So … we’re going camping this weekend. Well I’m still not entirely sure I can call it camping what with our fancy “Rolling Ramada” as my dad calls it. Ha. But I’ll go with “camping” in the interest of simplicity.
Previously when we’ve done these things, my dad plans it all. I just show up. Now I have to figure out what we will be eating for 2 dinners, 3 breakfasts and 2 lunches. I have to figure out how it all gets there and stays “safe” from food-borne baddies.
Happily I have a few resources. For my b’day I received The Camping Cookbook. Oddly enough, it’s not the one featured on the left. It’s actually another book with the same title put out by the “Love Eat” press and I cannot find a link to it ANYWHERE on the interwebs. Anthropologie apparently has it though. I also have the latest edition of Sunset Magazine where they do a whole “gourmet cooking” article and also have some really handy tips on packing a cooler and storing food for a few days. Lastly, I downloaded a copy of The Real Family Camping Cookbook to my Kindle (app on my phone). Unfortunately, a lot of what is proposed depends heavily on doing some prep at home and then doing the rest at camp. But the way this trip came together means I don’t have much (any) time for that. But I did my best. Here’s what I’ve come up with:
Breakfast
day 1 – scrambled eggs with bacon and cheese, toast
day 2 – banana pancakes
day 3 – cereal … cuz we’ll be packing up camp and mama didn’t raise no fool
received a card from my darling daughter on which she had printed every letter of the phrase, “Happy Birthday Mommy” and signed her name and drew about 50 little flowers (heart melt!)
completed 10 rounds of Cool Hand Luke (CrossFit workout involving rounds of 200m run, 10 pull-ups, 10 burpees, 10 kettle bell swings) scraping in right at the 45:00 min time limit
found a note in my purse from my hubby telling me he bought me a new macro lens for my camera
had a lovely lunch out with my husband, conspicuously free of the need to cut up food, clean up spills and referee battles, followed by a few stolen minutes exploring a nearby town
had a mom who was generous enough to watch the kids so we could have a lovely evening playing Geeks Who Drink Trivia with some good friends
received birthday wishes, greetings, notes, emails, FB shout-outs, cards and gifts from lovely people near and far
had a wonderful birthday party on Sunday where my whole family made me a super delicious meal of fried chicken, green beans, corn, fruit salad and lemon blueberry cupcakes
received lovely gifts including a new gym bag, some cute clothes, and a necklace (Tabby’s selection)
delighted in listening to my darling son sing umpteen rounds of “Happy Mommy! Haaaaaaappy Mommy! Happy happy mommy”
Last night while I was slaving away over a hot stove making the kids some fried rice for dinner and cleaning up the house, Matt was picking up our new (to us) pop-up camper.
It is a nice 12′ size with sleeping room for 8 (if most of those sleeping are kids). We put it up and put it down and it was pretty easy and quick. Hopefully soon we can stock it up and hit the road. We’d like to get a couple trips in before the weather starts getting too cool, possibly to The Great Sand Dunes. Matt also has designs on a trip to the western slope to do some apple and peach picking.
But of course before we can do any of that we need to get it all stocked up and ready to go. I think that will be a project for the weekend. And I’m hoping this will be a wonderful way to get the kids out into nature and spend time together as a family!
Quite a bit happened since my last post 3 days ago. For one thing, it is now August. Beyond that …
Friday Morning I ran N Table Mesa (this is a redundant phrase since Mesa = Table, but that’s what we call it around here) with Kelly in the AM. It was beautiful. Then I got to sleep while Matt took the kids to the gym.
I spent most of Friday cleaning the house. It was quite a slog with the kids to contend with, but it did improve.
Friday night we had the family over Movie Night. Matt and I made Chicken Parmesan salad which was AWESOME. Everyone liked it. Then we watched Freaky Friday (new one with Lindsay Lohan as specified by Tabby, though I still prefer the old one) and Tabby got her movie snacks. Not sure which she likes more: movie or movie snacks.
Saturday morning we hung around the house and had breakfast and then eventually went to Costco. After Costco, we dropped the kids off with my parents so we could have date day.
We had grand plans for FUN but as we are OLD, we spent a few hours organizing the house. We cleaned out both kids’ closets and bookshelves (our new niece has a box of books heading her way) and their playroom.
After that we went to Good Will to do a drop off. I almost lost it when I put Tabby’s old crib bedding in the bin. Of course it’s not the bedding … it’s what it symbolizes. *sigh*
After that we went to IKEA (you know, the one that just opened a couple of days ago) to embrace the insanity (we stood in a Disneyland style queue, only longer just to get in) and buy stuff for the pop-up camper and a new peppermill that I am in love with. Also we looked at beds for our kids who are officially growing up TOO FAST.
Of course after IKEA, we were starved, so went to dinner at Smash Burger (best burgers EVER) and then to Bass Pro (gag) and Target.
We came home, unloaded the car, gathered running stuff and passed out.
