Camporee!

We had a family camp-out with the Girl Scouts.  But then only Colby came.  Poor guy!  So it was a mom & daughter camp-out with Colby there.  But it was fun anyway!

Except for the really loud owl that woke me up a bunch of times.

What time is it? SUMMERTIME!

Why is the end of the school year always SO CRAZY!?! 

Because it involves kids like these...

And saying goodbye.

And ripping your heart out, knowing they'll never be first and fifth graders again.  That they're getting bigger.  That you have to say goodbye to the wonderful teachers and coaches that helped encourage and challenge and expand their world.  I never cry on the first day of school, I'm always distracted by the exciting new supplies and new teachers and new classrooms and new friends.  So much new stuff!  But the end of the year is so hard for me!  I hate goodbyes.  I may be a little dramatic.  I realize this.  You have to love me anyway.  

My awesome friend C decided to celebrate the beginning of summer by creating a homemade GIGANTIC SLIP & SLIDE!!!!  Look at how huge that is!  It went down the side yard of her neighbor (and luckily our friend;) J's house.  There were about 15 little girls over, ready to party.

At first some of the girls didn't understand what you were supposed to do.  They daintily sat their hindquarters down on the plastic and expected to have a swift, entertaining, but fully controlled slide down the hill.  They slid awkwardly down about three feet and wondered why it wasn't "working".  Then one brave girl threw herself down belly first on the plastic.  Then C broke out the bucket of shaving cream.  And a bottle of soap.  And, for good measure, a Costco size bottle of dish washing liquid.  Yeah.... there weren't any problems sliding down after that....

 

 

Can you see why Gretchen loves these girls?  BRING ON THE CRAZY.

Just in case you were wondering, yes it IS very fun to cover yourself in shaving cream.  Being covered in shaving cream unleashes your inner poser.

(Unfortunately Ella was at a class GIRLS ONLY swim party, so I didn't get any awesome pictures of her covered in shaving cream.  Though she may have been too mortified by her sister to engage in shaving cream shenanigans...)

 

Gretchen posed at the top of the slide, ready for adventure...  

 

Adventure!

 

 

Our friend C is a very good friend to have.  For example, the week before she made a GIGANTIC END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR ICE CREAM PARTY for 50 of their closest friends.  Don't be grossed out by how unhygienic it is to share an ice cream trough with 50 of your closest friends (we're building immunities!) think about how awesome it is to have A FIFTY FOOT ICE CREAM SUNDAE!!!

The only problem is that it was sort of on a hill, and our little friend on the bottom right kept yelling that her ice cream was "floating away"!  But it's the ice cream trough that keeps giving, cause as hers floated away, another new ice cream cam floating down to her.  Awww!  Circle of life.

   

Remember how two paragraphs before I was saying how hard it is to say goodbye to our teachers?  Yeah.  It was.  Now I'm going to go on about that again.  Feel free to make fun of me for what an emotional nerd I am.  This year my friend M & I partnered up to do art in two classes (her son's and Gretchen's.)  We had so many nice moms (and even a nice grandma) who came in to help us.  It was AWESOME.  To thank our amazing teachers, we had the kids do self portraits on shrinky-dinks (dude, we're bringing shrinky-dinks BACK.  For reals.  It's our 2nd time using them this year, and we have a plan for next Christmas too.  Booya!)  We gave the kids the option to draw their self portraits as a person, or as an animal.  They just had to draw the animal (or person) with a t-shirt on that had their name.  So we could tell who it was who thinks of themselves as a purple dragon.  I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but they turned out ADORABLE.

 

I gave Gretchen's teacher hers at the Poetry Slam the night before the last day of school.  I was going to say, "We love you so much, thank you for all that you did for our children.  You have an amazing gift of making each child feel special and capable.  We all owe you so much."  But instead I just sort of awkwardly shoved it at her and said, "Thanks for a great year." and then sat down again before I broke into tears.  UGH.  NERD!

No, but seriously, her teacher was amazing.  Sniff.

Also, that's not her baby.  But look at how cute that baby is.  We all fight over holding her.  We let her teacher win.  This time.

 

The kids were encouraged to wear "Black" to the poetry slam.  Fun, right?  Gretchen took it a step further and wore ALL BLACK.  She resurrected her super creepy Halloween costume from kindergarten year.  And totally owned it.  I kept thinking she'd wimp out and take it off last minute, but she sat in full black for the full poetry slam.  Even delivered her poem in it.  Yep.  Pretty proud of that kid!

 

 

I almost didn't make it to the Poetry Slam.  I had an unexpected 18 hour layover in Phoenix on the way home from Charlotte, NC.  Why did I go to Charlotte?

 

To help these fine people debut their new card game, "Nuts about Mutts"!  Yaaaaay!  We were at a Specialty Toy & Gift Fair, right next to the Smelcils people (smelly pencils!  don't be jealous!  My girls were!) 

