I forgot to mention the fact that Jacki and I had gone to the grocery store on the first day.  We walk up and she says "we should both get shopping carts".  And I’m thinking to myself "we’re not gonna get that much stuff are we?".  Sure enough, both of us FILL up our carts and they’re overflowing with groceries.  We both check out separately only to find out that we had spent within cents of each others totals!  We spent almost $400 on groceries!

Day 2 began waking up to screaming kids…not ours but our neighbors in the next camp site!  Seemed like the crack of dawn when they started up, fighting with each other at the top of their lungs…."Get off me!…No you get off me…Your underwear are on my pillow…You’re bugging me get away from me!" and with only a tent and about 25′ to separate us from them…you can just imagine!   So all of us were pretty much AWAKE at that point.

Andy had bought this handy coffee maker thing that you put directly over the camp stove so we got that started, only to find out that we had only brought 2 coffee cups.  Luckily I had brought this huge ladle looking thing so I drank my coffee out of that! LOL 

We decided to make a BIG breakfast consisting of bacon, hashbrowns and scrambled eggs.  Well, the bacon took a LONG time to cook because it had to be done in batches so it ended up taking like 45 minutes to cook the bacon.  Then came the hashbrowns which were taking forever and we didn’t figure out that we should have done those in batches for like another half hour.  So finally one batch of hashbrowns were done I go to hold a plate out for Andy to put the browns on and the plate folds in half and I dropped it on the ground!  Instead of getting a spatula and scooping it back up and stupid me used my hand and burned it in the process!   Nobody ate those browns BTW.   Another half hour and the next batch of hashbrowns were done!  Then onto the eggs…luckily those only took a few minutes. 

By the time breakfast was done cooking…I think it was like 2 1/2 hours after we started, we were all STARVING!  We scarfed it all up and then made sandwiches to take to the beach.

As I said it was a long trek to the beach so we packed up everything and set out for an entire day at the beach. 

The girls were in the water as soon as we got there and it was windy as could be so they got really cold, really fast!  Bella ended up falling asleep all wrapped up in her towel and hunkered down under the umbrella.  Carey and Andy were taking turns flying Carey’s stunt kite that he had gotten.

We got back to camp and felt a little overexposed I think!  It was a long day at the beach.  We cooked steaks over the campfire that night and they were yummy!  Although everything tastes good when you’re camping.

Here’s some more pics from the trip.

Jacki and Andy….aren’t they cute?

Here’s the girls trying to wipe their feet off with baby wipes…those things were lifesavers!

This is one I’ll probably be scapping, she’s not smiling in it but the clarity and the lighting of the picture I just love!

Here’s Bella flying her kite and actually smiling at me…FINALLY!

Hey look….it’s one of those species of scrapbookers!

Smoke makes really great sunsets!

To be continued….

Let me just start off by saying ****there will be lots of pictures here and I’ll be blogging day by day****

Last week we set out to go camping with the Burris’ for a week at McGrath State Beach which is located between Ventura and Oxnard.  We had to take 3 cars to fit everything and we were taking all our bikes so that was a challenge!  Jacki and I left with Bella and Maddi and we made great time getting there, early enough to scope out the perfect campsite for us. 

We wanted to be close to the beach because (come to find out later) the beach was quite a trek to get to since there is an estuary that runs the entire length of the beach and you have to walk pretty much to the end of it to cross it and then get to the beach.  The sites that were close to the beach didn’t have enough trees to put our hammocks up in so we kept looking.  Driving around it seemed in circles, thinking we hadn’t seen some sites when in fact we had passed them like 3 or 4 times already! LOL

We found one that seemed nice, large area around the fire pit, big grassy area behind, trees to hang the hammocks…but it was a little far from the beach.  So we kept driving around, picking out sites and had to keep driving up to the guard shack to ask if they were taken yet.  They went ahead and reserved site 151 for us while we were still looking for another site.

Meanwhile, Carey and Andy still hadn’t arrived yet so it was up to Jacki and I to pick out the campsite.  We drive back to the sites that were close to the beach and this lady tells us that she’s leaving out of 3 of them.  So back to the guard shack we go to reserve one of them.  Only to find out that we can’t reserve them until the lady checks out of them.  So we waited, and waited, and waited…no lady!  Carey and Andy finally arrive and Andy drives to the site where the lady was and come to find out there was a major red ant problem at that site…so no go! 

We ALL start driving around looking for a site now, running back and forth up to the guard shack to see if they’re reserved, I think this happened like 5 times.  We still had site 151 reserved for us but we thought we could get a much better one.  So the boys decided that we should all go check out 151 and see what it’s like.  Come to find out the boys were happy with it and we pretty much drove around and did all that nonsense for nothing!  LOL 

It turned out to be a good site, a little too much dirt, lots of spiders in the trees (which you will most likely see a spider LO or two from me), a little trek to the beach but all in all a good site!

