push to find the dogs a new home that might be a better fit for their energy level and needs. I decided to try posting a listing online on Craigs List, not really expecting much to come from it because it seemed like there were a lot of pet listings. So I was very surprised when I had about 4 responses within a few hours and it turned out that a couple came that very night and ended up taking both dogs. We felt good about where they were going and were glad that the dogs got to stay together.

(And true to form, Lupin jumped right in their car and made himself at home in the driver's seat while they struggled to convince Bear to get in -- finally having to pick him up and stick him in the back seat!)

Whether or not we will get another dog remains to be seen. So for now, we just have our cat, Daisy, who just turned a year old. She is still a bit hyper and is definitely not a cuddly cat to sit contentedly in your lap. She will tolerate the girls when she has to, which usually looks something like this:

And she's found a few favorite new places to curl up recently, like my computer chair:

And the fresh piles of laundry before they get folded:

At least she doesn't jump on our bed in the middle of the night anywhere and try to attack our feet!

Photo Shoot

I realized the other day that the pictures of my kids on the wall were getting pretty outdated. Since I didn't buy any of their school pictures this year (so expensive!), I figured I'd better hurry and take some myself so the kids would have some sort of portrait for the year.

So one Sunday afternoon, we did a quick photo session after church. Not the greatest pictures, but they turned out okay!

Hayley:

Courtney:

Hannah:

McKay (who didn't change out of his church clothes because he was going home teaching with Brian):

And a couple with the cat:

Spotted

Spotted after school one day...

(And McKay was working on some HTML programming on his computer but snuck away before I got a picture.)

This makes me happy. :-)

Egg Hunt

We had a little egg hunt for all the kids while we were at Julie's house on Easter. Even the big boys decided they wanted to participate -- who can pass up all that candy?

Easter

After church on Easter Sunday, we went over to the "blue house" (as we all call it) to have dinner with Brian's sister Julie and her family.

Setting up the kid's table in the kitchen:

They had cooked a turkey (with some new fancy infrared thing -- it was yummy!) and Hannah begged to be given a whole drumstick. This is her favorite part of a chicken, turkey, etc. We all teased her about getting so much for her skinny little self!

She managed to clean it off pretty good all things considered!

The kids had fun playing outside and we had an egg hunt (coming up next post). This picture of Courtney "dancing" with Ashley's dog Toby cracked me up!

And perhaps most amazing of all was that we managed to convince McKay to let Julie cut his hair. I have been trying for years (literally) to convince McKay to let someone else (like Julie, who is trained and definitely more experienced) cut his hair instead of me. I never feel like I do a very good job, but for some reason he has always adamantly, absolutely refused anyone else -- ever since he was a little boy. So despite his protests, I had to take a picture as proof!

Easter Eggs

(I think I'm going to divide up my Easter posts so I don't have to put so many pictures in one post.)


The kids were excited as usual to dye Easter eggs the Saturday before Easter. This year, we noticed the instructions said you could either mix the color table with vinegar for "brilliant" color, lemon juice for "traditional" color or water for "pastel" colors. In the past, we have always just used vinegar but this time I let the kids decide. So we ended up with some of each and honestly, I couldn't tell much of a difference!


Not much else to say, so here are the pictures!