Miriam's birthday party, 8 years old

We finally got around to hosting Miriam's birthday party, just a little over a month after her birthday.  She wanted a jungle party.  Hooray for me since I have tons of jungle decorations left over from having a jungle theme at cub camp last year!

The cat volunteered to be part of the decorations!  She crawled INTO the decorations, hung out for a while, and then had quite a time getting OUT of the decorations.

We've got quite a bunch of jungle stuffed animals!

She invited a mix of friends from school and church.  The party lasted three hours but I think most of the girls thought it went by way too fast.  With a bunch of seven and eight year old girls there was a LOT of squealing.  As soon as the girls started showing up, there was lots of running around, going down the fire pole, getting into dress up clothes, dancing to the disco lights, and loving (torturing) the cats.  You'd think the cats would be smart enough to go hide somewhere but they kept coming back through the rooms the girls were in.  They must enjoy getting dressed up in doll clothes!

This is the closest we could get to a group shot, and we're missing two girls.  No one wanted to stop playing long enough for a photo.  We even had to give up on getting them gathered for the birthday song and just sing with who we had.  

Almost everyone piled into the hot tub for a dip.  In and out, in and out, soaking the floor and the towels.  The mail lady brought up a package while girls were taking a break from the hot tub were riding the zip line in their wet swim suits. She said it made her shiver just to look at them!  Miriam had found the sign I hung on the female port-a-pottie at camp last year "girls only" and hung it on the front door.  When Jacob got home from work and stepped onto the hot tub deck, he had a bunch of little girls yelling at him, "You can't be here!  Girls only!"  Unitimidated, he came inside anyway.

Miriam rocking to her music, using the bat for the piñata as her microphone.  The colored lights are from the disco ball on the table behind her.  

One of the girls thought the top of the fire pole would be a great place to change her clothes.  It was quite a sight to see shirt, pants and underwear progressively fall from the sky!

Presents opened, cake eaten, everyone back to playing.  Dode made a batch of kettle corn that the girls devoured.  The floors were covered with puddles and pieces of popcorn.

Miriam must be getting older because I think this is the first party where she didn't cry because people didn't want to do what she wanted to do.  She told me it was her best party ever.  I think she feels that way every year!

Day Camp National Camp School 2013

I was able to teach at BSA National Camp School for day camp leaders again this year, my fourth time.  The training is held at Camp Thunderbird, a cub scout camp near Olympia, WA.  You don't volunteer to be on staff at National Camp School (NCS), you are invited.  The volunteer staff came from Western Washington, Spokane, Portland, and Southern Oregon.  I love teaching at NCS because I love day camp and I love teaching with so many highly skilled instructors.

The van loaded up and ready to head to camp.

We really put the participants through a lot at the training.  It consists of two full days that begin with breakfast at 7:00 am and end with a cracker barrel (snack) at 10:00 pm.  The classes are 15-40 minutes long with most being 20 minutes.  That's a lot of different information to throw at people!  We do our best to keep it fun and entertaining to the participants.

My Darth Vader welcomed everyone to school.

Every year, the National office of BSA selects a theme for day camps.  We incorporate that theme into our National Camp School.  Using the same theme at NCS and my own camp works out great for me because I get to use my decorations more than once and I get them ready for camp months in advance.  

One of the thank you's I made to hand out.  I'd seen the idea on Pinterest, then couldn't find it when I wanted to make them so I had to come up with the dimensions myself.  It felt so unfair!

Another thank you.  Last year people complained on their evaluations that they received too much candy so I also had fruit leather.

We had a fridge in our classroom stocked with ice cold R2D2 water bottles.  I found the labels here.

I'm very proud of how I transformed last year's jungle monkey into a space monkey!

Inside our classroom.  I'll be able to re-use most of the decorations at my camp.

I was fortunate that both our school carnival and a pack in our district had an outer space theme this year and they let me have their decorations.  See the planet and stars garland?  I made it with a circle cutter, star punch and sewing machine.  I used a leather needle and just started sewing.  It worked great!  

Decorated table, ready for the participants to arrive.

Having a clock to keep track of time while you're teaching is a must!

Our classroom has a mantle that was fun to decorate.