Here’s the campsite….

Here’s the fire that’s been burning in-between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria for like 3 weeks now.  Everyday we would wake up thinking it was out only to look later in the day and see these HUGE plumes of smoke come outta nowhere!  For a couple of days the wind shifed direction and blew the smoke our way and it was really hazy from it.


Another view of our digs for the week….

First glimpse of how dirty my feet were getting and I was not happy about it! 

******WARNING*******  this photo may make you want to get up and go wash your feet…even if they aren’t dirty!  This was pretty much the norm for the entire week if you were wearing flips, gross huh?  These are Andy’s feet BTW 🙂

This was our first trek out to the beach the day we got there. 

When we got to the estuary Carey took his shoes off and put his feet in the mossy muck!  He looked down only to find two beer bottles so he picked them up and threw them away…doing his part for the environment!

Not sure what Jacki was saying to me but this picture is funny!  Carey always seems to capture the weirdest pictures of Jacki and I.

And for all you arachnophobes out there…here’s just one of the hundreds of spidey friends we encountered in the tree at out site!  At dusk you would look up from sitting at the picnic table and you could see them all moving around, kinda cool but really kinda creepy!

And to round things off for this post Bella in her new Roxy Pink Polka Dot Bikini! 

Carey had promised Bella a while back that he would set up the tent in our backyard and we would have a trial run before we went camping at the beach in a couple weeks with the Burris family.  And can I say YAY I can’t wait!  So this weekend was it.  We had purchased a new mattress and it wasn’t gonna be delivered until Saturday so we thought Friday night would be perfect for setting up the tent. 

Here’s Bella having a great time letting Roly Poly’s crawl on her, which is always great entertainment! 

And here she’s picked up a piece of moss and she turned around to me and said, "Mommy look it’s SMOSS!"  LOL

And finally…the tent was UP!

Time for a spectacular night sleep listening to cars driving by, sirens, crickets and then at 5:30 AM a bird that sounded like one of those annoying car alarms.   Oh the joys of camping out in the backyard!

And for those who don’t know…Hootchie is a term of endearment for the girls in the IESG!  I can’t remember who exactly started it…if it was Jenny or Wendy.  But anyhoo, Wendy is leaving us and moving to Oregon and probably on her way there right now.  But the fact is, she won’t be at any of our monthly crops anymore unless we can hook up a webcam, which might actually become necessary.  We will miss her dearly and just last weekend had a crop at my house which was her last with the IESG…for a while anyway.  We wanted her last crop to be special so Jenny made her a "Drama Queen" crown, that was quite spectacular I must say…

and we all chipped in and got her some going away scrap supplies and a cake, we all had a great time of course, we always do when the hootchies get together! 

There were some tears shed when it was time to say goodbye but there were also laughs when we decided to take a group picture.  But there wasn’t anyone else home to take it.  So I decided to set the camera on the TV with everyone sitting on and in front of the couch.  Trouble was, Carey had set the auto timer on the camera to only 3 seconds and I didn’t know how to change it.  It was pretty hilarious trying to press the button and then litterally FALL into the picture.  Some of the expressions on my face and others are hysterical! 

Sorry Jenny, I cut off half of your face in this one!

Needless to say I think we captured a moment that we will all remember! 

I was so sad…for a couple of reasons.  So sad to leave such a wonderful preschool and teachers and staff but also sad for Bella because she won’t be seeing most of her little friends anymore.  I don’t think she really comprehends this whole concept of going to another school next year.  But it WAS a great last day, they had a "beach party" and brought in little kiddie pools and the kids played, they also had a table that had shaving cream on it and the kids were putting it all over them..what a mess but of course Bella would have no part of that mess!  But what a great way to clean a table 😉

The kids also decided it would be fun to soak all their teachers so they all ganged up and dumped buckets of water, shot them with water guns…the poor teachers, they never saw it coming.   But what great fun! 

So here it is…Bella’s preschool graduation!  She was a donut in one of the many songs…I was so proud!   There were so many people in the church and the lighting was bad so sorry for the bad photos….well that and Carey was screwing around with the camera through half of the ceremony!

So onto Kindergarten next year and a whole nother’  experience in her little life!

And I would like to point out that my husband Carey was in charge of the camera throughout the entire graduation festivites and this is about the best one we got…and it’s HIS camera!  It’s cute but I think I would have liked pictures of our faces…Next time I’m taking the shots! 

Wow, it’s been a while since I blogged on here.  I’ve been busy and will be for the next month getting ready for SOY (Scrapbooker of the Year contest), swimming lessons starting for Bella as well as school ending, summer starting, vacations to be had!  FUN!  I have to furiously finish about 10 more layouts to complete the sumbission for SOY, which right now I don’t see happening but miracles have happened! LOL 

I’ve been digi scrapping lately…just easier than getting out all my schtuff!  These 2 layouts were from a couple of challenges on sb.com.

