It's My Life

We attended the Second Annual Camp-or-Treat event at Watkins Mill State Park this past weekend.  The Camp-or-Treat is a weekend of Halloween fun at a local state park in our area. Festivities include a Costume Contest for many divisions: canine, children and adults. There is also a Spookiest Campsite Contest.  Last year we used costumes we had made for our trip to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party where we were crayons. We attempted to add a bit of scare to those costumes and made an Evil Crayon Factory . We were not scary, but we were creative. This year we had to find a way to bring some scare but not too much scare because this is a family event and there were lots of little kids.  I have wanted to create a Mad Scientist Lab for a while now and this event provided us with the perfect opportunity to do so. The frame of our science lab came from two easy up tents. We used shower curtain liners purchased at a local dollar store as the walls. We found that i...

Four years ago we started a tradition. It started off as a small idea. I wanted to go camping. Then I thought it would be funner with other people. So I whipped out an invitation and invited several families that had young children. To my amazement; several of them said yes. Without much effort; our annual family camp-out began. This year, our fourth year, we had 54 people say yes and joined us at Smithville Lake. Every year the Family Camp-out has landed on a different weekend in September. Amazingly, the weather pattern has followed us despite the weekend. It is usually windy and cold on Friday night followed by a sunny and warm Saturday.  This year was no exception.  The highlight of my Friday night was having my son home from college; even if he came home with two fractures in his right foot. This year we had plenty of activities planned. We tried our hand at screen printing. We held a raingutter regatta. There was even an impromptu bags tournament. We ...

Labor Day Weekend we achieved one of our 2014 goals. We visited our fifth state park in a year and earned our Camper's Award from the State of Missouri. Long Branch State Park is located in Macon, Missouri right at the intersection of 36 and 63 Highways. For those of you from the Kansas City area it reminds me a lot of Smithville Lake. The lake is completely the focus of this state park. We explored the lake by driving around. It was apparent really quickly that this lake is huge. Not only did we find Long Branch Lake but we also found Macon Lake. Both entertained us. Long Branch has a camping area with electric hook-ups but they also have primitive camping available as well as hike-in camping. Our campsite was located in a tree grove which provided great coverage from the sun.  The shade coverage provided us with amazing sleep both nights because the sun was kept at bay. We also enjoyed two rain showers during our holiday weekend. We like to hike during our state par...

We are going camping this weekend! What started off as an idea has morphed into a full fledged camping trip weekend. I love to camp. We use to go all the time when we had an RV but we have not gone at all since the RV went away. (The RV went away about the same time The Short Chic came along.) She is older now and is ready for a weekend outdoors. Going camping is always more enjoyable with other people so I whipped up an Evite to send out. Have you ever used Evite? It is a cool website that allows you to create and manage invitations to events. I found an invitation that was perfect for camping.  I added all of our specific information, imported email addresses and sent the Evite out. What I was not anticipating is that almost everyone I sent the invitation to said YES!  So, I have been busy the past several weeks planning a camping trip for 8 families, 14 kids, and a total of 30 people (Katie, I counted you as a grown-up now)!!! Anyone who knows me I knows I am a ...