  

 

You should totally buy this card game!  Despite the fact that it's still getting shipped from the Italian printer.  You should TOTALLY buy a million copies!  It'll be on Amazon in a few weeks with free Prime shipping!  Woo hoo!  While we were there, we found out their first game (which I illustrated for them many moons ago, "Cover Your Assets") is not only the hot new college drinking game (Grandma Beck and I are a little mortified that we're contributing to the delinquency of minors, but happy they're buying the games;), BUT it's also in the Top 100 games on Amazon.  Woo hoo!!!!!

It was a really fun experience, and cool to see all the specialty toys.  Grandma Diana would have been SO EXCITED, it was all her favorites.  Automoblox, fancy wood learning toys, random 3D puzzles, dress up booths... the works!

The next day, Grandma Beck (who I call Tauni.  We're close like that.) decided the best way to spend our free morning was to go to an antique mall.  That, my friend, is ALWAYS the best way for me to spend my morning!

Here note two things:  

1.  People have always loved their cats.  Even antique people.    

2.  Does that music stand look familiar siblings?  They totally had one!

 

And, because poor Ella got NO pictures this post, I'm throwing in this one from her friend's birthday party.  She beat that beautiful purple unicorn to a candy-bleeding pulp.  That sounds awful, doesn't it?  But look at how big and capable she's getting!  

And, I forgot to add this one on.  Here's Gretchen with her soccer coach getting her ribbon.  Yay!  Soccer is over!  (Wait, did I just say that?  I mean "Yay!  She tried something new and persevered!"  I really was proud of her, by the end she was totally going after that ball!  I would have been all, "Um, I'll just stand over here and hope it never comes close to me...")

 

 This was the first week of summer and we kicked it off with a bang.  I invested in water park passes and they've already paid off!  We went FOUR TIMES last week!  And we're going tomorrow!  Crazy, I know.  But SO SO SO FUN!  Gretchen' officially ridden all the rides.  (There's one even I won't go on!  It's the only one that Ella won't either.  I was proud of her for branching out!  I thought she'd stick to the lazy river and the wave pool all summer, but she proved me wrong!)  Uncle Aaron and his crew are rolling in Monday evening, then we're going to take them to Tahoe and show them around town.  So fun will be had this week, my friends.  FUN WILL BE HAD.

CHICKIES!!!!!

The feed store was getting their last delivery of baby chicks on Friday.  But I was scheduled to be in Ella's class doing art!  What to do!?!?!  COLBY TO THE RESCUE!  He picked out the best three chicks they had.  I mean, CLEARLY.  Look at these babes.   Above is when Gretchen saw them for the first time after school on Friday.  AwwwwWWWWwwwwwWWW!!!!

Right now they're named Chicken Nugget (formerly "Marky"), Hello Chicky, and Brownie*. 

*Names subject to change at a moments notice. 

We have to keep them away from Duke (who we are babysitting for Uncle Aaron for three more weeks).  He wants to eat them.  EAT THEM SO BAD.

We also have to keep them away from Russia, our comrade kitten.  She wants to STALK AND HUNT THEM SO BAD.

So for now they live in a big Rubbermaid container in the girl's tub.  Under a heat lamp.  With the shower door and the bathroom door closed AT ALL TIMES.

Because even though one's named Chicken Nugget, we don't really mean it...

Their feet are creepy, FYI, and may make you freak out a little bit. But get over it.  Cause they're so FREAKIN' CUTE!!!!

 Kiss!  Mwah!

  Creepy feet, cute face!  Awwwww!

Gretchen is super into "posing" them.  She kept trying to get this one to pose for a portrait amongst the flowers.  I'd already shut down the idea of posing in the fairy village (too far for chicky to fall) and she wouldn't stay still enough to pose in the flower pots....  CHICKY, BEHAVE!!!!

 Pretty much the best picture ever taken, right?  I KNOW!  CHICKIES!!!!

Oh yeah, and did you see Gretchen in her soccer uniform?  She had her last game yesterday.  She rocked it.  But she also hates it.  So she says.  (She says that about a lot of stuff, we'll see how she really feels when next season rolls around.  I'd bet she wants to join again.....)

And my dream of summer marshmellow roasting came true, friends.  Gretchen and I ran to Home Depot yesterday and bought a $20 galvanized metal tub..  Then we said, "That's our fire pit!"  Then we made a fire in it.  Then our friends came over and made smores with us.  AMAZING.  The backyard sort of smells like camping now, so hopefully our neighbors don't hate us.  AHHH SUMMER!!!  It's amazing!  I can't wait for the rest of it!  Except I sort of can, cause summer gives me serious anxiety (balancing work and chllins and chickies and trips out of town.... OVERLOAD!)  But I have a plan this year.  Only two road trips.  Passes to the water park.  And I will know my limits.  I WILL!  Ack!  When things get stre3ssful, I can just hold a chicken in the chair swing and it will all be ok. 

Only Tourists call it SanFran...

 

Look at that!  My friends, that is me and my baby girl right before we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge.  For my birthday weekend I got to go to Ikea AND spend the weekend with my family and our girl scout sisters in San Francisco!  It was my FIRST TIME THERE!  What?  How can I live four hours away and NEVER HAVE GONE TO SF?  How can we have gone to NYC TWICE since moving to Reno and still not taken a weekend trip to SF?  Because, my friends, we are ridiculous.  I'm not sure if you've heard, but San Francisco is pretty fabulous.  

