Raising Cubs in a Campground

Last year we threw our first Halloween Bash and while I took lots of pictures I only shared a photo of PapaBear's hilarious pumpkin carving display. I found lots of DIY Halloween crafts online & thought I'd share them now since the only decorations I'm putting out this year are our pumpkins from our straw bale garden. We haven't ever really decorated for Halloween before so I was starting from scratch. With a very small budget we managed to make our big ol' house party worthy. I used lots of black card stock for bats , mice on the stairs (#8), cat silhouette, and the silly toilet monster (#2).  I also stretched a package of brown paper lunch bags pretty far. We gave out paper bag brooms as prizes for games (#11) ( dangling doughnuts , scavenger hunt, Halloween bingo), used them to wrap up drinks for the dice game which is always a big hit, and used them for collecting items for the scavenger hunt. I wrote "Happy Halloween" on the front of the bag...

UPDATE: If you follow me on twitter you probably already heard the good news that Alice is alive and well (and LOCKED in the house from now on). I learned the hard way that there was a cat with very similar markings living in our campground and that is the cat that was hit crossing the road by our house.  I am still in shock that our Ali showed up on our front porch alive and well at about 7:20. It was an emotional morning to say the least! Thank you for your kind words everyone!!! original post follows.... Today is Julia's sixth birthday, but I don't feel like celebrating. An hour ago I left to get birthday doughnuts and my headlights lit up what looked like a coon on the road in front of the park. But it wasn't. It was our Ali. Our sweet sweet Ali Cat. The same kitty who less than 24 hours ago was budging in on Elsa's 15 month portraits. She was so good with Elsa and let her love on her without complaint. Elsa's favorite sign is Kitty because she loves her...

We made it! Elsa celebrated her 52nd week by pulling herself to standing on our kitchen steps. (June 23rd) All this time she's been our baby girl, lagging behind in development compared to her siblings. Sitting for FOUR months before she started to crawl. Humoring Mama and staying 'little' as looooong as possible.  The times are a changin' now! She now has way more awareness of her surroundings, her wishes, and getting in the middle of all the action. One thing that hasn't changed is her smile. No new teeth for a while now. Still top four and bottom four. She's a great eater - chunks of cooked carrots were added to her diet today with success.      Did I mention the pulling up she's starting to do? Good time to retire the basket! Cloth Diaper Details: Using a Thirsties cover here, but ever since I bought disposables when she had Hand Foot & Mouth, I've been using them more often. My excuse - she's a squirmy wormy on the changing...

Our baby girl turned 51 weeks waaaaaaaaaaay back on June 29th. But I'm not going to dwell on my lack of updates. Instead I've pulled out my calendar and looked up the notes I've taken on Elsa's development and am going to get myself caught up. So there. :)  This was VBS week so Elsa was my helper at school while I did my part to help out. It's been nice to not have to wake her from her afternoon nap (transitioning to one nap slowly) now that school is out for summer.  She's so good about going to sleep as long as I stay in the room with her. I love to sit in the rocker and watch her drift of to sleep. She tried chicken breast for the first time this week and liked it, but for the most part we will continue to use beans as her main source of protein. I hate beans. hate.them. But it's the least I can do to help her be braver than her mama. I'll wrap up this week's update with one of my favorites from this week. Good thing we only have o...

 Our neighbors clued us in on a great way to carve a pumpkin without the typical mess that goes with it. The secret is to carve into the pumpkin before  it turns orange. I used my car key to carve Elsa's name into one of our pumpkins and then waited a few days to see whether a scar would form or if I would cause the pumpkin to rot.   A week later and sure enough, there is a scar starting to form which means Elsa's pumpkin is on its way to being ready to decorate our front porch and it only took 20 seconds to personalize it! A week later and sure enough, there is a scar starting to form which means Elsa's pumpkin is all ready to decorate our front porch and it only took 20 seconds to personalize it! This will remain a simple design for this year but by next year I will carve her name (and maybe the year?) and then let her paint the pumpkin. Sam loved painting his pumpkin when he was two and I have a feeling Elsa will too. Here's the pumpk...

 She is a treasure and we are so happy to welcome her to the family! God's riches blessings to our newest Goddaughter! We love you Amelia!

 The day Julia has been waiting for FINALLY arrived. August 28th, 2012. Ever since we dropped her big brother, Sam, off at kindergarten two years ago she's been itching to go. Sam is a pro at this first day of school business. He has loved school from the beginning . Preschool seems like forever ago. Look how little he looked and so handsome the next year ! I love being able to compare their heights against the big rock by our office. I suppose it would only be fitting to do some senior portraits on the rock some day....some day far far far from now.  I found these chalkboards at a garage sale the week before school started with the intent of using them to play school, but they ended up being perfect for the first day of school shots.   (Elsa's reads: First day with just Mama) As you can see, Julia is right at home at school.  The first day she didn't get to stay very long and she had to have boring ol' mom along.  We did some o...

Something always seems to get in the way of being able to check "nap in the hammock" off of our bucket list for the summer. Sam has fallen asleep in the hammock, but I've been too greedy about having a big chunk of 'nap time freedom' to slow down and nap in the hammock myself. Monday night Elsa was tired especially early so I put her pj's on and took her out to nurse and rock her to sleep, hammock style. Then I asked PapaBear to wake me in a bit so I didn't sleep too long and risk Elsa not transferring to her bed OK.  It was so worth being groggy the rest of the evening from taking a nap at 6:30 at night to have that special snuggle time with my little girl!

Back on June 6th we made a bucket list for the summer based off of this post at Delia Creates.  There were only a few things we didn't get to this summer which is pretty good considering how full our list was! A couple of ones I added as long shots were "Swim Underwater" and "Ride without Training wheels." Neither Sam nor Julia could swim when the summer began or really liked to put their face in the water so this was a big leap. But you know what? They DID IT! We signed up for an early time slot for lessons so they could spend the rest of the summer practicing their new skills. That move paid off big time because they were jumping off the diving board, going down big water slides, and having a blast in four different pools we visited this hot hot hot summer. We weren't as proactive about helping Julia gain the confidence she needed to ditch the training wheels until last week. We put her old bike away and only left this one out - without training w...