Because next morning we were back up on North Redundant Mountain running again.
We picked up the kids. They had an awesome time, of course. Ben was the life of the block party. Tabby got stung by a wasp. They both got pancakes, snuggles, and thoroughly spoiled.
We had to stop by Walm*rt on the way home. I spied the super-delicious food-like product you see on the right (it has not only slim-jim style beef jerky but also mini ritz crackers with cheese-product sandwiched between them) while we were in the check-out line. I did not buy it.
We had lunch then naps (for the kids). We thought they’d never wake up. But eventually they did. So we took them to the pool (it was SUPER HOT yesterday).
They didn’t want to leave, but we had to go home and have dinner. We made steaks and super super awesome zucchini feta fritters (highly recommend).
Amazingly after all of that, we could do little but put away some laundry and then put away the kids in their beds. We followed very shortly.
It was somewhat difficult to get out of bed this morning.
I seriously love photography. When I believed my camera to be dead, I was adamant that I would have a DSLR back in my hands within one day, dip-into-savings be damned (and I don’t take $$ out of savings without a fight). I think my favorite thing about it, besides the obvious memory-making aspect is the fact that it’s a continuous learning process.
I had my DSLR for years before I really dug into how to use it. Most of the time the sheer speed of the DSLR was more than enough for me to use it and Matt has a pretty good background in the technical aspects of photography so whenever I wanted to achieve a certain effect, he was my cheat sheet. He’d tell me to do this or that and I’d do it and generally it would work, but I didn’t really know why.
That was fine for a long time since I was busy raising the kids and just wanted to take some photos already!! But I did finally get a wonderful little book that somehow made all the stuff I sort of knew, in theory anyhow, really crystallize. It’s got a bit too much on shooting with film, something I have no time for or interest in, but otherwise it’s a great book. I have not switched over to shooting fully in Manual mode … my main subjects are the kids and I’m not good with speed in manual mode, but at least I know now when I need to and I’m comfortable enough to switch over and set things as I need to get what I want. Like awesome blurred waterfalls.
There are only about 100000 more things I want to learn and hopefully will over time.
One of the simplest weeknight dinners I make is a pan of scrambled eggs. I season/flavor them with whatever’s on hand: cream cheese and some dill, smoked salmon, leftover bacon, salsa, spinach and feta, ham and swiss and mushrooms. They are always a hit with the kids.
And whenever I do that I like to have some sort of lightly sweet baked good to go along with the meal. Sometimes it’s two-bite cinnamon rolls from Costco or just toast with jam, but likely as not, I make homemade muffins. I have used tons of recipes, but these are my go-to muffins that are perfect for using up any fresh fruit that’s getting past its prime or the tail-end of a frozen bag of fruit.
Ingredients
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour (you can do all one type if you like)
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 C sugar
1/3 C natural applesauce
1 egg
~ 1/3 C milk
1 T oil
1 cup chopped fruit or a bit more if you’ve got it
spices to compliment your fruit
Note about fruit/spices: this is a great recipe for doing your favorite or using what you have. I’ve done blueberries with just a little vanilla extract, blueberries with some lemon zest and peaches with cinnamon, allspice and cloves. I think these would be wonderful with apples and/or raisins and cinnamon or anything else you fancy.
Directions
Heat your oven to 400. Place liners in a muffin pan – this recipe seems to make between 10 and 15 muffins depending on how much fruit you use and how generous you are when putting batter in the muffin tins.
In a bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. In a 1 cup measuring cup, add the applesauce, oil and egg. Add enough milk to go to the 1 cup line and stir. Pour this into your dry ingredients along with any spices you’re using and stir until combined, but do not over-mix. Carefully fold in your chopped fruit.
Pour batter into prepared muffin cups. I like to do 2/3 to 3/4 full though the original recipe calls for filling them to the top! Bake for 18-25 minutes or until just browning on top.
My maternal grandpa’s family has family reunions every 2 years. We flip-flop between a location in the Rockies (near us) and a location in Missouri (near the other branches of family). They started when I was a baby and have been going strong for 30 years. I have been to almost all of them. My mom and a few others, every one.
This year’s family reunion was on the schedule as one of our bi-weekly weekend trips. It was the last weekend in July, or so the calendar said. Friday afternoon, around 3:30, I was at home waiting for a friend of mine and her little girl to arrive for a playdate when my mom called. “I’m sick, Jess,” she said. I figured she was referring to a stomach virus or something that would take her out of commission for Tabby’s beloved Friday Movie Night. But then she went on.
“Reunion is THIS weekend.”
Tabby at Dinner amongst her people
That’s right … the summer of calendar mishaps and idiocy continues. We as a group had collectively gotten it into our heads that reunion was a weekend later than it actually was. Now the reunion was to be held near Warsaw, MO, about 10.5 hours from Denver, or about 2 hours from the nearest airport if you could get yourself on a plane. But of course, a quick check of flights revealed that it was both cost-prohibitive and a scheduling nightmare.
