It's My Life

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 ...

 The heat of summer has arrived in my area. It took so long to arrive, I was beginning to questions its existence. Within days we went from mid 70's to nearly triple digit temperatures. I like the heat. I hate the heat. No, wait, I like it... sometimes. It is definitely a love hate relationship with the heat. The rain continues to visit us. We are having the most difficult baseball season. I heard a rumor the baseball league has had to reschedule 400 baseball games this summer. That is a lot of missed baseball! Our yard and flowers love the rain. Everything here is so green. I wonder how long that will continue now that the heat has arrived. We have an active summer planned.  It is so hard to balance all the fun things going on in the summer with rest and relaxation. Luckily for us the Graduation Party forced us to get many of our summer projects done early. We did some landscaping, some mudjacking, and some deep house cleaning. Two areas that did not get organized befo...

I am going to publically acknowledge that I have been a poor blogger this spring/summer. It is not that I have finally ran out of things to say {like that could ever happen!}. Or that my life has gone bland {we are still spicing it up over here!}. Or that health concerns still do not impact me {in fact, a dear friend of mine is facing one now}. The truth of the matter is, I will formally admit, I have finally spread myself too thin. There Husband. I have formally admitted that I have a problem. I. Take.On. Too. Much! I have always wanted my kids to be involved in what I call "pro-social" activities. They are the type of activites you want your kids involved with (organized sports, dance, 4-H, piano lessons, book clubs, cheer, science club, chess club, ect.) as oppossed to those activities you do not want your kids invovled with (reckless behavior like drinking, drugs, non-stop video gaming, sleeping all day, sex, criminal activity, ect). When we just had The...

Missouri is full of vacation spots. Some of them are obvious {Kansas City, St. Louis, Branson, even The Lake of the Ozarks}but some of them are less than obvious. We recently went on one of those less than obvious ones. We planned a four day getaway to Dora, Missouri to camp and canoe on The North Fork River. Here in Missouri, we call it a "float trip". What can you expect on a float trip? 1. Some driving. Most of the rivers that we float on are in the southern part of our state. It took us a good 5 hours {not including stops} to get to Dora, Missouri. At this point, even Missourian's are probably asking, "Where is Dora, Missouri?" Well, it is 40 driving miles away from West Plains, Missouri. As is typical with most float trips, you can not access the river by interstate. Nope, in fact you must get off the busy roads and take the roads less traveled. We prefer to pop in a CD full of good ole country music and just enjoy the ride. Of ...

My girl loves Disney. She really loves the Princesses!  Jasmine is her favorite. When her Daddy and I saw an advertisement for Disney on Ice last week,  I knew I was going to try and get her tickets to the show. We scored great seats (Thank you Craigslist!). Then we made plans with our BFF's and we headed out! In the rain, no less. The show included Alice in Wonderland. This was one of the coolest parts. The numbers line up numerically. Peter Pan came flying in and so did Tinkerbell. She even sprinkled pixy dust all over, it helped us fly home at the end of the night! The Loin King came on after intermission. (I kinda felt like the first half drug by and then they rushed the second half.)  Snow White was there! And the Seven Dwarfs. The Short Chic loved it when Sneezy blew down all the other Dwarfs. Oh and Thank Goodness Rapunzel and Flynn Rider were there! ( I think she got a hair cut.) I loved the floating lanterns. And then Miss O...