Junior Park Ranger McBrayer

While the AR McBrayers were here, we took a side trip out to Mesa Verde, one of our favorite places to visit. The entrance is only about 35 min from here and they have just finished their brand new visitor's center at the entrance to the park which as it turns out, is quite stunning! ( I wish I had pictures to show you).

Not sure how many of you know but all National Parks (and most if not all State Parks) have a Junior Ranger program that is designed for kids from 4 years old to 12. It's a program that encourages kids to protect their parks and learn a bit more about each park during their visits. If you fulfill all of the requirements by the end of your visit, you can take the oath to become a Jr. Ranger and are awarded a medal to show off!.

 Here are my little Jr. Rangers working hard on their booklets inside of the archaeological museum.

They took this project very seriously. Greenpea is hard at work. 

The kids were so engaged that I ran with it and had them complete almost the entire booklet before I realized they only needed to select a few activities. There are different activities depending on the age groups you have too.

Here they are making cornmeal that they even bothered to taste! (I imagine it tasted just like sand since there wasn't actually corn in there and eroded rocks turn into just that!)

"Raise your right hand…or your left, or maybe just any ol hand and repeat after me."

Right from left. Something it looks like we all need to work on...

I am always amazed at just how thoroughly these rangers double check the kids work and correct them as they go along. They don't give these badges to just anyone, you know.

I am proud to announce that we left Mesa Verde with 4 Junior Rangers that day!

Honor & Strength & a Big Imagination

My little warriors asked to be Spartans this year for Halloween. Only problem is that Spartans pretty much wear nothing more than a pair of leather undies and a red cape. Precisely why my youngest found this so appealing! 

Even if we could get past the idea of basically streaking through the neighborhood for Halloween, which might work in Georgia, we happen to live in Colorado where we could easily have 6" of snow on the ground by All Hallows Eve! Tighties and a cape aren't gonna fly.

All I could think of doing to warm them up, was to buy a muscle suit until I ran across a tutorial for this. Can you say GENIUS?!?!

I'm not gonna lie. I looked at all of the pictures and then sort of made it up as I went. A scrap piece of material, stuffing, layered it inside  50 cent t-shirts from the thrift, drew lines with a ruler and sewed along the lines. Much easier than all that cutting!  I added a little darker color paint to the creases and added a belly button and I was a hero! 

Ok so I wasn't a hero. The 6 year old woke up the next morning with a huge grin on his face scrambling to try it on and the 8 year old said, "I'm so not gonna wear that!" (Are we seriously there already?!?) Oh well. We can layer real clothes under all of this and it will only make them stronger looking!

Cereal boxes, elastic, glue gun applique and some bronze spray paint. I learned this from some over the top, overly creative helmet how to on instructibles. 

"Ain't nobody got time fo dat!"

So I ordered the shield/sword combos which were totally worth the $12 on Amazon and the Spartan helmets which were totally NOT worth the $12 on Amazon and ended up being pretty cheap. 

"Honor and Strength" is the saying on the shield. I think these were so cool with the spot for the sword to fit into the shield. You know like for when you are marching and you need to carry a spear too...

Choir robes from thrift for the capes.

And a cut up leather skirt that my mother sent me (Sorry mom. I looked for Annie Oakly accessories to go with it to no avail but I still got three Spartan costumes out of it!)

Curtain rods from thrift. And I might add, the 8 year old is taking this picture pretty seriously even though he said he'd never wear those muscles...

You might be asking, where is the third Spartan? He is actually going to be a Roman soldier (so they have someone to fight, naturally) and since he already has bulging muscles I didn't make him a muscle shirt and I am totally making him wear the leather briefs version of the bottoms! (That will have you checking back for another post! He he.) And as you might imagine, he's not really all that in to dressing up on random nights more than a week before the big candy binge and sparing in the courtyard in front of a bunch of college students. 

Happy Halloween!

Mama + kids = music, art & sports

Daddy + kids = science, math & history

It's so funny to me to watch the activities of the boys when they are influenced by either me or Justin. When we take our turns with the boys separately, the days are geared so differently. With Daddy, the boys are all about science, math and history. When they are with me, it's all about art and music and being active. While Justin was away, we spent our week making field trips to the college practice rooms for their real pianos to practice on. We spent three nights at Sugar Creek rehearsals getting ready for our gig at James Ranch and then an evening of performing and goat herding. (We had a baby goat join us on stage for Wagon Wheel!). We spent a day at the lake swimming and went on countless bike rides. I got the stuff for them to craft in their scrap books and I've had watercolor "classes" at the kitchen table. And we piled all the balls, bats, tennis rackets, frisbees and the sort and went to the park one day to have some skills practice. There is a reason God intended there to be two parents. They learn so many different things from each of us.