This one I asked 3 different people to tell me 5 words that describe me.  I had fun with this one since I didn’t have to come up with the journaling myself 😉

This is me and my best friend Jacki!  She’s been gone on vacation for a week which seemed like a month to me!  I’m glad she’s back 🙂

Now for the tag!
so these are the rules…Each player starts with 7
random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to
blog about their seven things and post the rules as well . At the end
of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their
names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have
been tagged and to read your blog!

Ummmm….some of these are dups from a previous blog a LONG time ago…

!.  I don’t read books…I know, I know I should but I just don’t.  I seriously think the last "book" (besides a text book) I read was a Danielle Steel novel in the summer of my senior year of high school…pretty bad huh?

2. I‘m a PADI Certified
SCUBA diver and have dove many times in Hawaii, Channel Islands and
once in Lake Perris which was sooooo completely gross that I started to
hyperventilate.  You know when you watch CSI and they’re removing a
body from the Hudson river…that’s how it was!   I prefer the warmer
clear waters…but doesn’t everyone?.

3.  I can cook but I CANNOT bake!  I’m terrible…no matter how hard I try to follow a recipe it always comes out wrong!   And the ironic thing about this is I think it would be so much fun to decorate cakes for a living!

4.  I never balance my checkbook…really WHY?

5.  I lose my keys just about every single day.  I really need to put a clapper or something on those things.

6.  I had a license plate
frame on my car when I was younger that said…"Blondes tease but
Redheads Please" and it took my dad about 3 months to notice it was on
there and when he did he said…"What the !@#*?"

7.  I dyed my hair
black when I was in high school and my mom made me wash it like 10
times until it started turning green.

I tag…

Jacki
Jenny
Peggy
Wendy
Trisha
Melissa
Jen

This past week has just been a whirlwind of running around and getting ready for Bella’s Birthday party on Saturday.  I had these grand plans to make this cupcake tiered birthday cake but had a few bumps along the way.  It started out on Friday night, we had picked up a pizza to throw in the oven so we didn’t have to make dinner and…I burned it!  So then I move onto making the cupcakes, luckily those came out perfect.  I was going to make this icing for the cupcakes called 7 minute icing.  I’ve made it before a long time ago and it’s my favorite icing…kinda like marshmallow fluff! 

Anyway, my aunt who is visiting is sitting there watching me make this icing which requires you to use a double boiler system and beat the ingredients for 7-minutes.  I was about 2 minutes into it and POP the Pyrex bowl shatters!  It’s 10PM and really don’t feel like going to the store to get icing.  So I called my husband and tell him he needs to pick some up on the way to my mom’s house the next day.   I don’t get my 7-minute icing so I’ll have to settle for store bought…no problem! 

I let the bowl cool for a while and instead of moving the bowl and pan over to the sink I proceed to pick the Pyrex bowl up out of the pan while its on the stove, the bottom falls out of the bowl and corn syrup, sugar and egg whites go splashing all over the place!  So now I need to strain the glass pieces out of the pan before I can wash it.  I get the strainer out and hold the dripping pan over the strainer and walk it to the sink.  All the while my aunt is sitting there laughing hysterically at me because I used a strainer to catch the drips from the pan LOL!!!!  Total DUH moment for me!   Took me a while to clean up the sticky mess but after that I decided to quit for the night and start over in the morning.

The next day went MUCH better.  I frosted the cupcakes with store bought icing and they looked fabulous!  I just need to keep reminding myself that I’m NOT a baker.  As much as I would love to be able to bake and decorate cakes from scratch, it’s just never gonna happen. 

I have to give much thanks to my friend Jacki for helping with the streamers and everything else they looked awesome!  If she hadn’t been there to help me I would have still been running around in my pajamas, hair disheveled and no makeup by the time the guests arrived! 

I have to say the best part of the day was after all the kids left and the adults got to go jump in the bounce house!!!!  It’s really good exercise too BTW. 

Here’s some pics from the party!

The party favor buckets…I had grand plans for these too but ran out
of time.  I did get to use my Crop-O-Dile on them…it really does go
through metal!

Jacki’s beautiful streamer job!

So Happy to be 5!!!!

Someone coined this the "Pullata" because it wasn’t exactly a Pinata…you don’t whack it with a bat…you just line up and pull the strings on the bottom…very unexciting if you ask me and I guess I didn’t know that’s what the strings were for when I bought it.  I thought they were just for show.  Oh well, I guess we didn’t have to worry about the kids whacking each other with a baseball bat that way! LOL

Why is this blog thing so hard to set up?  I’m usually very computer literate but this just irritates me!!!!