Summer Time!

Summer is here!  We were so ready to swim on Tuesday and headed off to the pool at 11am sharp when the front office lady had told me it was open.  But is wasn't open, so I called the office again and a man there told me it is only open on the weekends until school is out.  We were soooo bummed!  So we went home and ate lunch then went to Oregon Ridge to see if we could swim or at least play at the "beach" there even though it technically isn't open either.  Success!!  I do think technically you are not supposed to actually get into the water when there is no life guard there.  Some people were swimming anyway.  I told the girls they could, but only in the very shallow wading area.  Later we did find out that our apartment pool IS open before school's out.  It opens at 3:30 each day.  I don't know why I was told wrong information twice, but now we know.  And we did have a fun time at Oregon Ridge.  I enjoyed sitting in the sun.  The girls got to play and splash with some other little girls that were there.  And there were hundreds of little tadpoles all along the edge of the water that the girls caught and watched for a long time.  We did return them to the lake before leaving this time though.

I noticed the crazy amount of honeysuckle growing behind our apartment and it gave me ideas.  So we went out and gathered a bucket full of the blooms to bring back.  My goal was to get 6 cups, enough to make jelly and sorbet.   So that afternoon I made the jelly.  It looks and smells so wonderful!  Then I attempted the sorbet the next day.  I don't think I let it freeze long enough so it ended up more like a slushie than sorbet.  Also I'm the only one that liked it - I think it was just tooo sweet.  It was like really intense cotton candy with flowers.  I actually made myself sick drinking it because I didn't want to waste it after the girls didn't want theirs!

There are also a ton of wild roses growing all around and behind our apartment building in the woods.  It is awesome to smell roses when I'm walking Tinkerbell or when the girls and I tromp off into the woods.

On Friday we went to explore Harper's Ferry WV with friends.  We all had learned about Fredrick Douglass and made the trip to see where he made some famous speeches and comment about the place.  We also learned a lot about John Brown's Raid before going so it was really neat to see where it all happened.  The first thing the kids wanted to do was get in the Shenandoah River.  It is crazy hard to keep them out of water!  We did eat our picnic lunch on the river though and promised them they could put their feet in on our way out.

We decided to do the Junior Ranger program.  This led us around the various exhibits, trails, and monuments collecting information and doing activities around Harper's Ferry.  The girls enjoyed the dress up clothes.  We also hiked up the hill to Jefferson's Rock.  What an amazing view!  The Rock got its name after Thomas Jefferson looked out at the point where the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers converge and said, "this scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic".  

It was crazy hot that day so our promise of ice cream after hiking up the hill was much appreciated.

After completing their booklets, the kids were sworn in as Junior Rangers and received their pins.  Each park is different, and at Harper's Ferry there are three levels of activities of which each has its own pin.  All the kids except Lyla were determined to get all three and they did.  Lyla is more of the mind to make sure she gets one, so as not to be left out, but she's not going to stress about getting all of them.  So she was happy with her one pin.

Saturday the girls and I went with Celee's Girl Scout troop to Aberdeen MD to a Ripken Stadium encampment.  Again, it was crazy hot (I love it!) but the girls had A LOT of fun.  We pitched our tent and then the girls were pretty much free to run around doing activities and playing for the rest of the time.  At one point while we were all standing around up in the stands in the shade, Gwyn had her elephant (that she sleeps with) and was throwing it up high and catching it.  And wouldn't you know it?  It got stuck up on one of the beams in the ceiling.  We went to ask for help and a Ripken employee came to try to knock it down with a baseball.  After many tries, the baseball got stuck up there too.  Finally someone brought a ladder and a broom and got the elephant down, but the baseball is still there for all we know.  So now we know some interesting trivia about Ripken Stadium.  How did a baseball get stuck up in the rafters at the top of the stadium?  Gwyn did it.

The girls all got their faces painted.  With mustaches.  They kept sweating them off and going back and getting them again.  We had a pretty good dance party going on in one are.  There were two bounce houses.  People were chalking and braiding hair.  Celee won tickets to an Ironbirds game later in the summer.  At 10:45 they started the movie.  It was Hotel for Dogs.  Needless to say I did not pay much attention to that thriller.  Lights were out after the movie which didn't end until 12:45.  Then there were some noisy girls next to our tent so we didn't actually go to sleep until around 1am.  The we woke up a little after 5am and tried to go back to sleep, but at 6am the wake up call came over the loud speakers and the 80-90s pop music began.  So after 4 or so hours of sleep we were a bit loopy.  I was actually having a good time singing, dancing and generally being silly.  The girls were surprisingly cooperative too!  So we packed up the tent, had breakfast and headed home.  We all crashed Sunday afternoon, but it was definitely a fun weekend.

I've decided to do a juice cleanse this week.  My skin has been so bad for the past couple of weeks.  I think that I allowed emotional eating to form some habits of the candy/chocolate kind that are probably the source of the breakouts.  I'm pretty sure than citrus is not the cause of my breakouts so that's why those type of fruits are included.  This is what $70 of fruits and vegetables look like.  I'm going to miss dairy for a week.  :(  But it's worth it if I can have some peace about my skin and prove to myself (again) that food is not my master.  And now I'm accountable to do it because I've said it publicly right?