Here are a few captures from James Ranch.

First Week Report: Camp Daddy

In case you were curious just how my first week back to work was for the kids was, here is a recap of the activities I came home to witness over lunch and at the end of the day.

Science. Bases versus acids. They tasted EVERYTHING.

And kept detailed notes about each one. 

Sushi for dinner! Mango as well as avocado nigiri is remarkably simple and delicious.

Potato gun building and launch.

It took some fiddling but they eventually got this thing to shoot potatoes to the edge of the trees.

On our way home we found the most terrific toad. 

Check out this beast!

A history time line in the hallway of Animas.

Thanks to the history prof down the hall from Justin, they scored some history books that they were able to cut pictures out of to use for the timeline.

Color coded for Old World, New World and people. They add to it each day. And they did reading and math flash cards each day. This Dad's default is education and there is just no way around it. They may thank him one day for all of this.

I am pretty sure, they don't miss me at all! What do you think?!?!

Boys and Sticks

 We went to the library the other day and I came across a book about sticks. I thought this was a great idea. Someone actually put together an entire book on how to play with sticks. Why didn't I think of that?!?!

The boys naturally gravitated to the chapter on weapons and so began our evening outing to Junction Creek to look for bows and arrows and swords. Patrick is now a proud owner of a pocket knife (which was his souvenir from Greece)  and was able to widdle the sticks to their proper shape (with a little help and muscle from us of course). A little twine, a hand saw (which made it a whole lot easier), and a pocket knife and boy, we were on our way.

In case you were wondering what weapons and neighborhood kids might looks like if they just so happened to be in the same location, you can take a look at Aeneas's eye. A near miss. Keep it within the family with some adult supervision! Jeeze.

In the past, we have made forts with some of the techniques used in this book. Here is one you have already seen but one we did recently along with some other great uses for sticks.

Fort sticks

 Stick Foosball!

Comparison sticks

Cooking sticks for stick and bug soup.

 Collection Sticks!

 Stick signs.

Fire sticks!

 Walking sticks

 Fiddle sticks

Save your money and go to the woods for some good play sticks!

Alpine Adventures: Stage 3

Ever since we moved here we have heard people rave about the Silverton fireworks show as the best they have ever seen. But with a late night show followed by a winding road, 2 mountain passes, no guard rails and a road packed with travelers pushing the travel time home to 2.5 hours, there was no way we were going to try it without a place to stay up there for the night. There were fires around Pagosa Springs and Wolf Creek Pass was closed, our normal route, so we detoured around via the Million Dollar Highway through Silverton and Ouray to access the Lost Wonder hut, dropping a few tents and chairs on our way through at a BLM campground outside of Silverton hoping for the best. 

When we returned to Silverton, everything was there! Parking was a mess and it looked like a mix of a NASCAR race and a refugee camp but all of the people were respectful, quiet and nice. Everyone was on top of each other and yet it seemed just fine. The McAlvany's met us up there with their kids and it turned out to be one of the funnest 4th of July weekends I've ever had. 

Fire restrictions left us roasting over the Coleman. 

Patrick, Dashel, Declan and Aeneas.

We all travel with the jumbo packs of baby wipes just in case we end up with something like this!

Good job Tess!

This was the first trip where the boys got to "sleep" in a kid tent. They horsed around until about 12:30 am and all woke up giving each other the McAlvany and McBrayer torture respectively. All in good fun of course.

Blair street, Silverton, Colorado

Hanging out on the drawtight waiting for the parade!

Movie star Tess.

I'm glad someone brought books!

The boys' favorite float.

Justin's favorite float.

It was fun watching the jeep to the left almost pull the bumper off the one in the middle during their stunt.

 The fire department water fight. 

Back to the campground and all of the boys put on their own parade with their own made up song and throwing beads.

Then we spent the hours of the afternoon making mud soup.

They worked really hard on this.

The big boys skipped rocks. This never gets old.

Justin teaches Mathias (Dave and M-C's bro in law) how to play Oh Heck.

After M-C had her fill, we all got to partake in some traditional 4th of July BBQ! It was really good coming from a girl from the South, where the BBQ flows like water.

The fireworks are indescribable. We were so close that they exploded over our heads. And they were so bright we had to close our eyes at times. They were so loud, each boom was heard 4 to 5 times as it echoed back and forth off the mountains surrounding Silverton. We parked on the highway and managed to skirt the traffic backed up that was headed to Durango and were at our camp in 15 min. What a fun celebration!

Happy Birthday USA!