A blurry photo of my core value flags hanging in the dining hall.

The instructors set up displays about different topics.  This is my nature display, with ideas for incorporating nature activities into camp.

This is my communication display.  It gave the pros and cons of various ways of communicating at camp.

My buddy Vader and me.  

The team I taught with.  Myself, Sheri and Tylene.  We decorated painter's suits with tape to become astronauts.

I taught seven different classes at NCS this year.  My favorite things to teach are how to do crafts and woodworking at camp (after doing 11 camps, I have a lot of experience in "what not to do" and enjoy sharing what I've learned with others) and building morale at camp.  Teaching at camp is a lot of fun and a lot of work.  It's also exhausting.  It took me most of the next week to feel like I had my energy back.

Spring Break 2013

I've found that the easiest way to make fun things happen for the children is to turn them into traditions. We have been going to Ocean Shores for a few days during spring break since I was pregnant with Elizabeth.  In the last 13 years, we've only missed one year, the year Miriam was delivered prematurely by c-section two weeks before spring break.

Our annual group photo.  It's impossible to get everyone smiling!

We've found that staying three nights is perfect.  It gives us two half days and two full days at the beach.  Because of the way my mom's work schedule was this year, we went to the beach from Sunday-Wednesday.  Easter came early this year so we ended up leaving Dode to celebrate Easter by himself when we left for the ocean after attending church.  He went over to his grandparents to celebrate with them, his parents and his cousins Tracy and Erin who drove up from Utah for their own spring break celebration.

After getting home from church, we changed into casual clothes, ate a quick lunch, gave Dode hugs and set off for fun.  We picked up Isaac Colson at his house on the way.  When we got to Isaac's, we had to wait a few minutes because he'd gotten the pick up time wrong and was in the shower when we arrived.  He cut his shower short and we headed to the beach.  As I pulled onto the freeway, I told myself, "Next stoplight, Aberdeen."   (Aberdeen is a town 30 minutes from Ocean Shores.)

It takes about 3 1/2 hours to get to Ocean Shores.  As soon as we checked into the hotel and unpacked, we hit the pool.  It's not a very big pool but we had it to ourselves.  After spending an hour at the pool, we changed into warm clothes and made our first visit to the beach.  It had been beautiful sunny weather at home but it was overcast and windy in Ocean Shores.  A little cold weather isn't enough to put a damper of the children's fun.  When we got back to the room, we found that my mom and Millie had arrived.

We hadn't had our annual night Easter egg hunt yet.  I was too tired from the day to hide eggs that night, so I promised Miriam we'd do it on Monday.

The hotel we stay at (Best Western Lighthouse) has a free breakfast buffet.  After breakfast Monday morning, we did the usual ocean activities: pool, eat, beach, repeat twice.

Elizabeth and Millie preparing to fly a kite.

Making roads in the sand.

Isaac, Anastaya, Isaac Colson

Elizabeth

The most exiting thing to happen on Monday was my nephew Gabriel getting in over his head in the pool and trying to drown himself.  When I saw him having trouble, I got up, checked my pockets for electronics and prepared to jump in.  I realized he was close enough for me to reach out and I could grab him without going in, so I did.  He lay on the side of the pool gasping for a while.  I encouraged him to get a life jacket on before getting back in and after a while, he was ready to re-enter with life jacket on.  He kept to the sides of the pool for the rest of the night.  At one point he came up to me and said,  "Thank you for saving my life Aunt Stephanie."

My mom treated everyone to pizza on Monday night.  One thing that holds true for Ocean Shores each year is that there is always a long wait for food at any of the restaurants.  I think when the spring break vacationers descend, there's just too many people for the waitresses to keep up.  After dinner, I went down to the pool again and this time I got in with the children after they begged me to.  After an hour and a half of them hanging all over me, choking me and wanting me to help them swim, I finally called an end to the fun and we headed back to the room.  Miriam reminded me that I'd promised an egg hunt that night.  I told her, "Oh Miriam, I'm so tired from the day, can we do it tomorrow."  Instant tears.  So, I got on my warm clothes and set off to the beach with our Easter eggs.  As I drove there, I thought to myself, "It's times like these when we really have to dig deep to be a good parent."  I hid the eggs at the beach as quickly as I could and went back to pick up the children.