We were all really bummed. We only get to see our extended family in short spells every once in a while. It’s not that we can’t see them at other times but there’s a pretty large contingent and so a reunion is excellent visiting value. Beyond that you hate to miss out on something that’s part of the collective group’s history. So we started scheming. The biggest hurdle was my grandma. She has perfect reunion attendance and we were very much looking forward to bringing her with us, but at 88 years old she has a walker and is on full-time oxygen. Between the combination of the two (well not the walker so much as the reasons for the walker) we simply couldn’t figure out any way to get her to the reunion in time.
Once we came to terms with that, we assessed whether or not the rest of us should/could go. Ultimately we decided we could … and we would. So playdate over (all this transpired in phone calls and mom coming to my house in about an hour as the playdate was going on), I set the land-speed record for packing and got us ready to go in about half an hour. Trip all over I can say in all honesty that I did an excellent job. The only thing I forgot was a swim-diaper for Ben.
We met up at my mom’s house and piled clown-car style into my mom’s SUV, using up 6 of 7 seats. My dad was off fishing in Wyoming with a buddy and we had no way to get in touch with him and so left him fishing. We left at 6:30 pm on Friday and made it to Salina, KS and a very nice Courtyard Marriot by 2:15 AM. After a paltry 3-4 hours of sleep, we left Salina by 7 AM the next morning and made it to “Camp” by 11 AM.
Reunion was what reunion always is, organized chaos. People in the lake and pool, people in the meeting room, mixer games, awesome group meals, playing games ’til way too late, lots of fun and laughs and photo-taking. My kids got to meet their age-mates, 5th or 6th cousins (had to sketch out a partial family tree on some scratch paper to figure that out) that are the children of my age-mates. My kids slept in a queen
Lil' Skipper
(double?) bed with my mom and Matt and I shared a twin bed. Sleep was scanty and light, but that’s hardly the point.
We learned that it was definitely worth the effort. And we were very glad we went. Unfortunately, we still had to drive across Kansas once more.
Even this fairly blurry camera phone pic is worth 1000 words. Sweet baby girl has taken to sleeping on her floor in a little nest made of all of her blankies (there are MANY). Loki sometimes joins her. Matt asked her why and she says it’s “more comfortable.”
So I’m wondering if it’s softer/nicer down there (and maybe we should think about getting her an even bigger girl bed) or if it’s just cooler (it’s been crazy hot here, just like everywhere else). We need to move Ben into a big boy bed before too long, so maybe it’s time.
So I didn’t tell you the funnest part of our Saturday hiking adventure. Our camera died (well not really but read on). We were pretty much at the turn-around point of the hike and I noticed the low battery notification. Usually you have a bit more juice and so I kept snapping away. All of a sudden the camera was dead. Normally you at least see the indicator lights and some read-outs on the console but I had NOTHING. So I figured the battery just really died. We got back to the condo and I pop the card in the reader and also got NOTHING. Tried my mom’s camera. NOTHING. Then I put a new battery in the camera and tried Mom’s card in my camera and NOTHING. I was getting pretty panicky at this point, thinking the camera AND the card died.
Matt did figure out later that the battery I used wasn’t charged enough and the camera itself is fine. But the card seems to have died … and took all the lovely hiking photos with it. Happily, Kelly got a few on her point-and-shoot, but I took tons more of the kids that I want. We’re getting another card-reader just in case, but if that doesn’t work, these fine folks in FL will be attempting to recover my photos. OY.
Happy Ending Update: The new card-reader arrived early (wasn’t supposed to arrive until late Weds after this was posted) and happily, the card was readable and we got all but the last photo (it seems to have died mid-write).
So. In addition to needing a new card, card reader and/or data recovery services for our camera, my long-lived MP3 player, an awesome Creative Zen Vision: M that they do NOT make anymore is gasping its last breaths. Sucker has lasted me for years and I have not been kind to it. I use it daily, frequently for hours at a time. I have dropped it more times than you can imagine. In other words, it owes me nothing! And yet it has been trucking along. Even still it’s not dead. It is having weird power surges and doesn’t turn off/on predictably. And then it sometimes decided to re-build its library randomly, a 3-5 minute process. Irritating.
A bit part of me says I should just go ahead and drink the kool-aid and buy an ipod. They hook up to the gym’s treadmills. They have TONS of accessories. They are what all the cool kids have. But I can’t quite bite. I’ve really loved my Zen and I do not want to deal with iTunes for data transfer. I just want to load folders of music and books without having to load Apple’s bloatware. So now I’m debating between sticking with Creative and getting a Zen Style or a Zen Mozaic or going with a Sansa Fuze (Sansa makes the awesome Clip players I use for running). Decisions decisions.
So … we’re going camping this weekend. Well I’m still not entirely sure I can call it camping what with our fancy “Rolling Ramada” as my dad calls it. Ha. But I’ll go with “camping” in the interest of simplicity.
