Cabin Trip with my Girl Scouts

This weekend has been CRAZY! Kyle had the annual fathers and sons campout to go to with the boys, and I had my cabin trip with half of my girl scouts. Which meant that we needed to figure out what to do with Chloe, Lydia and Adam. Adam ended up going along with Kyle and the boys. Kyle didn’t really want to take him considering he is still so young (and in diapers), but I knew Adam would be more comfortable with Daddy and his brothers in a tent than at somebody else’s house. For Chloe and Lydia I made arrangements with them to have an overnighter with one of the neighbors. We debated on having a young woman from the neighborhood spend the night at our house with them, but Kyle REALLY didn’t like that idea.

As I got ready to leave yesterday morning, Lydia was super excited about her upcoming adventures for the weekend.

WP_20140718_001

At the cabin we worked on the Flowers badge for the juniors, and so the girls got to go out on a hike to look for and draw some flowers. We didn’t have any special badges for the daisies to work on, but we let them observe and draw flowers too.

IMG_2029

One of my co-leaders had access to a solar oven so we brought that along. We had planned on making brownies, or maybe cooking our pizza dinner in it, but when we saw that it wasn’t going to get hot enough for that we decided to make our smores in it (since we can’t have a fire to roast the marshmallows with).

IMG_2042

Along with the flowers badge, another of my co-leaders decided to teach the girls how to make flowers out of gum paste. Tyra chose to make a daisy.

IMG_2054

I had a “hiking is fun” patch to give to the girls so we actually went on two hikes. The first was up to the water tank. While we were up there, one of my co-leaders wanted to see if the letterbox her daughter left up there was still there. So the girls began hunting for it, and Dinah was the one to find it. That letterbox contained a clue to the location of a second letterbox. Our second hike was down to the beaver dam. Along the way we passed by where the second letterbox was hidden. Again, my co-leader wondered if it was still there, and tried looking for it. But it wasn’t where she and her daughter had left it. Once again, Dinah was the one to find it. Here she is standing next to where it was in the grass. 🙂

IMG_2057

The girls had a really good time. From what I heard they didn’t sleep much because they were up all night talking. From the room of the cabin that I slept in, I didn’t hear the girls at all. But I heard one of my co-leaders telling them to be quiet several times through night. Hopefully the boys got some sleep at their campout because I didn’t get much. 🙂

Cherries

Remember all these cherries?

IMG_1802

Well I turned them into this!

IMG_2025

Yumm! I canned some whole cherries with the pits and some whole cherries without pits so we can see if there is a big difference. It’s faster to can them without pitting them, but other than that I don’t think there is a huge difference in the quality of the fruit. I also made cherry pie filling, some cherry rhubarb pie filling, cherry jam, cherry rhubarb jam and cherry sorbet (not in the picture). Oh and I froze some whole pitted cherries so that I would have some for smoothies or whatever else we might want them for. 🙂

Trip to the Clark Planetarium

My parents are in town for a visit and so they took us to the planetarium today. I believe one or two of the kids have been to the planetarium as a school field trip, but most of us have never been. We decided to take the train, since the planetarium is pretty close to one of the stops, and it’s just fun to take the train once in awhile. 🙂

IMG_1986

IMG_1987

The car that we were on was loaded with missionaries. The girls sat at a table across from some sister missionaries and talked with them the whole way.

IMG_1989

We got off the train and walked to the planetarium. The walk wasn’t very far, but being July it was hot. Once we got inside the planetarium we found out we couldn’t take the strollers upstairs, so we had to leave them in the stroller parking area. We went upstairs and wandered around for awhile while waiting for our movie in the dome to start.

IMG_1997

It was interesting to see a movie projected onto a dome shaped screen. I think the big kids, especially the boys, liked the “Exploding Universe” video. Adam and Lydia did not. They happened to fall asleep during the beginning of the movie, considering it was naptime and they were sitting in a cool dark place doing nothing. But when things started exploding that woke them up really fast, and they were not happy about it.

When the movie was over we went out and looked at more of the exhibits.

IMG_1999

There was a set up to show what the landscape of Mars looks like:

IMG_2009

My cute little Martian:

IMG_2016

They also had a “Lunar Landscape”:

IMG_2011

Hey look! That Martian is a moon walker too!

IMG_2017

This camera was pretty neat. It could sense the heat of the people and objects in front of it and projected it in colors onto the screen.

IMG_2018

IMG_2021

We finished up our time at the planetarium watching a 3d movie called “Flight of the Butterflies”. Dad thought the girls would like that one. And so they did. The butterflies appeared to be flying right in our faces. I saw several of the kids reaching out to try to grab them. Adam and Lydia however, wouldn’t leave their 3d glasses on for long. They just wanted to play with them.

When the movie was over, and we had everyone use the bathroom, we got to walk back to the train station. This time we picked the WRONG car of the train to get onto. We just happened to pick the “bike friendly” car, and it was LOADED with bicycles and their riders. So most of us had to stand the whole way back to our stop. And each time the train made a stop, there was a huge shuffle to let people get off with their bikes and to let more people on with THEIR bikes. It was madness and it was impossible to keep the aisle clear. The employee working in that car of the train encouraged us to complain to see if we can’t convince the train line to add more “bike friendly” cars so they won’t just have one car jam packed with bicycles.

As we got closer to our stop, dad had me text Kyle to have him meet us at a restaurant for dinner. We ended up going to Texas Roadhouse, and they had to put us at two tables. That place is not very “large party” friendly. We were told they couldn’t make one big table for us, because of fire safety rules. Other than that, dinner was good, and everyone had a good time on our little adventure.

Fourth of July

Liesl is in town today for Granny’s birthday so we all went to lunch at Los Hermanos.

IMG_4847

IMG_4836

IMG_4838

IMG_4867

After lunch Liesl took lots of pictures out front of the restaurant. Here is one of all my kiddos spelling out USA

IMG_4922

Like all of their patriotic outfits?

IMG_4932

When Liesl was done taking pictures, and we finally figured out what the plan for the rest of the day was, we headed back home for a bit. We weren’t going to be able to be home for very long because we were supposed to be going to the Psuik’s house for the evening. Liesl and Ian and Granny stopped by our house on their way to the Psuik’s to check out our new bedroom furniture. Then they headed out and we rounded up the kids to head off too.

The Psuik’s had hot dogs for everyone to roast in their backyard fire pit, and there was a bunch of other food to eat too. Ethan found a loft in their large shed with a stash of legos to play with. Once he discovered that he was pretty much not to be seen for most of the evening. The kids had a good time playing with their cousins and making friends with the kids that were there that they had never met before. After everyone had had a chance to finish eating they got out a huge pile of pool noodle “light sabers” for the kids to play with. My girls were NOT good at batting at water balloons.

IMG_5064

IMG_5067

IMG_5069

When the water balloons were gone, the kids just went back to hitting each other with their light sabers.

IMG_5078

We finished the evening with some cake and jello for Granny’s birthday, and we got to see all the fireworks their neighbors were setting off. We also got to watch fireworks all over in the sky on our way home.