Armed with flashlights and plastic bags, the children hit the beach and began scooping up eggs.  I'm practical and lazy so I don't bother stuffing candy into the eggs.  I tell the children that they earn a quarter for every egg they find.  They can buy their own candy or save it for something else.  About half way through the hunt, Miriam came up to me crying.  She had a hole in her bag and had lost all her eggs.  The other children had unknowingly picked them up.  The older children felt badly for her and re-hid some of their eggs so she could find them.  When we got back to the hotel and counted out the eggs, Gabriel was the big winner with a grand total of $4.75.  The rest of the children found between $3.00-$4.00 worth of eggs.

Easter egg hunt, day two.

They had so much fun finding the eggs at night that we re-hid them the next day.

Tuesday, in addition to pool and beach time, those who wanted to got to go horseback riding.  Millie, Anastaya, Gabriel and Miriam ended up going.  Elizabeth would have liked to but she had a tummy ache.  Millie had such a good time, she said she wants to go every day next year.  Anastaya would have had more fun but she forgot to go to the bathroom before getting on the horse!

Miriam on her horse

Miriam and Gabriel, our hotel in the background

The kids also got to go bumper boating at the family fun park.  It cost my mom $45 to get all seven children on the bumper boats for a five minute ride.  We've been going every year for years but she thinks we need to find a new, less expensive, tradition.

Wednesday there was time for packing up, swimming in the pool, and visiting the beach one more time.  It was the nicest day of our trip, sunny with little wind.  After spending about an hour on the beach, trying to get a nice photo of the three littlest ones (Gabriel, William and Miriam) and making some sand castles, we got ready to set off for home.

Elizabeth and my mom wandered down to the water's edge one last time.  As they were walking back to the van, they noticed something moving in the sand.  They could just see a mouth opening and closing.  A fish was buried straight down in the sand.    They watched for a while and thought it was the weirdest thing ever.  My mom decided we all needed to see so she came back and got us.

When we got back to the fish, we saw that he'd worked his way out of the sand until his gills were exposed.  I'm not sure how he got stuck in the sand, but I knew that wasn't where he belonged.  I dug around him with my hands and scooped him up.

I had my shoes on but the children were barefoot so I passed him off to Anastaya to take him out into the water.  Before she could make it to the water, she dropped him.  She picked it up and decided to throw the fish to the water where he landed in about 1 inch of water, bouncing off the sand.  Everyone headed out to the water where they tried to coax the fish to start swimming.  After a few minutes, he seemed to be reviving from the trauma of being stuck in the sand, dropped in the sand, thrown onto the sand, and finally returned to the water.  They turned around and started heading back towards where my mom and I were waiting in the dry sand.  They hadn't even made it to us before a seagull swooped down and grabbed up the fish.  "No!", was the cry of the group.  "All that work just for a seagull to eat it!"  My mom told them, "It's part of the circle of life."

My mom invited us to have lunch with her at the Westport Winery.

They have a cafe with really tasty food and desserts.  If you ever go, get the frozen chocolate peanut butter pie, AMAZING!  Their grounds are covered in art and they had a maze, large chess board, and trails for the children to explore while we waited for our food.  The older children really enjoyed their meal and think it needs to be added to our yearly events.

After lunch, we headed in to Aberdeen to visit the Star Wars shop.

The day camp theme for this year is Outer Space and I thought I might find some things I could use.  The store is amazing, a jumble of Star Wars memorabilia.  The friendly owner greeted us as we walked in and let us know that they were running a special that day, everything in the store half off.  I knew from my research on Trip Advisor that every day is a half off day.  I found a broken bin where the ships were missing pieces.  For $5 each, I found a large millennial falcon, an x wing, and a storm trooper helmet.  When I was checking out, I showed him my key chain, a Darth Vader ring that I'm using in honor of day camp.  He told me that since I had that, he'd pay the tax on my purchase.  Isaac found a few patches to sew onto his jackets and Elizabeth found an R2D2 M and M figure.  Isaac thought the store was amazing and thinks we need to stop in for a visit each year.

