Camping: Rain AND Shine

As usual, camping in Naselle was lovely. I always enjoy spending time with friends and family and doing lots of nothing. The weather wasn't as good as it has been on our other camping trips, but it turned out to be MUCH better than expected. The only time it really rained was on Sunday. We even enjoyed a good share of sunshine! The kids had fun playing with their cousins and being visited nightly by the "Camping Fairy" aka Kylee. I must say, on this particular trip, the kids were spoiled rotten!

We played lots of games, ate lots of food, played paintball, watched a couple of movies out by the fire, and went 4-wheelin'. Six days of pure fun! Below is the slide show of pics. I also downloaded a short video of the insane rain (unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture the thunder and lightning) on Sunday morning.

Camping Videos

All 3 of these were shot while on a 4-wheeler...so they are a bit bumpy. Remember to turn the sound on.

Singing and Special Sauces

Synnove's newest thing is dipping her food in whatever is within reach. Her latest dips have been:

-Teriyaki stick dipped in vanilla yogurt

-Apples dipped in ketchup

-A cheeseburger dipped in applesauce

Soren LOVES to sing. He sings in the car with the music, sings to his teddy bears, sings while he and Synnove dance, etc. It is especially cute in the car when he's trying to pick up lyrics here and there with that serious singing face. Anyway, here's Soren (and I) singing Jesus Loves Me...

Play Dough and My 1st Compressed Video!

I have this book called The Preschooler's Busy Book that I've had since I taught preschool 6 years ago and I don't think I've gotten it out since. It has several different dough recipes, and I tried one yesterday. I didn't have all the ingredients of any of the others, so it was my only option. It turned out to be quite stiff, but the kids still enjoyed it. I got out the big bag of cookie cutters I scored at the Goodwill Outlet back when Synnove was still a baby and they made a bunch of fun shapes.

What I found after I got out of the shower...

That afternoon I went to the store to pick up some ingredients to make a couple of the other recipes. The kids BEGGED to play with dough this morning, so I cooked up a batch and the kids had a blast!

Here's the recipe I used:

1/2 cup of salt

2 cups water

use tempera, kool aid, or food coloring (if desired)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons alum

4 cups sifted flour

Directions: Heat water and salt on the stove till salt is dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in the rest of the ingredients. Mix/knead till it's ready to play with. It's supposed to last up to 2 months in a sealed container.

I've finally learned how to compress video files! I just downloaded Microsoft Media Encoder and shrunk it to VHS quality. The entire process of uploading to Blogger still took a while (around 12 minutes)...even though I shrunk it down to around 5 megs. So, here's a snippet of our morning!