Amongst the Blooms: Enjoying Our Yard

Cache Camp 2011

What's our next project, Grandma??" Unfortunately I forgot my camera on our expedition to the park to ride the paddle boats, but we made a "field journal" out of a 3-ring binder, and a clipboard with an "outdoor alphabet chart" to note special sightings on our adventure...f for feathers, p for poop...LOTS of g for geese, thus the p for poop of the goose variety!

In the "Reading Tent"

Cache chose "King Burger" for dinner, and the best part was the play area!

We finished the evening at an indoor, blacklight mini golf venue...as Cache said, "I got a 1, Grandpa got a 1, but Grandma didn't!"
Saturday was the Grandpa part of Grandma camp! Cache and Grandpa went fishing and then did "man" projects until it was time for Cache to go home. Another happy camper!

Bailey's Grandma Camp July 2011

In the "Reading Tent"


We watched Roman Holiday, and made scrapbook pages of the famous sites in Rome.

Bailey loves Olive Garden, and she introduced us to her favorite bottled Italian water.

Bailey's Grandma Camp had an Italian theme...we studied Italian art, culture, food...and wished we could be in Italy!

Christmas---I am SO far behind!

Winter Garden Aglow...newly discovered this year...will be a tradition from now on!

Christmas Eve at Jay and Christa's...



Sing-a-ma-jig...hilarious!

Christa's handiwork...crocheted headbands with removeable flowers for the girls.

Catch Up

Back to December...our traditional Nutcracker experience at the Morrison Center...Bellamie is still too young, but next year, ALL the girls will be able to go!

We Celebrated: Our 40th Anniversary, My 61st Birthday, and BSU vs VA Tech in Washington, D.C.

We arrived Friday, September 3, and headed out to see the sights...

We were especially moved by the World War II Memorial...I had just been doing some genealogy research, and found my mother's cousin, Oliver Pincombe had died in Stalag XII right before the liberation of his German prisoner of war camp. I found his name in the Memorial's archive.

Our morning began with a tour of the White House...after passing through many security stations, we made our way through the public rooms, each room being manned by a Secret Service agent who willingly shared stories and fascinating details about its history.

The Capitol dome through the glass ceiling of the visitor's center

"the whispering spot" in the old Senate chamber

We had a personal tour of the Capitol and the Library of Congress by a young lady who grew up with Dallin, and is now an aide to Senator Crapo...she had access to all the "behind the scenes" areas,and lots of stories to tell. We loved our visit to Ft. McHenry. The battle there, during the War of 1812, produced the poem, by Frances Scott Key, which became our National Anthem. We watched a film about the battle, and his experience, in a darkened auditorium...then the National Anthem began to play and the blinds began to draw back to reveal the view of the flag waving over the fort...magnificent!


I spent my 61st birthday dipping my toes in the Atlantic Ocean at Rehoboth Beach, DE! We got a little lost on the way, only added 2 hours to the trip (!) but we wanted to compare the East Coast with the West Coast, Atlantic with Pacific, and decided it was a little more crowded, but worth the trip!


We did some last day sight-seeing on Monday...The National Archives (no photos allowed) and Ford's Theater and the house across the street where Lincoln died...they are right in the middle of a modern city, but have been preserved so well that one feels transported back to that time and place in history.

We met our friends who share our anniversary, at Clyde's in Washington, D.C., for dinner before the game. We were staying in Baltimore, so we had to show up in our "spirit gear"...no way to change before the game!

Our trip culminated with a BSU victory! We were out-numbered, out-yelled, but not out-played! I was so excited, I forgot to get out the camera while we were IN the stadium! This was BIG-TIME college football! At Fedex Field in Landover, MD, we got to see what 80,000 screaming Hokies sounded like...our little (10,000) band of BSU fans did our best to cheer on our team. Getting to the stadium was a challenge (up and down hills and through the woods!) but what a game!!!!

Grandma Camp with "The Eights"

This year's camp was named "FANS"...FOOD/FUN...ART...NATURE...SCIENCE...and we made fans to represent! (We watched Disney's "Polly" and danced along...shaking those fans!)




We combined food and art (chocolate pudding finger-painting)for lots of fun..."Grandma can we lick it??!!" Of course!!



We read "Hailstones and Halibut Bones" by Mary O'Neill from BEREA, OHIO! As we listened to each "color" poem, we thought about what color means to us...we each picked our favorite color and created collages to express our ideas.

Our nature walk yielded beautiful specimens which we affixed to our duct tape bracelets.



For the science portion of our camp experience, we watched the different ways color disperses in fresh water, and salt water...AND we combined colors to see what would happen...F-A-N-S Camp was FUN!!!