Leaving the Star Wars store behind, we set off for home.  After fighting a bit of traffic and dropping Isaac Colson off at home, we made it home around 7:30 pm.  Isaac got the sewing stuff right out and sewed on one of his patches.

Kettle Corn Machine for the Dicksons

This post is about the meeting of two interests.  Last month, I won $500 for an article I submitted to Evergreen Surveyor.  Since then, I've been trying to figure out what I wanted to spend the money on.  For the last year (at least) Dode has been thinking about building a kettle corn machine for our family.  Last week while I had the children at the ocean to enjoy spring break, Dode was busy surfing craigslist for a wonderful "treasure".  He found a commercial kettle corn machine in Olympia for $200.  That was about half the price that he thought he could build one for.

He sent me an email about it and told me they sell new for around $2,000.  With the money I had won burning a hole in my pocket, I said, "Go for it".  Janice was looking for a bit of adventure so Dode, Sheri and Janice loaded into Janice's truck after work the next day and drove to Olympia to pick it up (about a 2 hour drive each way).

When he got there, he saw that the machine had seen heavy use and the bottom of the kettle had even been replaced by a new piece of stainless steal, but it was usable and heavy duty so he brought it home.

We got back from the beach on Wednesday night and the children could hardly stand to wait to try it out.  Thursday evening, we took the kettle corn machine over to Dode's grandparents for the inaugural use.  His cousins Tracy and Erin were visiting from Utah.  We'd watched a "how to make kettle corn" video on YouTube but weren't really sure what to do.  You can do anything after seeing it on YouTube right?  What better way to experiment than in front of a crowd, right?!

Aunt Viv asked us what the plan was and we told her we were making it up as we went.  She decided the wise thing to do would be to move her car out of the carport far from where we would be doing the popping.  We got everything assembled and fired it up.   Soon, it was raining popcorn.  The flat, after market bottom, on our kettle encourages early popped kernels to explode out of the kettle all over the place.

Outside and getting ready.

Elizabeth stirs the pot.

We're all watching the kettle and waiting for something to happen.

The first kernel leaves the kettle.  It is a white blur near Aunt Viv's right hand.

Uncle Dave (our photographer) caught a lot of excitement in this picture!

Dode had one of the unpopped kernels, covered in melted sugar, land and stick to the skin of his collar bone and then pop.  Ouch!  I told him that's because he's such a hottie!  We didn't stop laughing until long after the popcorn was done popping.  Our kettle corn experiment definitely brought life to the crowd.  It was a cold, rainy day outside but under that carport, we were having a blast.  Dode's grandpa and grandma even stayed outside in the cold throughout both batches we did.

When the popcorn was done (popping every few seconds just like making popcorn in the microwave), Dode's cousin Tracy had the honor of dumping it out.  Unfortunately, the bin to catch the popcorn wasn't in the right place so half our first batch ended up on the ground!  

Dump it out.  Grandma is still hiding from rouge popcorn.

(click on this picture to see grandma's face)

When it was time to dump the salt on our first batch, I sprinkled what I thought was a good amount of salt over the popcorn and turned the salt shaker right side up only to have the plug on the bottom of the shaker fall out of the shaker and salt start gushing out.  So, part of the popcorn was extra salty!

We should have stopped while we were ahead because our first batch was pretty close to perfect.  We made a second batch that was on the "well done" side of cooked.  All in all, it was great fun with lots of laughter.

Clean up of the kettle corn machine is so much easier than cleaning our theater style popcorn popper.  With the theater popcorn popper, I have to clean the inside windows and all the nooks and crannies of the popping mechanism.  With the kettle corn machine, we just dumped some water in, brought it to a boil, washed it around and dumped it out.  Clean and ready to go!  We could even use our kettle to make an enormous batch of hot dogs or chili!

 Driving over to his grandparents, Dode and I remarked that it was a grey rainy day and we both had a case of the blahs.  After all the laughter and excitement, driving home our moods had lifted!   I think we brought some energy to our relatives as well!

We made another batch at home Friday night after watching the YouTube videos again.  We got that batch right and didn't even salt it extra.  The children think it should become part of our Friday night tradition.  Pizza followed by kettle corn.