In Girl Scouts there's this thing called "Bridging" where when you graduate from a level, you're supposed to symbolically walk across a bridge and be greeted on the other side by the next level of girl scouts.  One of our Girl Scout moms found out about this program where you can walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.  SIGN ME UP!

Here is my Bridge Walk Selfie.   (There were people with selfie sticks ALL OVER SF.  For reals.  They weren't even embarrassed about it.  They should have been.)

 

Here's the girls after we finished the walk.  Don't they look like they could be on the brochure for How To Be A Fabulous Girl Scout?  Yep. (That is not Ella's Bear, BTW.  We're not cool enough to have that accessory.)

 Our hotel was centrally located, which means we thought we could walk everywhere.  By the end of the day, one of our little friends' pedometer said she'd walked EIGHTEEN MILES.  I didn't quite believe the accuracy of that claim (the pedometer, of course I believe our friend!), but I'd bet we walked over 13 miles.  With 10 year olds.  It's not our muscles that hurt, it was EVERYTHING.  Ella kept saying, "My feet are so sore!  Not like in one spot, just EVERYWHERE!".  Yep.  You know when you walk around all day and then at the end your feet just ache when you stand up?  Like, "Nooooooooooooooo!  Not again!"  That.

 But we didn't stop.  Instead we went to Alkatraz.

 You take a ferry there.  No, there weren't any sharks.

 But there is an audio tour.  So basically it's a bunch of people meandering around a big empty prison in silence.  That's not weird.

 Gretchen was a little creeped out by the whole thing.  The audio tour had "Sound Effects".  Do you know what it sounds like when someone get's shanked?  We do now!

Also, there was a dummy head from the infamous breakout/unsolved mystery.  They had it laying on the bed with blankets around it to look like a body.  It was SUPER CREEPY.  Gretchen thought they put a real head on the bed and it was NOT OK.  Even after we explained that it was just a statue, she still had a hard time getting to sleep for a few weeks.  Poor kid.

 Just chillin' in the prison dining room with dad...

 

 The Alkatraz ferry had pretzels.  That made life better...

After our marathon day, we slept HARD.  But we also wanted to get the most of our last morning in the city, so we met our peeps in Chinatown.  AND took a trolly ride!  That was a lovely $27 lift up a hill in an old-timey wooden car.  Have you heard how expensive San Francisco is?  Yeah, they weren't lying... 

 

 

Enjoying your trolley ride sweetie?  IT'S THREE DOLLARS PER MINUTE!  #$&@#$ ENJOY IT!

 

 

 Chinatown is awesome and we love it. 

For reals.

So these pics are NOT from San Francisco, but were on my phone and I wanted to share.  A farm in Spanish Springs had the brilliant event, "Baby Animal Days".  For two days they opened their pumpkin patch farm up to the public to share all their baby animals!  It was pretty much a cute overload.  You couldn't walk two feet without either hearing, or yourself saying, "AwwwwWWWwwwWWW!"

  

She's not really strangling the goat.  See?  It's smiling...

 

 

And then it was the collaborative art auction at the girl's school, which I missed for reasons I'll explain in a bit.  The piece above is called "100 First Grade Hearts".  My friend Michon & I are crazy and when to 4 classes to have each kid make a heart, which we combined and framed in this fabulous antique frame that my other friend donated to the cause.  It was pretty much awesome ifIdosaysomyself....  If I had a billion dollars, I would have put my hat in the bidding ring for it... You can't tell in this picture, but it's made up of acrylic, glitter paper, watercolor, oil pastel, tin, and MORE. 

 

 

And in Gretchen's class, we used manipulative hipster lyrics to trick people into spending more billions of dollars to support our school.  Each kid drew their "home".  Can you guess which one's is Gretchen's?  

(it's the yellow one in the middle!!!  Doesn't it look JUST LIKE our house!?!?!  I know, she's brilliant...)  

Ella's class project turned out pretty cool too (we acutally had to re-do it cause the first attempt was NOT COOL.  But onwards and upwards, it came together in the end.  And then I forgot to snap a photo on my phone.  Whoops!  I've got a picture of it somewheres....

Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter....

 

I was not at the fabulous art auction, because I was IN SEATTLE!!!!  I got to spend the weekend with my two BFFS!  First Lismarie picked me up from the airport and we got to spend a glorious evening eating the best strip-mall Thai food in Southcenter, then we got to stay up until midnight talking, then we got to go to Goodwill AND Target to shop, and lunch, and then the ferry to Seattle.  I KNOW!  But then it wasn't over, cause Lismarie helped me sneak into Janeece's house so we could set up her SURPRISE 40th BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!  It was so awesome!  Huge props to Mr. Janeece for arranging it all.  Saturday J and I got to get our nails did real pretty, then took the bus downtown and shopped and shopped and shopped.  We even got to go to the Japanese Dollar Store and get treasures for the girls.  I know!  Best weekend ever!  

  

And life just keeps getting even more exciting, cause look what they got at Costco.  CHICKEN COOPS!!!  WHAT?!!?!!  Should we get one?  (Spoiler alert:  WE DID!)